People can stop panicking about this Imperial measurements thing!

[Echobelly]

The proposal to reintroduce Imperial measurements is a fucking stupid idea and waste of time but Lordy, my social media is alight with people going 'OMG, they're going to force everyone to learn Imperial and it's ageist and ableist and will wreck trade and it'll be so expensive to recalibrate all out scales' etc etc.

I mean, hold your horses folks - they're allowing people to use imperial which wasn't allowed under the EU, just so they can say we can now do something we couldn't do under the EU. It's not being mandated. It's totally empty symbolism.

A handful of red-faced market stall holders will use it to make a point, no one else will care, nothing else will happen. I mean, I hate this bloody government and this ridiculous, retrograde idea but please be better than those people who don't read beyond the headlines.

Sorry, just the inaccuracy of response to this is bugging me!

As recently as 1995 there was a Jet petrol station on the A56 in Stretford, Manchester, which still displayed the price per gallon for unleaded petrol (but not diesel or 4* which was still available at the time).

My then next door neighbour told me that she liked going there "because they still sell petrol by the gallon and I know I'm not getting ripped off."

Well, first, the (mechanical) pump displays had all been dispensing in litres by law for at least fourteen years by that point so the "selling" was indeed in litres. Second, at a time when most other places were charging about 43.9p per litre this place was charging something like 46.9p (it's a 'last petrol before motorway' station). So she was driving past cheaper places to pay more simply because the price was also displayed in gallons and that was more comforting. If she had taken even the most perfunctory glance at the per litre price further up the sign board, she would have realised that she was getting ripped off.

What made it even more hilarious is that her understanding of her car's fuel economy wasn't based on anything involving actual measures, like miles per gallon or litres per 100km, but on the fact that "it uses ten quid a week."

Those conversations are still a mindfuck to me a over quarter of a century later, and they neatly encapsulate one of the biggest problems in Britain: basic numeracy, never mind scientific reasoning, is so poor here and the average man or woman in the street so stupid that it is impossible to have a rational discussion about the objective superiority of one system of weights and measure over another, which is why politicians come out with this emotive nonsense instead.

I dread to think of the resources wasted pandering to attitudes like this, or the resources wasted dealing with incorrect conversions and incompatible standards, often to appease people who are the first to complain that living standards have stagnated. I'll let you in on a secret: UK incomes are poor by comparable European standards in Germany, Denmark or France because productivity here is piss-poor by anyone's standards, and this sort of batshittery is a good reason why.

Are you suggesting that pubs sell beer by the litre, instead of by the pint? You're going to have a major alcohol problem on your hands!

Quite obviously beer would be sold by the half litre,which is 68ml LESS than a pint

Quite obviously beer would be sold by the half litre,which is 68ml LESS than a pint

If the UK's metrication programme had even fleeting contact with common sense then this is exactly what would have happened. You'd still go into the pub and order 'a pint' but you'd get 500ml instead. Nobody seems to have a problem with 440ml cans of Carling, or half litre bottles of Spitfire ale, or 250ml bottles of Brasserie French lager from Aldi which is how most people drink these days, so all the coy anal-retentiveness about the full 568ml of liquid in the pub is baffling.

When mainland China went metric the catty (used for weighing vegetables etc at wet markets, and about 604.8g) was redefined as 500g. If pre-industrial barefoot people living in huts could cope with this, surely 21st century Brits can.

I remember the old man in the pub in 1984 who complained that half a litre of beer wasn’t enough and a litre was too much. Orwell used metrication as a metaphor for tyranny.

We just order "one beer" in our metric lands. Third flr small one and depending on language "xxx" for a litre one (that's not served everywhere at all.
Half a litre one being a default where I am from means no one is really specifying

@Theoldprospector

Schools teach metric and imperial.

People still use both metric and imperial, and I very much doubt we will move to the metric system for all measurements any time soon.

People would not generally be happy measuring time using a metric system.

I am 26 and was only taught metric at school. I don’t know how to use any imperial measures at all.

@Blossomtoes

I remember the old man in the pub in 1984 who complained that half a litre of beer wasn’t enough and a litre was too much. Orwell used metrication as a metaphor for tyranny.

