I old towns I am fascinated by the patterns of roofs if you are looking down from city walls. We recently visited Óbidos which is about 100 km north of Lisbon not far from the A8 motorway. This is a very well preserved fortified town and well worth a look. The roofscape views from the walls are good.

This view is taken from the wall not far from the main entrance to the town. It shows some of the variety of chimneys that are to be seen.

There is plenty of lichen on the roofs implying good air quility.

Chimneys come in a variety of forms including elongated ones (right) here and rounded.

Some chimneys such as these just outside the city wall remind me of lighthouses!

We are now near the end of the "silly season" when the press - starved of the normal volumes of political news sees fit to publish material that normally would not make the mark for publication. However, there are also many stories that make the press that seem  to totally misrepresent fact yet get published if they support a particular political angle. Sometimes I think that the worst of these come in the Euro myth category where almost any story regardless of accuracy is used to attack Britain's participation in the European Union. One such article was a piece from Neil Parrish in the Western Morning News on 27th August 2008. I have wanted to comment in depth on such articles and Mr Parrish's article was a random choice; I have had no particular reason to single him out.

For reference, I am broadly in favour of Britain's EU membership having benefited from the free movement of goods and labour in my lifetime. I have however never been a fan of the common agricultural policy and some of the more grandiose schemes mooted. However I am tired of the bleating of British politicians who seem not to be able to do their jobs.

I picked this one out about the demise of the acre because having registered land for my house in 1999 I have a little idea of what really goes on. I also remember the state of metrication in the UK when at school in the 1960s and 1970s and resent the Orwellian way that some politicians rewrite our history.

Now let's take a look at the article...

Government fails to save the acre from EU oblivion

VERY quietly over the summer, when no-one was looking, the EU took advantage of the holidays to quietly kill off the acre.

This is a wild claim. European law must be ratified by the European Parliament of which Neil Parrish is a member. How can they "take advantage of the holidays"? If he is not happy with the measure what did he do in the European Parliament to stop it? Was he caught napping?

Sadly, from January 2010, our ancient measurement will be consigned to history, no longer to be used when land is registered.

 
Many ancient measures have been consigned to history for good reason. We no longer have bushels, firkins, Winchester gallons, Scottish stones and ells. Phasing out a unit might just be because it is past its 'sell by' date.

Europeans tend to look over the Channel with puzzlement at our imperial measurements and are generally completely unable to fathom exactly what they mean. The pound, the pint, the mile, the hand and the acre may not be totally logical, but they are part of what makes us special. They represent the unique history of our island story, but unfortunately they fall foul of the EU drive for harmonisation and uniformity.

Actually it is not just fellow Europeans who are puzzled by Britain's attachment to imperial measures. Citizens of the Commonwealth, Asia and South America are equally puzzled. In the 1960s Britain said it was going to go metric and those Commonwealth countries who were not already metric decided to do the same. Australia and New Zealand changed over successfully in the 1970s.

Units like the acre are not unique to Britain, after all it was introduced by the Anglo-Saxon invaders. Not surprisingly the Dutch and Germans had a similar unit - the Morgen - if they are puzzled, then it is only to ask why we have not modernised.

After repeated attempts to rid us of our other imperial measurements, European bureaucrats finally got one over on us by managing to kill the acre when no-one was looking. Hidden deep down in page 30 of the minutes of the last EU Agriculture Ministers' meeting was the sentence that killed it. Ministers approved it with little debate and no protest from the British Government.

 This is not the root cause of the acre going. When the UK joined the EU in 1973 it agreed to adopt the metric system confirming a decision taken in 1965. However some derogations were negotiated e.g. allowing the pint for draft beer and the acre for land registration.

Acres are odd units for land registration, as land registration relies on maps. Our Ordnance Survey maps are based on a one kilometre grid and this is nothing new. The same system has been used since the 1940s. A hectare being a 100 m by 100 m square fits perfectly with an OS map as there are 100 hectares in every OS grid square; ten rows and ten columns. Not surprisingly the UK Government - which had the option to retain the acre - started replacing the acre with the hectare or square metres in 1995 and this was compulsory from 2003. When I purchased my building plot in 1999 the land registration was metric.

Furthermore the EU rules governing units of measurement come from the Units of Measurement Directive - reviewed in 2007 - and not the EU Agriculture Ministers' meeting. The agricultural ministers would have to implement what was agreed in the directive. This directive was subject to a public consultation and any UK citizen could have taken part. The UK Government made strong representations to the consultation as did some industry bodies. If the loss of the acre was so important what did Neil Parrish do to mobilise his constituents?
 

The humble acre is one of Britain's most ancient units, measuring 4,840 square yards, and has had an illustrious history. The word itself represents this history, coming from the Old Saxon word of aecer, meaning open field, and the Latin word "ager." This Latin word is also the root for "agriculture". Its exact size was first set out under a law passed in the reign of Edward 1 in the early 14th century.

from Garway

I agree that the acre has a long and important history - and I like the word - in fact it dates back to the 9th century when it was defined by a furlong and chain. It is rooted in our European history and is close to the Dutch 'akker' or German 'Acker' which mean cultivated fields. Like most imperial units it has its origin in invaders from the Continent - just like the Romans introduced the mile.

I can't help feeling that to throw away a word and a unit of measurement with such a tradition, and to replace it with the "hectare", measuring 2.471 acres and hated by most farmers I know, is a sad betrayal of our entire agricultural tradition.

Obsoleting a unit is not the same as throwing away a word; we talk of "milestones" figuratively although they have been obsolete for decades.. 'Old money' in other words £sd had an even longer tradition going back to Roman times. Yet despite its antiquity it was absolutely necessary for our finance system to phase it out and use modern decimal currency.

Nobody I know can define the acre. Area units are normally based on squares e.g. square metre or square foot. The acre is an awkward oblong unit - one furlong (furrow long) by a chain. Who understands chains these days? The acre was the size of an Anglo Saxon strip field - we have abandoned strip farming between the 17th and 19th centuries in the UK - an obsolete concept. The acre - like 'old money' - is an important part of our past but belongs in a museum.

A hectare is a sensible unit being 100 metres square - about the size of a rugby pitch. For London dwellers it is about the size of the pedestrianised area in Trafalgar Square.

I know some people involved in agriculture and have never heard that hectares are the subject of widespread hatred. Indeed a friend at church who is an agricultural chemist tells me they are very useful. His company does soil surveys to ensure that farmers target precisely where fertilizer is needed (based on soil analysis) to save indescriminate fertilizer usage. They take one sample per hectare (using GPS to position the sample) and of course this fits with OS maps.

I accept that in reality, it probably won't change everyday life for Westcountry farmers too much. The acre has not formally been used for several years. Hectares are currently used in tandem with acres for most documentation and so this ruling will make little practical difference to most farm sales.

In other words this is saying that the issue is a storm in a teacup!

In what now appears a cunning plan by the EU to lay the foundation to kill the acre, all Single Farm Payment claims are already made in hectares, and have been for some time. 

Single Farm Payments need to be based on the same rules in every country so the hectare was an obvious choice. Since the UK has already phased out the acre for Land Registration how can this be an EU 'cunning plan'? The acre was already gone when land registration started to use hectares and square metres in 1995.

However, psychologically it is a hammer blow to the British countryside, reminding us once and for all that no-one can avoid the arbitrary rules of the European Union. The humble acre may have given us the very template for the mishmash of fields which make up the British countryside, it may be well-loved, easy to visualise for our farmers and have existed since the 14th century, yet all this is no match for the pen of European bureaucrats.

 
No, the mishmash of long abandoned strip fields was the template for the acre not the other way round. How is phasing out an obsolete unit a "hammer blow" to farmers? The land still has the same area regardless of the units used. The land will produce the same whether measured in acres or hectares!

Originally, an acre described the amount of land that could be ploughed by a man and an ox in a single day, and while I accept that most Westcountry farmers no longer plough their land in this way, our entire agricultural heritage is based on holdings measured in acres. More importantly, farm sizes sound a lot bigger when they are measured in acres.

 
I am relieved that Mr Parrish acknowledges that his constituents have moved on from strip farming.

However why is it an advantage that "farm sizes sound a lot bigger when they are measured in acres". Anybody buying or selling land needs to compare like with like. They need to know that a 100 hectare farm is bigger than a 70 hectare one (or equivalent in acres). Would Mr Parrish prefer to specify farms in square metres? That would make the numbers much bigger!

In an ideal world a compromise could have been sought. Many other countries seek opt-outs of EU policies which affect or impinge on ancient traditions – and we could have done the same. The EU is constantly attempting to downgrade our traditions and all this achieves in doing is driving people more and more eurosceptic. Our Government always seems to let them get away with it – and it makes me wonder if this is their intention.

 
Why are we clinging on to imperial measurement traditions in the 21st Century? It is a sad reflection on the demise of numeracy and science in the UK that such drivel is stated by politicians - though I suspect the motive is simply to blame the EU at any pretext. Imperial measures were developed for an illiterate and innumerate society. Metric units are designed to be used for calculation in other words for modern numerate people.

It is no secret that our imperial system of measurements drives the Europeans mad. For years, the EU has been trying to persuade our Government to give them up. It dreams of a Britain where people drive (preferably on the right) in kilometres, weigh themselves in kilograms, drink litres rather than pints and measure their land in hectares. For years, it has put the pressure on and generally the Government has been able to resist.

 
This is really the Orwellian bit. An objective look at our history will show that the UK wanted to modernise its manufacturing and professional practices in the 1960s by adopting metric. This was a good decade before joining the EEC. Successive Conservative and Labour governments failed to see the conversion program through and we now have had decades of mess.

Having had a miserable few years struggling with long division and multiplication in imperial units and 'old money' in the 1960s, I can assure Mr Parrish that learning imeprial properly should drive anyone mad. I recall when my school textbooks were switched from dreadful imperial calculations to sensible decimal currency and metric units around 1970 by then Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher. My practical numarcy improved by leaps and bounds. We were told that the UK was going metric in a few years and needed to be prepared. Governments have let down two generations of children by teaching one system and retaining the old one.

Then came along Directive 80/181/EEC on units of measurements allowed in member states. Once again the pint, mile, yards and hands were threatened and once again the UK was able to negotiate a derogation – or an opt-out – to continue using them. A word of caution here, though – a derogation only puts off the decision for a few years, so expect them to be challenged once more in the future.

However, because of the Common Agricultural Policy, the EU has been able to tie in payments to hectare measurements. Gradually, the acre has become less and less important in practical terms. Granted, we all continue to refer to acres unofficially, but officially virtually everything is done in hectares. As a result, in July's Agricultural Ministers' meeting, the final abolition of the acre was on the agenda.

Now you would have thought for such an important event the UK would have sent a cabinet minister, as most other EU countries did. But no. The UK sent only a junior minister from Defra. Now Jonathan Shaw is an able politician, but surely for a debate on the future of the UK's oldest unit of land measurement, our Government could have taken it more seriously and sent the Secretary of State?

As the meeting developed, it became clear why Hilary Benn didn't bother to attend: there was little debate and no protest whatsoever from the British Government. We could and should have stood up to the EU in this case – and with a bit of a fight, we could have secured a reprieve for the acre.

 
This seems like a 'porky' to me. The acre issue surely had already been decided in the Units of Measurements Directive (80/181/EEC) review in 2007. The outcome of the review was approved by the European Parliament on 29 November 2007. The issue was already decided before Mr Parrish's meeting so no wonder Hilary Benn did not attend.

While I always enjoy attacking the Government, the real villains in this piece are the EU. This kind of pointless interference into every little nook and cranny of our national life is exactly what annoys people about it. We face major agricultural challenges in the next few years, particularly with food prices rising – yet the only response the EU can offer is to ban the acre. They really should get their priorities right.

 
Now Neil Parrish comes clean. This is what his article is about!

Food price rises and the state of farming are important. What the dickens has using acres got to offer in terms of helping with price increases?

