The news that bird flu has broken out at a turkey farm near Holton, Suffolk illustrates once again the difficulty that the Government has in trying to run with an “official” system of weights and measures while doing nothing to encourage its use.
The news that bird flu has broken out at a turkey farm near Holton, Suffolk http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/6327193.stm means that Defra’s containment policy comes into action. Accordingly a 3 km protection zone and 10 km surveillance zone has been established around the farm.
Any user familiar with an Ordnance Survey map will be familiar with the kilometre grid system used for map references. Any OS map user will be able to understand what the protection zone and surveillance zone mean.
Although our roads are designed in metric and regulations for traffic signs are metric (see http://www.ukma.org.uk/Campaign/RoadContractors.htm), Department for Transport continues to forbid the use of metric distances on traffic signs (scroll down the BBC story to see the map).
It is ludicrous for one part of government to use metric on a health & safety issue and another part to forbid its use! It is no wonder so many people in this country are not proficient in any system of units.
Metric Views 