For some strange reason, although the Lisbon TGreaty (the renamed superstate constitution)was passed by Parliament, and given Royal Consent , it was not officially ratified until the signed document was lodged with the Italian Foreign Ministry in Rome. It is sad to report the dirty deed is now done and the documents arrived in a diplomatic bag in Rome on Wednesday 16th July 2008. It’s quite simple how the giveaway of our independence starts in different areas, it even almost sounds reasonable, but as with everything the EU does there is always an ulterior motive - namely the creation of a country called Europe. Although the EU already has a police force in the secretive and shadowy shape of Europol, it also, as warned by Torquil Dick Erickson, has an embryonic militarised gendarmerie too. Now, it obviously wants a recognisable pan-EU uniformed police force too, and what better way to start it off than by allowing police officers from all across the EU to operate in different EU countries. During July, news was released that the EU wants to set up police stations in tourist areas manned by police officers from the various nations. In the not too distant EU plotted future we could have French, Italian, German and other police officers operating in police stations in London, Bath and other tourist areas. The idea, according to the French interior minister Michele Alliot-Marie, is to put multilingual police in tourist areas to win back disillusioned voters to the EU - although a referendum would have been better. HOW THE EXPRESSION, “IN OLD MONEY”, PUTS YOU IN YOUR PLACE BY DEREK NORMAN Derek Norman: going metric has cost billions of pounds. Ever since the traitor Prime Minister, Ted Heath, lied through his teeth when he said, “There will be no loss of essential national sovereignty”, when referring to British membership of the Common Market/European Economic Community in 1972, there has been a relentless ratcheting of interference in virtually every aspect of Britain’s, heritage, culture, and traditions by the un-elected European Union Commission and the army of over-paid bureaucrats in Brussels that we are all paying for. Note: Employees of the EU get special privileges in the form of high salaries, generous pensions and very low tax rates that are not available to ordinary British citizens. Now that the 30-year secrecy files are available to the public we know that high-ranking civil servants in various government departments warned Cabinet Ministers that it would be very difficult to force metrication on the British people, especially house-wives and the elderly. The process of metrication would have to be introduced slowly over a long period of time with various sections of industry, commerce, and education being informed when it was time for them to go fully metric. The Civil Service informed the Government that there was a general desire by some industries, such as the Building Industry to go metric. This is only partially true because it was the powerful bosses rather than the workers or the British people who really wanted the change. Some bosses made exaggerated claims about the feeling of industry and commerce generally being sympathetic or actually desiring to go metric. Of course, during the 1960s various government ministers pushed for a change-over to metric to gain favour for British entry into Europe despite over a hundred and fifty years of Britain leading the Industrial Revolution and becoming, up to that time, the world’s greatest trader and exporter. The British system of weights and measures prevailed on about a third of the Earth and the 1000th-of-an-inch had become the industry standard for engineering. Going metric has cost this country many billions of pounds and many thousand of jobs. I have seen high quality machine tools such as lathes, boring machines, multi-ton presses, bending machines and many other industrial machines in good working order, ripped from their bases and sold for scrap, when their real value was perhaps 100 or 1000 time more than their scrap value. I saw these wonders of British engineering being thrown on the scrap heap for no other reason than that they were calibrated in British traditional units of feet, inches, and 1000th of inches and often replaced by inferior and expensive metric machine tools. We have seen hard-working men and women market traders taken to court and given criminal records for selling fruit and vegetables in pounds and ounces because the EU imposed Metrication Directives on the British Government that forced the traders to sell their goods in grams and kilograms. The traders were forced to buy new metric scales that cost between £500 and £2000 when their imperial scales were still in perfect condition. Petrol Stations and Garages were forced to replace their petrol pumps that delivered in gallons, with pumps that delivered in litres. If you can imagine the cost of all the petrol pumps in the United Kingdom being replaced at between £5000 to £10,000 a time you can probably make a reasonable guess that we are talking big, big, money. I have not yet mentioned all the manufacturing and production equipment that has had to be changed to metric, all the labels, specifications, operating instructions, building regulations, shipbuilding construction measurements and a multitude of other areas where metrication has cost the British taxpayers dear. I often phone the BBC or ITV weather forecasters to complain that all polls taken in the last twenty years show that the British people still prefer traditional British units when considering, depth of snow, distance of visibility in fog, or air pressure readings on a barometer, etc. A good proportion of the population, including the elderly still prefer temperatures to be given in Fahrenheit rather than Celsius/Centigrade. The Met Office, the BBC and the Independent TV Companies will not even consider giving the British people an imperial and fahrenheit forecast just once or twice a day. Since the BBC especially has to work to its charter of providing for all the people, I find it offensive that the Director and Chairman of the BBC ignore the wishes of so many of its listeners and viewers. One lady weather forecaster said to me; “We have gone metric and you will have to accept it”. Well pardon me! The Government has gone metric, but the British people have definitely not. The metric system is the system of force and punishment, whereas the imperial system is the British peoples’ favoured system of democratic choice. So next time you hear a Weather Forecaster, News Reader or Presenter say “The temperature in Old Money is xx degrees fahrenheit” or “The air pressure reading on your barometer in old money is xx inches” you know that behind that remark is a personal sneer at the 70% to 80% of British people that still prefer their own traditional system of weights and measures. Just think what the UK could have done with all the billions of pounds wasted on trying to force the unpopular metric system on the British people in terms of hospital services, help for the elderly or improving public transport? What about having a Golden Mile in the 2012 Olympic Games? After all, we’re paying for it! Derek Norman is the Chairman of Active Resistance to Metrication.