The Brexit Benefit of the Return of Imperial Units

[noblegiraffe]

I regret to inform you all that imperial units will not, in fact, be returning, despite being much vaunted as a Brexit Benefit by Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The reason for this is that they asked the People how they should be reintroduced and the People said 'Are you MAD?'

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/choice-on-units-of-measurement-markings-and-sales/outcome/choice-on-units-of-measurement-consultation-response

Still, we've got all those other Brexit Benefits to be luxuriating in, so this one is no real loss.

That sounds utterly mad, @Focalpoint

I think I'd assume that modern cars would pick up which country they were in and adjust their dashboard accordingly, like mobile phones. Hadn't occurred to me that with the digital display instead of the analogue speedometers that you would need to change manually mid journey!

We used to teach imperial units when I first started teaching, it was bloody awful. Then we'd do a lesson on metric and the kids would go 'wow, this is much better'.

I'm amazed you've had to teach any imperial - by the time I did my A levels in 1979 they'd gone to fully SI, and my DM (who'd have been 100 by now) was teaching metric to primary aged kids and perfectly happy to do everyday measurements in centimetres, litres and grams.

Feet and inches and stones and pounds haven't gone away really. I prefer imperial measurements because that's what I was brought up with. I just convert things on my phone to what I understand. Doesn't everyone do that?

In my first job in the late 80s, the boss had bought a heap of second (third? fourth?) hand test equipment that was fitted with dials reading in psi. Clients specified everything in kPa, so we all got very good at converting.

I was also very glad when the boss invested in electronic scales and we could ditch the old fashioned balance that you had to use tweezers to add tiny flakes of metal to get a reading.

Imperial still uses base 10, otherwise you would be buying A ounces of something.

@ErrolTheRednosedDragon I started high school in 1979. Everything in maths and science was in SI units but because everything in the shops was in imperial we had to learn how to convert for cooking and needlework lessons.