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R.I.P the Acre c1300-2008

Guy Aitchison, 21 - 07 - 2008
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Guy Aitchison (London, OK): Have we seen the last of the "British" acre? The 700-year old land measurement has apparently been banned by the EU following a meeting in Brussels last week.

The Sun (as you may have guessed) is not best pleased, informing its readers that "Britain" (don't they mean England?) has used the acre to measure land since " the late 13th century under Edward I’s reign." The word acre is apparently derived from the Old English for "open field" and was considered the amount of land tillable by a man behind an ox in one day. The measurement was eventually defined by law under Queen Victoria in the Weights and Measures Act of 1878 as being 4,840 square yards or 43,560 square feet.

This history was brought to an end last week when a "lowly Whitehall official" nodded through the EU orders that sealed the acre's fate. What do OK readers think? Surely the humble acre deserved better than this.

 

Toque said:

Tue, 2008-07-22 18:10

Why aren't you telling me this in Esperanto James, or is universalism only good where it suits you?

Heck, let's all drive on the right and standardise our spelling like the Americans, and lets call coriander cilantro, and courgettes zucchinis.  Let's eliminate cultural differences entirely.   And we can all live in eco-towns, happily ever after.

Our identity is not only defined by uniqueness (group identities are defined by sameness), but if you eliminate everything unique about an identity, it ceases to be a functioning identity. 

I love visiting other countries and discovering their difference, in fact that's why I go; and I'm sure the millions of visitors to Britain love discovering the uniqueness of here. 

Do you think any normal person on the continent (ie not a politician) cares less whether people in Britain drink pints or buy pounds of cheese?  Of course they don't, and neither should you.

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