Your Letters
14:33 UK time, Monday, 7 May 2007
A bumper Bank Holiday crop of letters.
Today's Metro informs us that it would take four million peas to fill a carriage on the London Eye. Aside from my disappointment that they missed such an obvious pun by not using the correct terminology of "pod", I am incredibly confused by all these new standards of measurement. How on earth am I meant to find out how many peas will fit in a phone box or cover a football pitch?
Tanya, Staines, UK
You might be interested to read this morning's Metro, in which our attention is drawn to the fact that "it would take four million peas to fill a carriage [sic] on the London Eye". Another useful addition to MM's conversion tables. The London Eye itself gives us some . My favourite: "twice the speed of a tortoise sprinting". That's cleared that up.
Lucy Jones, Manchester
To Lee, in Manchester (Letters, 3 May) - Buy it a pony, that usually works.
Keith, Loughborough
Re: Christian Cook's letter about wheelie bins to the moon and back, I think they are trying to say that if we got everyone in the UK's rubbish in wheelie bins it would stretch to the moon and back, and I think you'll be surprised if we work it out a little. If we take the surface to surface distance between the Moon and the Earth as about 376,295km, our wheelie bins would have to stretch twice that, so 752,590km. Average wheelie bin height is 1.07meters, or 0.00107km, so we would need 752590/0.00107 wheelie bins to cover the distance, which works out as 703,355,140 (and a little) wheelie bins. Divide this by the population of the UK (60,609,155) and it works out at roughly 12 wheelie bins each. Spreading half a tonne between 12 wheelie bins works out as each one holding about 42kg. In my opinion that would be fair (although I'm sure someone can tell us the average density of household rubbish and use the volume of the wheelie bin - 240litres - and further refine this). So I think in this instance the Labour party are right.
James, Stirling
Re The and the , is this early arrival of the silly season another sign of global warming?
Ray Lashley, Bristol, UK
Re: What's with this new-fangled comparison of pennies into St Paul's Cathedrals or credit cards to Ben Nevises? If you want people to get their heads around the vastness of a trillion, the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ of all places should stick to the tried and tested units of conversion: Routemaster buses and/or Olympic swimming pools.
Natalie, Preston, UK
If one teaspoonful is 5ml, then teaspoons is quite easy: it becomes 5,000 million litres, or a volume of 5 million cubic meters of water, which is around four thousand olympic-sized swimming pools. Given the amount being spent on each Olympic pool in Stratford, however, it may be surmised that it might have been better to clear off this entire national debt.
Jel, Swansea
Finally a funny picture for the caption competition! A picture that wasn't part or a promo campaign for something or other. Just a picture of two people doing something serious, that can have a funny caption applied to it. Isn't that the point? For the last month or more it's been a series of people posing in funny costumes or some such.
When it's a picture of the Queen staggering with a lifeguard nearby, THAT lends itself to a funny caption. Please NO MORE of the cute PR posed shots for the caption competition.
Dave McQueen, Edmonton, Canada, ex pat from London
Did you know that more than four million Tunnock's caramel wafer biscuits are made and sold each week? Who eats them all?
Emma, Hull, UK
Det Chief Supt Chris McDonald, in , is "head of Operation Blunt, the knife cream taskforce at the Metropolitan Police". Is producing knife cream a similar process to that of turning swords into ploughshares?
Rick P, Oxford, UK
Re: , could I point out that the use of the phrase "up to", so beloved of advertisers, clearly allows for the possibility that there is no water at all on Mars?
Angus Gafraidh, London UK
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