Metric
dilemma sorted
The news that Englishmen are to be spared the dreaded ban on weighing
things in metric units instead of pounds and ounces is something that
I welcome, but there never was much chance of our anglers changing over
to foreign measurements because they are useless for the purpose of weighing
fish.
Besides when I retired from working over 22 years ago I vowed never to
let anyone tell me what to do and what not to do ever again, especially
people from a country that once tried to kill me by dropping bombs on
me.
You see for all of my long life anglers have adhered to a system whereby
a fish was considered a good specimen to be sought out keenly by those
of us who like to try for good sized fish.
A roach for instance has always been considered a true specimen to be
admired when it reached a weight of two pounds.
How then could we evaluate the worth of a roach that weighed 452 grams?
If I have got it right an ounce in imperial measures is fractionaly over
28 grams.
And a pike is considered a specimen to be sought after when it has reached
the weight of 20lbs. Would we feel equally justified in claiming to have
landed a pike weighing 9,040 grams in metric measures? It would be meaningless.
I can put up with carbon fibre fishing rods and poles being sold in measurements
in centimetres and metres because they are mainly made in countries that
do measure that way, but I always do a calculation in my head when trying
a rod to convert it into feet and inches.
I fail to understand just why things that we invented in England like
carbon fibre and televisions etc are now almost exclusively manufactured
abroad.
At least I can now legally weigh my fish in proper English weights: not
that I would ever have done otherwise anyway.
Attempts to get people in America to adopt metric measures did not even
get considered by anglers in America who, like us, weigh their fish in
pounds not kilos.