Metric Martyrs
The Metric Martyrs was a British advocacy group who campaigned for the freedom to choose what units of measurement are used by traders. The group believed that vendors should have the freedom to mark their goods with imperial weights and measurements alone. This opposes the current legal position that imperial units may be used so long as metric units are also displayed. The advocacy group was formed by individuals who had been accused of offences related to selling loose produce using imperial measures, including not displaying metric signage, and for using unstamped weighing machines (which had had their stamps removed by the authorities). Newspapers dubbed the group the "metric martyrs" after Chris Howell, then weights and measures spokesman for the Institute of Trading Standards Administration (today the Trading Standards Institute), said that they could martyr themselves if they wanted to. Legal cases In 2001 Steve Thoburn, a greengrocer in Sunderland, the main defendant in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Advocacy Group
Advocacy groups, also known as lobby groups, interest groups, special interest groups, pressure groups, or public associations, use various forms of advocacy or lobbying to influence public opinion and ultimately public policy. They play an important role in the development of political and social systems. Motives for action may be based on Politics, political, Economy, economic, religious, morality, moral, commerce, commercial or common good-based positions. Groups Methods used by advocacy groups, use varied methods to try to achieve their aims, including lobbying, media campaigns, consciousness raising, awareness raising publicity stunts, Opinion poll, polls, research, and policy briefings. Some groups are supported or backed by powerful business or political interests and exert considerable influence on the political process, while others have few or no such resources. Some have developed into important social, and political institutions or social movements. Some powerful advo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Metrication Opposition
The spread of metrication around the world in the last two centuries has been met with both support and opposition. Metrication The United States of America Metre Convention, officially accepted the Metric System in 1878 but United States customary units remain ubiquitous outside the science and technology sector. The metric system has been largely adopted in Canada and Ireland, and partially adopted in the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, without having fully displaced imperial units from all areas of life. In other Anglophone countries such as Australia, Singapore and New Zealand, imperial units have been formally deprecated and are no longer officially sanctioned for use. Technical arguments Natural evolution and human scale One argument used by opponents of the metric system is that traditional systems of measurement were developed organically from actual use. Early measures were human in scale, intuitive, and Accuracy and precision, imprecise, as illustrated by still-curre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Metrication In The United Kingdom
Metrication is the act or process of converting to the metric system of measurement. The United Kingdom, through voluntary and mandated laws, has metricated most of government, industry, commerce, and scientific research to the metric system; however, the previous measurement system (Imperial units) is still used in society. Imperial units as of 2024 remain mandated by law to still be used without metric units for speed and distance road signs, and the sizes of cider and beer sold by the glass, returnable milk containers and precious metals, and in some areas both measurement systems are mandated by law. Due to metrication many Imperial units have been phased out. However, the national curriculum requires metric units and imperial units that still remain in common usage to be taught in state schools. As such, the public is familiar with both metric and Imperial units, and may interchange measurements in conversation, for example: distance and body measurements. Adopting the metri ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Directive 80/181/EEC
As of 2009, the European Union had issued two units of measurement directives. In 1971, it issued Directive 71/354/EEC, which required EU member states to standardise on the International System of Units (SI) rather than use a variety of CGS and MKS units then in use. The second, which replaced the first, was Directive 80/181/EEC, enacted in 1979 and later amended several times (in 1984, 1989, 2000 and 2009), which issued a number of derogations to the United Kingdom and Ireland based on the former directive. Directive 71/354/EEC When the first units of measurement directive was issued, the six members of the EEC had been using the metric system for a hundred years or more. During that time the metric system had undergone a number of changes, particularly in science and engineering. Some industries were based on the CGS variant of the metric system and other on the MKS variant. In 1960, the CGPM published the International System of Units (SI), a coherent version of the met ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Act Of Union 1707
The Acts of Union refer to two acts of Parliament, one by the Parliament of Scotland in March 1707, followed shortly thereafter by an equivalent act of the Parliament of England. They put into effect the international Treaty of Union agreed on 22 July 1706, which politically joined the Kingdom of England and Kingdom of Scotland into a single "political state" named Kingdom of Great Britain, Great Britain, with Anne, Queen of Great Britain, Queen Anne as its sovereign. The English and Scottish acts of ratification took effect on 1 May 1707, creating the new kingdom, with Parliament of Great Britain, its parliament based in the Palace of Westminster. The two countries had shared a monarch since the "personal" Union of the Crowns in 1603, when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne from his cousin Elizabeth I to become (in addition) 'James I of England', styled James VI and I. Attempts had been made to try to unite the two separate countries, in 1606, 1667, and in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Selvedge
