Metric madness
Sir: Your article 'Going metric' (29 April) raises issues to which both the Metrication Board and Parliament are completely indifferent, but of very great importance to democracy. I am the author of nine gardening books, and, as Director of the Henry Doubleday Research Association, of a very large number of booklets for gardeners. All these publications are full of ounces a square yard, inches apart, inches between rows, pounds to the gallon of water, and feet and inches of height for shrubs, alpines and herbaceous plants.
Are gardeners, whose gardens stay the same size, to be left out of metrication, or is there to be an appointed day on which all gardening books must `go metric?' Will it become illegal for bookshops to sell books containing non-metric measurements, just as carpet shops may not sell carpets by the square yard? If this is the case then are publishers' stocks to be burnt, or are the offending figures to be blacked out and replaced by metric and at whose expense? Is the Government taking a long stride towards 1984 by introducing book censorship?
The Government is abdicating its responsibilities by consulting about three hundred trade organisations already committed to metrication, and denying the voters their right to a voice in changes that will concern us all. To politicians, elections are about office, not democracy, and if they are allowed to enforce metrication in this underhand manner there is no way we can prevent them from enforcing Esperanto, eugenics or euthanasia, by merely consulting the 'experts' and ignoring the voters. Lawrence D. Hills, 32 Convent Lane Bockins, Braintree, Essex
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