Realistically, I don’t expect much mileage in this one.
Boris Johnson is set to announce the return of imperial measurements after the UK’s break with the European Union.
The Prime Minister could reportedly announce a consultation into how to further incorporate imperial measurements in Britain on Friday to coincide with the Queen‘s Platinum Jubilee.
Downing Street hopes the move could shore up support in Leave-voting areas after Conservative polling took a hit amid revelations about lockdown-busting parties at No 10, the Mirror reported.
It’s mildly diverting, but I suspect that metric measurements are now too entrenched. I know some of us still use old money, but even my generation grew up with a bastardised metric and imperial approach. The younger ones have no idea what imperial measurements are, so don’t expect too much from this. Apart from mickey taking from the remoaners. See the comments to the MoS article for typical reactions from these cretins.
On even a basic CAD system, switching between metric and imperial is just a mouse click. That said, this is not a trivial thing: I will drive miles in MPH, will buy my mates a pint and I’m 6 foot, not 1 metre 80. I’ll frighten my fellow passengers with my 9 inches while cruising at 37000 feet.
Presumably there will be no more forcing metric into areas where it is simply used as a means of demonstrating subservience to the wannabe imperial authorities.
I see quite a few 110, 220 and 328 yard signs round here while out about in my wonderful petrol driven carriage. Of course, that these are 100, 200, 300 metres is purely coincidental and had nothing to do with any non existent plans to use kilometers.
Of course, watching rejoiniac meltdown is always entertaining.
Like you l grew up with both systems and use both. In some instances l find imperial more intuitive e. g. mph and mpg make more sense to me than kmh or km/ltr, pints are only reasonable measure of beer (and milk) and knowing that an inch is the width of my thumb and the distance between my wrist and elbow is a foot is handy.
Otoh if it involves physics, maths or engineering l default to metric as it is a far superior system for these applications.
Guess l’m lucky to be comfortable with both
A ‘quarter’ of sweets or half a pound of butter always seemed more intuitive to me. Same with pints. Quantities on a human scale.
+1 to all above
Quantities on a human scale
Yes, even French traders still, illegally, use French ounces
However, imo it’s more words but no action by Johnson. If he meant it the restoration could be mplemented in one day. No need for consultations, committees etc
@LR Bushel? I can fathom that, a groat idea to chain to the League
Words, no action:
Harry Miller calls on Priti Patel to close down the College of Policing
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwViwB98ydY
I am also of an age where I grew up with both Metric and imperial weights and measures. I do sometimes swap between the two because, in certain circumstances, using inches for example can be more convenient. However, thinking that because I voted to leave the EU I want to see a return to using imperial measurements completely is a bit of a leap of logic. I don’t. As an engineer I remember what a complete pain it was when the company that I worked for started selling machines from the US. They haven’t even settled on a standard thread form, so we didn’t only have to get in an entire new set of nuts and bolts, we had to get several. We often had screws and nuts that looked indentical but had a different thread. Speaking of the us, they do regularly get stuff back to front. Red and Blue in politics, MM/DD/YYYY instead of DD/MM/YYYY. Almost the entire world except the US uses metric, so why would we want to follow them?
During the entire occupation of both the EEC and EU I never ordered anything other than a pint, even though I might have technically received 586ml of beer, nobody gave a shit (except Brussels bureaucrats, apparently).
What BoJo is proposing is little more than ignoring the diktats of our erstwhile overlords, something that we’ve fairly successfully done since forever, irrespective of whether these were Romans, Saxons, Danes, Normans or Bruxellois/Bruxelloise. Same applies to BoJo.
Just Boris being a knob. That guy needs to stop having brain farts and be quiet.
Metric is clearly the easiest and most sensible system, so what’s the point?
Does this mean I can go back to Scotland and buy a “fourpit o’ tatties”? I suppose it’s unlikely because the scum at Holyrood will oppose it just because.
(For those not educated properly it’s a fourth part of a stone of potatoes: a common request in my childhood)
I grew up with the Imperial system. I learnt about the metric system in science classes so the switch was pretty painless.
On thing that amuses me about the metric system is the meter, which was based on the circumference of the earth. But, presumably because the earth was the wrong size(?) and the meter would have been too large or too small, it was actually based on a quarter of the circumference of the earth. And a quarter isn’t metric, is it?