Lucky we still have pints then which is just exactly the right amount!

Drinks are weird when you think about it. So i wgo to the pub and order pint of beer which is imperial, but wine and spirits are metric😁
What's 125ml in imperial?
And 50ml?

As a result of this thread and Google, I've discovered that Jack and Gill were both measures of fluid, Gill was double a Jack and someone down sized the Jack, and Gill came tumbling after!
The things you learn.

So yes the could call a half liter a metric pint.

Interesting!

But you wouldn't because I agree with the man in 1984 and so does everyone else here I think!

Which is why beer still comes in points with zero hooha!

@Annoyedanddissapointed

Drinks are weird when you think about it. So i wgo to the pub and order pint of beer which is imperial, but wine and spirits are metric😁 What's 125ml in imperial? And 50ml?

When you really think about it, drinks are stupid and epitomise the whole mess Britain is in. If you order a draught beer in a pub, it must be sold in multiples of half a pint by law. But the same beer in a bottle (or can) must be sold in metric, even in a pub. It does not matter that bottled or canned beers might come in 250ml, 275ml, 330ml, 440ml or 500ml sizes; all are legal. As is the 284ml bottle, and the awe-inspiring 568ml can. So if you are in a pub where Peroni is sold both on tap and in 330ml bottles, trying to work out which is the better buy is a calculator job.

When supermarkets first started displaying unit pricing in the mid Nineties alongside pack pricing, it was not unusual to see, say, 330ml bottles of Stella Artois in a 12 pack with the price per litre underneath, but 440ml cans with price per pint underneath. And the maths was usually often wrong anyway.

The 50ml spirit measure actually post-dates Britain's 'complete' metrication. In the early Nineties, a whole ten years after the UK completed metrication, spirits in England were still sold in measures of 1/6 of a gill. Even more mind-blowingly, in Scotland they were sold in 1/5 of a gill.

Hardly surprising we're a nation of alcoholics.

@Otherpeoplesteens Thank you!

I wouldn't see it so bleakly. You are no25 according to wiki. I am originally from ine in top 10😂

@Annoyedanddissapointed

Why would changing to metric on beer end up with lots of drunk people 😳

You only have to see what happens when relatively sober Brits go to Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Greece and Cyprus to see the effects of drinking in metric.

@jcyclops 😂😂😂 the pesky metric European beers

Lolol yes. Poor confused Brits getting smashed by accident

If you order a draught beer in a pub, it must be sold in multiples of half a pint by law

I like drinking thirds or two thirds...

My aunt was refused a pint in a pub in the 60s. They would only sell her a half.

Don't know why that popped into my head!

All ghis talk about thirds and halves reminded me of unrelated, but a fun funfact
Apparently someone tried to outdo maccies quarted pounder in US with a third pounder but it tanked because people didn't understand 1/3 is bigger than 1/4🙈

@Annoyedanddissapointed

All ghis talk about thirds and halves reminded me of unrelated, but a fun funfact Apparently someone tried to outdo maccies quarted pounder in US with a third pounder but it tanked because people didn't understand 1/3 is bigger than 1/4🙈

Why doesn't that surprise me!

The Australians swear by 2/3 as its the optimum size to drink a chilled beverage before it gets to warm in the heat. Apparently.

Personally I'm a fan as 1/2 are too small and pints too big.

1/3s are ideal for beer tasting and stupid ABV stouts though.

The purists hate them.

I actually know place in UK selling 2/3 and 1/3 of craft!

So confusing😂

Yes and that's because it's often Really Expensive.

(And often really strong )

@NiceGerbil

Yes and that's because it's often Really Expensive.

(And often really strong )

Our local craft bar is the only place that did well over lockdown. Its the only place that didn't put up prices. Now a pint in a chain brewery isn't much different, when it previously was much cheaper.

I would rather drink really nice, really strong beer by the 1/3 than cat piss by the pint.

and drink beer in half pints

Lightweight😂

God what beer do they sell that it works out nearly same. The one here has 1/3 for 4.50!
I keep to pilsner urqell🙈

I think they have some unusual measures in brewdog pubs from memory.