It has been said that Britain is becoming a knowledge economy, and also that metal bashing can now be safely left to the low-wage economies of the Far East. If only it were that simple. Consider the railway industry …
Continue reading “Parts of the knowledge economy hit the buffers in South America”
In November 2005, the UK Department for Transport (DfT) produced an estimate of the cost of converting road traffic signs for speed and distance measurements to metric units. Optimism bias accounted for between 26% and 33% of the total overall cost. Now, the usefulness of optimism bias is being questioned.
In the comprehensive spending review (CSR) there was much talk of making changes to underpin a competitive economy, to put public services on a sustainable footing, fit for a modern age, and to prioritise those areas of public spending which are most likely to support economic growth. But there was no mention of eliminating an unnecessary overhead, which the UK’s struggling economy shares with that of the USA, namely the cost of maintaining two measurement systems side by side for the indefinite future. Continue reading “An opportunity for savings overlooked in the comprehensive spending review”
For many in Britain, the metric system and decimal measures are the same. Sunday’s once-in-a-century date provides an opportunity to consider the link between the two.
The UK’s twelfth largest consultancy by turnover, Scott Wilson, has been bought by the US design firm URS for £218 million. URS is second in the ‘Engineering News Record’ list of top 500 design firms. Metric Views speculates that Scott Wilson’s metric know-how is crucial for URS in this acquisition.
Metric Views has learned that the coalition government may drop the proposed amendments to road traffic sign regulations, which would have required dual signage of height and width restrictions within four years and which would have achieved savings and improvements in efficiency for the UK economy in the long term.
Continue reading “‘Rebalancing of the UK economy’ postponed?”
A slogan appearing on the label of a bottle of apple juice leaves some of us guessing about its intended message. Continue reading “A juicy story”
Two questions from a reader have prompted thoughts about the impact on UK trade of the continued use of pound/inch units in the US, and about the future prospects for manufacturing industry. Continue reading “Measuring, trading and manufacturing”
There is a widely held view in the UK that we share our measurement system with the USA. True – but not in the way many believe. Continue reading “Linked by a common system of measures”
Two recent Channel 4 Dispatches programmes entitled “Kids Don’t Count” sought to demonstrate just that. But if you saw the programmes and are a regular reader of Metric Views, you may have wondered if the programmes overlooked the real problem. Continue reading “Kids don’t count”
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