Anyway, as Al Murray said in his role as the Pub Landlord, the decision should be left to the ladies: “Which would you rather have, 12 inches or 10 cm?” 😀
12 inches is 30.5 centimetres. 10 centimetres is about four inches.
25 metres is 27.3375 yards.
And that 30.5 cm is such a handy, human size that French, German, Spanish etc children take what is essentially a one foot rule to school, rather than an unwieldy one meter rule.
The Imperial system evolved to meet the needs of the people who were using it. The metric system was imposed from on high by elites who thought they knew what the people should want better than the people themselves.
I remember window shopping in a French town and seeing a child’s carpentry set in a toyshop window with the rule marked in inches. In a French DIY store I heard a plumber as French plumber ask for X metres of plastic pipe, adding ‘demi-puce, s’il vous plait.’ My professional translator mate told me it literally meant ‘half a thumb.’
Tant pis pour la systeme metrique!
“The younger ones have no idea what imperial measurements are, so don’t expect too much from this.”
I remember being shocked when my cousin, delivering the eulogy at my uncle’s funeral, related a story in which something happened “just a few meters away”. It sounded totally jarring to me – I had honestly, but clearly naïvely, thought that even if they used these measurements, people simply didn’t talk like that in everyday speech – but he’s only five years younger. Then again, I remember being taught imperial in my first couple of years of school before the switch to French measures.
I’ve never understood the point of them. Base-10 is such an awkward system. If we had to overhaul the entire thing, couldn’t we at least have based it on something sensible, like twelve?
I worked for my entire career as an engineer in the oil industry for American, British and European companies. Almost all used the American Imperial system of meseaurement as the oil industry mostly grew up in and was dominated by the US. Tables of volumes for different diameters of holes ,casings and drill pipes etc, had been drawn up since before the second world war and were widely available and used. Laterly all computerized.
Computers can as easily handle imperial systems as decimal if not more easily. The first software I came across in the early seventies was octal using base 8.
One European company insisted that we drilled wells in vertical meters but we still used drll bits such as 17 1/2 “, 12 1/4″ 8” and so forth. Volumes were to be calculated as cubic meters instead of barrels and gallons. As a drilling supervisor this made my life a nightmare as I had to translate all these unhandy quantities back to imperial for the crews.
With modern computing power there is no reason to abandon quantities on a human scale for most of the general population. If you work at Cern by all means use the artificial metric system but leave me to my pint of beer, mph and miles per gallon.
I’m told that right up till decimalisation, IBM would sell you a mainframe module that handled Pounds, Shillings, and Pence in hardware.
@Stonyground
I use imperial and metri depending on which I find easier, in many cases they’re just numbers
1″ of rain is easier than 25.4mm
2′ long is easier than 60.96cm
10, 12, 13… 17… 21mm tools easier than x/y”
but sockets are 1/4, 3/8, 1/2″ sq dr and that works too
It’s freedom of choice rather than Gov’t diktat
Supermarkets know this and package milk in pints. Remove the metric mandate and we’ll see more
@Bucko the EU troll
Buck off, Let people decide what the easiest and most sensible system is, not Gov’t
@FrankH
+1
The fun really comes in working for an American machinery manufacturer.
You have to be very careful when the spec/designer calls for something to be “one mil”.
Do they mean one millimetre? Or one thou? One mil or one thou is one thousandth of an inch (25 microns).
Super annoying.
I remember that, in the early radio days of the wonderful Kenny Everett’s Captain Kremmen, the Captain ‘millimetred his way along the parapet’.
I think all BoJo is saying is that if consenting adults want to use something else, then it’s permitted now rather than illegal.
The Richter scale is metric. Had to look that up.
I despair of people pointing out that imperial fans are some combination of insane or retarded and implying that they should be taken to court if they display and exchange some item or service in non-SI units.
Where I am currently working, we having a combination of European and US machines. This means two sets of spanners/sockets and two sets of Allen keys etc.
This was the only country in the EU which outlawed Imperial measures except in certain circumstances, e.g. beer, although here and in the EU steam pipes were in BSP.
Surely people should be able to use what they want, as long as the tools used for measurement are accurate then there’s no problem.