The UK is unique among European countries for its continued use of imperial units on road signs. Its road signs are almost exclusively imperial. The use of miles, yards, feet and inches dominates UK road signs whereas the rest of Europe, excluding the crown dependencies in the British Isles, uses metres and kilometres on road signs.
This is the not the only area where the UK is an outlier compared to the rest of Europe. Many other areas of British life are exceptional or highly unusual compared to the rest of Europe. These areas are described in this article.
Hyper-Centralized State
The UK is one of the most centralized states in Europe despite being a multinational state of four nations with their own distinct identities. Compared with federal or devolved systems (Germany, Switzerland, Spain), the UK’s concentration of power in Westminster is exceptional. Even after devolution, England — 85% of the population — has no national parliament or government, another global anomaly. Westminster doubles as England’s parliament and the UK parliament. It deals with England-only issues and UK-wide issues. This is globally unique.
Wholly Unelected Upper House
The House of Lords is fully appointed with over 800 members. It is the only wholly unelected upper house in Europe. In terms of its size, it is the world’s second largest legislature. Only China’s National People’s Congress (NPC) is bigger. The NPC acts as a rubber-stamp for decisions taken by the Chinese Communist Party leadership. The House of Lords is not territorially or vocationally representative and is larger than the House of Commons.
FPTP Electoral System
Compared to Europe, the UK’s winner-takes-all First Past the Post (FPTP) electoral system for general elections is extremely unusual. The vast majority of European countries use some form of proportional representation for electing their national legislature. FPTP has traditionally produced two-party dominance, highly disproportional results and governments with large majorities on minority vote shares. FPTP does not work well in the current era of a fragmented multi-party system.
Private School Influence
Despite the fact that only 7% of children attend private schools in the UK, they dominate politics, the judiciary, the media, military leadership and cultural institutions. No other European country has such a stark elite pipeline from fee‑paying schools. It’s closer to the US Ivy League feeder system — but starting at age 13.
The UK has extremely expensive and exclusive private schools such as Eton, Harrow and Winchester (which are misleadingly called “public schools”) that cost more to attend than most workers’ gross annual salaries. No European countries have anything equivalent to these schools.
Marketized Universities and £9K+ Tuition Fees
Britain pursued mass university expansion more aggressively than almost any European country. Now approximately 50% of young people attend university. The UK used a uniquely debt‑based funding model for the university sector. Pupils pay over £9000 per year to attend university, which the vast majority take out in student loans. In the rest of Europe, public‑university tuition is generally low or zero. As a result of the massive increase in the number of graduates, graduate wage premiums have fallen sharply. The UK’s combination of high fees + mass participation + declining salary returns is genuinely exceptional.
Housing Tenure and Planning Exceptionalism
The UK has one of the most restrictive planning systems in the OECD, very low rates of new construction, high housing costs relative to income and a uniquely powerful “property-owning democracy” ideology. This combination is not found elsewhere in Europe.
Water Privatization
England and Wales are globally unique in privatizing their entire water and sewerage industries. No other country has followed their example. Almost everywhere else, the water industry is run by the state.
Conclusion
This article explores various British policies that are extremely unusual or exceptional compared to European norms. The retention of imperial road signs is one of these policies, but it is not the only one. Perhaps, the fateful decision to abandon the changeover of road signs to metric units in the early 1970’s despite several years of preparatory work is one of the ways the UK has deviated from the rest of Europe. Now the UK is the only European country that uses imperial road signs. Apart from the UK, only Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man use imperial road signs. These territories are crown dependencies, not countries. Outside the British Isles, the rest of Europe uses metres and kilometres (i.e. metric units) on their road signs.
Andy Burnham at the Labour Conference had some encouraging words to say. If there is more overt movement towards the EU coming then maybe DfT can be persuaded to start a program of converting road signs to metric (at least the low hanging fruit that does not include speed limit signs).
Ezra aka punditgi
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Andy Burnham had some encouraging words to say at the Labour Conference. If he moves the UK significantly closer to the EU perhaps DfT can be persuaded to convert at least the easy road signs to metric over time (all but the speed limit signs).
Ezra aka punditgi
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An interesting paper by Ronnie. At first sight it might appear to be verging on a political commentary, but if we are to promote the metric system (or any other cause for that matter), we need to understand the rules of the game which in this case is the political setup.
Perhaps the most significant exception that Ronnie missed was that England has not had a total transfer of power form one regime to another since 1066. Even during the Civil War (1642-1661) and the Glorious Revolution (1689), the “establishment” remained the same. As a result, there has been no need to rebuild any aspects of the nation from scratch. In contrast, France adopted the metric system during the French Revolution – the existing system of units was badly broken, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy adopted the metric system when those countries were formed by a union of a number of smaller states, each with their own system of units. Other countries, realising either that their systems were broken or that a powerful neighbour was using the metric system chose to also adopt the metric system in order to remain competitive.
Britian has, to a large extent, adopted the metric system where it is appropriate to do so for reasons of remaining competitive, but due to the inertia of government has not competed the process. The principal metrication project that is outstanding is that of road signs. In the case of Ireland and South Africa (and I believe Australia), metrication of road signs was tied in with an overhaul of road signs legibility. In South Africa, for example, there was a mixture of national standards for signs giving instructions (STOP, Speed Limit etc) and provincial standards (direction markers) for others. In the early 1970’s a national standard was adopted for all signs and by and large the new signs followed the Vienna Convention on Road Signs. In Ireland, the rules relating to speed limits needed to be overhauled, so the adoption of km/h for speed limits was done at the same time.
What about Britian? In 1963 the Warboys Committee published its report on road signs. (https://archive.org/details/op1265802-1001/mode/2up) The report recommended a wholesale overhaul of Britains roads signs, including, crucially, a new mixed-case font for use on road signs. This font improved the legibility of the signs no end. The report had one major flaw – it made no provision for the eventual adoption of the metric system and in particular advocated mph speed limit signs that were, to all intensive purposes, identical to the km/h signs in use on the Continent. It should be noted that in 1963 there were no plans to adopt the metric system, but two years later that Britian’s metrication program was announced in Parliament.
Where does that leave us? Apart from the imperial unit aspect, our road signs are fit for purpose (or would be if councils made sure that they did their jobs properly!) Everything in the UK has been on a step-by-step process and it has bee the same with road signs. Some readers might recall that before the last election, I broke down on the A43 near Silvertone and although I stopped in a lay-bye next to a location marker post, the AA did not know what I was talking about when I tried to explain where I was. I wrote to my MP and on the eve of the election I had a letter from the minister acknowledging that the used of location marker posts was not in the handbook used by ministers even though it was in the Highway Code. Last week, on trip to Nottingham, I noticed that driver locations signs had been put up in, or very close to emergency stopping points on the so-called “intelligent” motorways that I used. Maybe what is needed is a quiet nudge to government to get then to move in the right way. Another tactic that I used ten years ago was to ridicule weight limit signs at every possible opportunity by saying that the only vehicle I knew of that that emitted “7.5 T” was a Tardis (though I had never actually measured a magnetic field of this strength). I don’t know if my needling caused someone with influence to quietly suggest to the minister that the “T” should be replaced by a “t”.
We should also take note of surveys that are done about attitudes to various aspects of metrication and where ewe see a positive trend, do what we can to accelerate that trend. The main areas that came out of the You Gove report of a few years ago is the increased use by younger people in the use of kilograms for personal weight and the use of metric units for short distances, especially 2 metres social distancing.
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