A selvage (US English) or selvedge (British English) is a "self-finished" edge of a piece of fabric which keeps it from unraveling and fraying. The term "self-finished" means that the edge does not require additional finishing work, such as hem or bias tape, to prevent fraying. In woven fabric, selvages are the edges that run parallel to the warp (the longitudinal threads that run the entire length of the fabric), and are created by the weft thread looping back at the end of each row. In knitted fabrics, selvages are the unfinished yet structurally sound edges that were neither cast on nor bound off. Historically, the term selvage applied only to loom woven fabric, though now can be applied to flat-knitted fabric. The terms ''selvage'' and ''selvedge'' are a corruption of "self-edge", and have been in use since the 16th century. In textiles Definition According to Hollen, Saddler & Langford, "A selvage is the self-edge of a fabric formed by the filling yarn when it t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
Halberget
Haberget (halberget, hauberget, halberject) was a kind of cloth described in Magna Carta of 1215, whose precise nature is not certain; the New Oxford English Dictionary defined it only as "a kind of cloth". A 1968 review by the Society for Medieval Archaeology of the UK proposed that it was a woollen cloth known for a broken diamond texture that was produced by early looms. As one of three kinds of cloth named in Magna Carta and in a variety of other medieval sources, it is believed to have been a major article of commerce in the 12th and 13th centuries. The cloth could be dyed green, 'peacock', dark brown, or in grain, and was available in coarse, good, or fine qualities, selling from 5.5d. to 4s. a yard. As such it could compete with other cloths used by the poor, or might be of a grade suitable for royalty. The texture of the cloth is believed to have superficially resembled a hauberk (chain mail) due to the pattern of horizontal rows, known as a 'broken diamond' or 'broken l ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
London Quarter
London is the capital and largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. London stands on the River Thames in southeast England, at the head of a tidal estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for nearly 2,000 years. Its ancient core and financial centre, the City of London, was founded by the Romans as Londinium and has retained its medieval boundaries. The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has been the centuries-long host of the national government and parliament. London grew rapidly in the 19th century, becoming the world's largest city at the time. Since the 19th century the name "London" has referred to the metropolis around the City of London, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent and Hertfordshire, which since 1965 has largely comprised the administ ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
John, King Of England
John (24 December 1166 – 19 October 1216) was King of England from 1199 until his death in 1216. He lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philip II of France, resulting in the collapse of the Angevin Empire and contributing to the subsequent growth in power of the French Capetian dynasty during the 13th century. The First Barons' War, baronial revolt at the end of John's reign led to the sealing of Magna Carta, a document considered a foundational milestone in English and later British constitution of the United Kingdom, constitutional history. John was the youngest son of King Henry II of England and Duchess Eleanor of Aquitaine. He was nicknamed John Lackland () because, as a younger son, he was not expected to inherit significant lands. He became Henry's favourite child following the failed revolt of 1173–1174 by his brothers Henry the Young King, Richard I of England, Richard, and Geoffrey II, Duke of Brittany, Geoffrey against their ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
The Crown
The Crown is a political concept used in Commonwealth realms. Depending on the context used, it generally refers to the entirety of the State (polity), state (or in federal realms, the relevant level of government in that state), the executive government specifically or only to the monarch and their Viceroy, direct representatives. The term can be used to refer to the rule of law; or to the functions of executive (government), executive (the Crown-King-in-Council, in-council), legislative (the Crown-in-parliament), and judicial (the Crown on the bench) governance and the civil service. The concept of the Crown as a corporation sole developed first in the Kingdom of England as a separation of the physical crown and property of the kingdom from the person and personal property of the monarch. It spread through English and later British colonisation and developed into an imperial crown, which rooted it in the legal lexicon of all 15 Commonwealth realms, their various dependencies, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
|
European Communities Act 1972 (UK)
The European Communities Act 1972 (c. 68), also known as the ECA 1972, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which made legal provision for the accession of the United Kingdom as a member state to the three European Communities (EC) the European Economic Community (EEC, the 'Common Market'), European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom), and the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC, which became defunct in 2002); the EEC and ECSC subsequently became the European Union. The Act also incorporated Community Law (later European Union Law), along with its , its treaties, regulations, directives, decisions, the Community Customs Union (later European Union Customs Union), the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the Common Fisheries Policy (FCP) together with judgments of the European Court of Justice into the domestic law of the United Kingdom. The Treaty of Accession was signed by the then Conservative Prime Minister Edward Heath and the then President of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |