Radio 1 Listeners ...'The Metric Generation' kick kilometres into touch! UKMA become laughing stock

In what is rapidly becoming the biggest embarassment for any pressure group, the spectacular backfiring of the preposterous attempt by the UK Metrication Association to force everyone to consider metricating the roads within 5 years has also ended up with the BBC becoming embarassed after their desperate attempt to give UKMAs proposals mileage.

Quote from a forum:

You are right in that BBC Radio One http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1 is a national radio station geared at 15 to 35 yr old listeners (with most of the listeners being teens-to-twenties).
Although it attracts fewer listeners than Radio Two (the most listened to station) it commands the largest market! share of young people.
Their news service, "Newsbeat" (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/news/) covered the subject (UKMA / miles) in their extended 5.45pm edition.
So, yes, Radio 1 *did* cover the subject whilst about 10 million listeners were driving home from work...
I was shocked what I heard (and wished I'd recorded it) as it showed that young people appear to be more "anti-kilometre" than I ever thought they would be.

In this "special feature" [vox pop] they stopped young people in the street and the main reaction was one of hostility.

Most went along the line of "they can stuff their kilometres" (whoever "they" are).

The feature started with the young reporter driving into a busy town. She started by saying how far it was (in miles) and then said "It's not rush hour for the moment so I'm zipping along at a good 40 miles per hour. If I look carefully at my speedo I can see that [pause] I think I'm doing [pause] something like about 60 kilometres per hour? It's difficult to say because the wording is so small, but it is there".

She went on to say that she was going to test the opinion of people in the town (that's where I cover it above).

The only non-hostile remark was a young lady...."I think I'm meant to know how far things are in kilometres but if I were to be completely honest I don't really know".

The radio show made the (common) error of quoting metric speed in km (rather than kmph) - as in "60 miles per hour is about 100 kilometres".
But people got the point. After asking more young people (who ranged from "Kilometres? No way" to "What's the point? Better to spend all that money on hospitals and things") the roving reporter "handed back" to the studio where the young lady in the studio said:-
"Well we've ruffled an awful lot of feathers with this one with loads of you texting in".

She then went on to read out a range of anti- to hostile- responses to the idea of kilometres instead of miles on British roads.

The UK Metric Association would have been mortified if they'd heard what all these kids were saying - it appears that they show more hostility (these days) to metrication than previous generations.
I wonder if its go to do with the "EU-factor"?

Anyhow - the report ended with some (guffaw) 'positive' news for the UKMA.

The Radio One lady said "Well it seems we have one supporter of the idea as one person has texted in saying that he already has kilometres on the dial in his car"