When retired airline pilot Roy Shaw went for a walk his hackles were raised at the sight of a Littlehampton street sign which gave directions in metric measurements.

He complained to Arun District Council, making the valid point that many people over a certain age had little or no grasp of metres and centimetres.

Initially the council was reluctant to act on 70-year-old Mr Shaw's demands that imperial measurements were used on the signs.

But then he pointed out that under government traffic regulations, road signs had to be in miles and yards.

Now the council has been forced to apologise and signs bearing the old measurements will have to be taken down.

Mr Shaw said metric signs were meaningless for older people but the opposite applies to those under 30, who have been brought up on a diet of metres rather than yards.

And his call for councils who display metric-only signs to be prosecuted is a bit over the top.

The best solution would be for signs to be in both metric and imperial measures until this country decides, one way or the other, which way it wants to go.