The Curious Case of the Metric Headlines in the Daily Mail

The metric system. Nice easy way of measuring things in units divisible by 10 or, in the words of Grandpa Simpson, "the tool of the devil"?

For many years now Britain's tabloids have been firmly in the latter camp. Despite the fact that every child born in Britain since at least 1979 has been schooled in the use of metres, kilograms and litres, the likes of the Mail, Express and, at the "higher" end of the market, the Telegraph are united in their hatred of all things metric.

It's an "un-British" imposition being forced on us by politically correct lefties and the European Union, quite probably in the name of Elf 'N' Safety. To quote Grandpa Simpson a second time, their attitude has been very much along the lines of: "My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's they way I likes it!"

Just this morning in the Daily Mail, columnist Peter Hitchens bemoaned the way the evil decimal-based system was being used in reports about the Snowpocalypse:

"The intensifying campaign to force the foreign, unwieldy metric system on the British people continues apace. Broadcasters and newspapers have virtually abolished the yard (still lawfully used on thousands of road signs) and the foot. But their most determined campaign is against the inch. Why do the weather people insist on telling us that 10cm of snow have fallen? Partly, they do it because they are fanatics. Partly because it sounds much worse than 4in. A country halted by 4in of snow sounds – and is – rather pathetic."

You know that when the Mail - and in particular Peter Hitchens - says "broadcasters" he's really complaining about the BBC. In the past he's even FoI'd the Corporation to try and uncover official rules that force Beeb hacks to use metric measurements over imperial ones. But perhaps he should start his crusade a little closer to home. Because also in today's Daily Mail is this headline:

What's that decidedly foreign-looking measure of temperature in the headline? Could it be - gasp! - a metric unit? In the past week there have been many, many more sightings of the metric menace in Mail headlines:

Extra points for the mix-and-match approach in the last one there.

So why is the Mail using the "foreign, unwieldy metric system" in its headlines? Could it be that "minus 7c" sounds, colder, scarier and generally more Snowpocalyptic than a rather pathetic "19f"?

UPDATE!
Just in case you can't be arsed to read the comments underneath, I should point out that Hitch's column appeared in the Mail on Sunday yesterday (5 December), not this morning's main paper. However, it was published on the Mail website this morning.

Snowpocalypse Now

I tweeted a link to this last night but thought it was worth sharing with the widest possible audience, not to mention preserving for posterity.

With epic snowfalls reported across the north-east and Scotland suffering its coldest November night since records began, you can't blame local journalists for trying to get a bit of the Snowmaggedon action. Unfortunately over in East Anglia things weren't looking quite so dramatic yesterday lunchtime, so the Norwich Evening News had to resort to this:

I've been checking back all day and there's still no update on whether the icy wall of death has plummeted down onto the innocent shoppers below.

If anyone has other examples of snow-related non-news I'd be delighted to hear about them in the comments.

Weather v Climate

With the sad predictability of an England middle-order collapse, respected scientist Richard Littlejohn is the first columnist to trot out this piece of HILARIOUS commentary:

"It’s late November and parts of Britain are under eight inches of snow. That’ll be the global warming, then."

By happy conicidence, today sees the release of a Met Office report that says 2010 is on course to be the hottest in recorded history. That'll be the global warming, then.

Mind how you go, Richard.