SPECTATOR'S NOTEBOOK
CHRISTOPHER BOOKER
As an aficionado of the singularly murky way in which plans have been laid to convert this country to the metric system, I was naturally taken with the story retailed this week by a certain scurrilous fortnightly. It seems that the imminent horrors of metrica- tion were recently raised at an editorial meet- ing in Great Turnstile, presided over by Mr Crossman, and attended by the late MinTech Mr Benn. As a member of the cabinet which had originally agreed to the metrication scheme (although he did not seem to be aware of the fact), Mr Crossman was dis- posed to dismiss the fuss, since metrication was after all only 'voluntary'. Gently, Mr Benn had to disabuse him by pointing out (although not perhaps in so many words) that this was only the propaganda line taken by his late Ministry—and that in fact the conversion is to be about as compulsory as enabling legislation can make it.
That even a member of the cabinet re- sponsible can be taken in by this propa- ganda confirms yet again the overwhelming impression I have had since I began to look into the metrication plan a few months ago —that hardly anyone, even those directly responsible, has the slightest idea of the fan- tastic upheaval in our national life that it is going to involve.
Even the 'metrication officer' of a large oil company recently confessed privately that 'the thing hasn't been thought out at all —it's going to be much more expensive and chaotic than anyone realises, and if there was the slightest chance of going back now it ought to be taken'. The Government did in fact last month promise the possibility of a debate in the autumn (the first there will have been), and anyone who is interested should write to his MP now.
I had some foretaste of just how unpop- ular metrication is likely to be when I raised the matter in a speech at the late election. It made me view with particular irony the charge by Mr Eric Lubbock that my recent criticisms of metrication in these columns were nothing but a 'Tory smear'. For the enthusiastically anti-metric audience to which I was speaking consisted almost en- tirely of Liberals, and the platform I held forth from was that of the party whose slogan used to be 'People Count.'
Year of the Comma
So much talk about conservation is con- ducted on the level of dinner-party sensa- tionalising, that it is incumbent on those who are genuinely anxious about these matters to be specific, and as far as possible well- informed. Otherwise the fear of the appar- ently limitless destructiveness of modem technology can of course easily become simply a kind of counter-neurosis, as unreal as the fantasies of Mr Benn himself.
A notorious example of the anti-pollution neurosis was the article by an eminent pro- fessor of histology in the Observer some time ago, entitled 'Where Have All The Butterflies Gone?'—which implied that not only have butterflies virtually disappeared from the English countryside, but that the use of agricultural chemicals may well have been responsible for the worldwide rise in crime and 'moral deterioration'.
Whenever people make this kind of point to me about butterflies, I attempt to redress the balance by telling the story of the Com- ma. This beautiful species, with its tawny, ragged-edged wings, was common all over England a hundred years ago, but then de- clined in numbers (long before the days of pesticides), until by the early nineteen-twen- ties it was only to be found in the Wye Valley. It then began mysteriously to in- crease, in the last few years to the point where 1969 might well have been known to entomologists as the 'year of the Comma', when it was plentiful again in almost all parts of England.
Rose-tinted
Butterflies have generally decreased in re- cent years, but not as much as is commonly thought. There is a kind of rose-tinted spec- tacle effect which persuades many people to recall that, in their youth, butterflies flew everywhere in clouds, whereas today there are none (often because they will not get out of their cars to look). In fact, in places today, such as on Beachy Head where I observed thirteen species in half an hour last week, they are as common as ever. In other places, the fact that there are none is as often due to the destruction of wild flowers by inten- sive pasturing as to any pesticides. On one hillside I know in Dorset one could until recently see over twenty species on a sunny August day. Today there are none—solely because that field has for the past three years been closely cropped by sheep and cows. On the other hand, in a Forestry Commission plantation fifty yards away, I last year saw a White Admiral which has not been seen there for twenty years.
Horror story An example of the need to be specific about these matters in another sense comes from a document sent in to the SPECTATOR by a Hampshire reader, Mr Nigel Vinson. It is the instruction leaflet attached to a German systemic insecticide, Matasystox-55—a typi- cal organo-phosphorous compound.
The instructions make horrifying reading, not just for what this chemical may do to a man, should any even touch his skin— 'fainting, nausea, vomiting, muscle twitch- ing' and of course possibly even death—but for the vagueness of what it may do to animals—'harmful to livestock, game, wild birds, animals, fish' etc.
What it means by 'harmful' is of course 'fatal', as the fish of the Rhine discovered last year in their tens of millions; and yet the leaflet simply tells the user to 'wash out container thoroughly' after use. Where? Un- der a farm tap, so that the residue goes straight into a nearby stream?
It is impossible not to conclude that these warnings, approved by the Ministry of Agri- culture, are made deliberately vague and un- derstated so as not to discourage use. It is true that organo-phosphorous compounds are relatively unstable, that is to say they break down and soon lose their toxicity— but even on that point the leaflet is vague to the point of meaninglessness. As to the price that is paid for such vagueness, we saw only this week the story of the Shropshire bee- keeper who lost two thirds of his 500,000 bees after nearby aerial spraying--ahnost certainly with organo-phosphorous.
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