Unfortunately, though, the deed is done. No-one will have the right to sell or even advertise their land in acres and I wonder just how long it will be before we see more metric martyrs being prosecuted for daring to mention the word "acre" in idle conversation in the pub.

 
What twaddle! 'Old money' was phased out in 1971 yet we talk of a car 'turning on a sixpence'. Why should anyone be prosecuted for mentioning an 'acre' even if it is no longer a unit in use? The hundredweight (cwt) was phased out but there is no law against using it in conversation.

Neil Parish is a Conservative MEP for the South West of England and chairman of the European Parliament's Agriculture Committee

 
It riles me that we pay people to represent us at the European Parliament and while their job is to scrutinise European directives and laws, all they seem to be able to do is to blame everything on the EU. An abdication of responsibility?

I do not like the Orwellian way with which Neil Parrish MEP attempts to rewrite history; though he is not alone on this! The final irony is that it was the last Conservative government and not the EU that effectively killed off the acre for Land Registration. In other words Mr Parrish's own party killed off the acre despite trying to blame Brussels over a decade after the event.

I am glad that the UK government decided to retire the acre - we need modern units for modern Britain! However it is galling that polticians attempt to represent a UK decision implemented in 1995 as a 'cunning plot' from Brussels in 2008. So where is integrity?

Last year I intended to post a tip on car rental in Lisbon. We were wanting to find a way to transport a family of five plus surf boards from Lisbon airport to the Peniche area. Checking out the usual rental companies at Lisbon airport suggested that the only option was an expensive people carrier. Our agent at Baleal Rentals told us that if we took the taxi to Santa Apolónia  we could rent two Seat Ibizas for less than a people carrier. He was right! We duly booked online. The limitation is that there is one choice - the Seat Ibiza - but at a great daily rate.

InterRent is located at the Santa Apolónia railway terminus which is close to both the river Tejo and the ancient Alfama area of Lisbon. It is a bit over 10 minutes taxi ride from the airport and the ride only cost €7. Last year we found the rental office an an obscure part of the station. There was a young and friendly man - who speaks excellent English - who seemed to run the entire operation single handed. He would deal with our booking, check our documents and ask us to sign the contract. Then he ran out of the station and drove back with the vehicle; he did everything in a helpful and friendly manner which makes a pleasant change from some surly rental staff at airports. He seemed to be the only InterRent employee although I cannot imagine he does the cleaning and servicing of the cars as well.

The good news is that they are still there at Santa Apolónia but have moved their office into the main station concourse near the ticket office. There is still a good 6.99€/day basic price to which you need to add insurance, extra driver fees, etc. Despite the extras it is still a great deal.

Furthermore the excellent, friendly internet employee with a toothy smile is still there working as hard as ever! He always has a friendly smile and speaks French as fluently as he speaks English. He now definitely has at least one colleague to help drive the cars around.

I sometimes wonder if people in this country think there was some sort of golden age in the 1940s and 1950s. A lot of people seem to be very nostalgic about the past while paying less attention to the future's challenges.

That thought crossed my mind again with the launch of the first steam engine for 50 years. Don't misunderstand me, I am certainly not knocking the determination and achievement ot the A1 Steam Locomotive Trust; they should be congratulated on their achievement. It is just that there seems to be too little attention focused on building a railway fit for the 21st Century.

While countries like France, Germany, Italy and Spain have been steadily been building their high speed railway networks, we are stuck with a mere branch line from Calais to St Pancras. The original plan to have Eurostar trains run through to Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow were quietly dropped. It took 3 decades to come to a decision on CrossRail in London while Paris has already got 4 RER lines and German cities have their cross-city S-Bahn lines.

Similarly Heathrow airport is served by the branch line for the Heathrow Express. Heathrow is close to the Paddington to Reading line and to the Staines line from Waterloo. Heathrow ought to be a railway hub for trains coming from Paddington, Reading, Waterloo and Basingstoke.

Our visionary Victorian railway engineers like Robert Stevenson and Isambard Kingdon Brunel must be turning in their graves! We should value our history but not at the expense of our future.