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!

Of course we need to keep metric, we've been teaching it to children for a long time. If you switch to imperial then (estimating here) the majority of people aged 40 and under won't understand it. We must either keep metric or use both. Although I personally think it's a story created to divert attention away from much more important news.

Although I could be remembering wrong!

Stuff which is like 12% is often pricier by some margin

I use whatever gives a measurement in round numbers. I wanted some wood measuring 29 inches by 35 cms. The timberyard were happy to cut it.

YY where would we be as well without using double decker buses, football pitches for big things

I think the only thing which is easier in imperial is hill gradients.

1 in 4 or 1 in 5 is so much easier to understand than 12%

@Summerofcontent

I think the only thing which is easier in imperial is hill gradients.

1 in 4 or 1 in 5 is so much easier to understand than 12%

I wouldn't have said that was an imperial v metric thing. The ratios or percentages are unitless.

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.

Nothing to do with the fact they're on holiday?

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

You mean, where they sell beer in SMALLER measures than the UK?
I think you'll find its the being on holiday that gets them drunker, not the units of sale being smaller.

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

Not true.

I cook in grams, measure in cm, but refer to my height in feet and inches, drink pints and weigh in stones.

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

Not true.

My mistake. It used to be true, but the regulations changed in 2006 to allow 1/3 and 2/3 of a pint, but not multiples of 1/3 of a pint any greater than that. I imagine I missed that because I was drunk. I should have realised this when the one pub I've ever seen them in started offering tasting 'flights' of 3 x 1/3pt glasses, but I have long given up trying to rationalise almost anything I see nowadays.

There's also the strange anomaly of milk. You can sell it by the pint if it is in a returnable container. If not, it must be sold in metric units. So, fresh milk in glass returnable bottles is a pint, fresh milk in single use plastic bottles is in the highly metric 568ml, 1.136 or 2.272 litre and so on container, while UHT milk in 1 litre cartons. It's dogshit.

Presumably our manufacturers will not be able to export to Europe if they start packaging and labelling in imperial, so commerce will win over nostalgia and a singalong to the Hovis ad theme tune.

@Summerofcontent

I think the only thing which is easier in imperial is hill gradients.

1 in 4 or 1 in 5 is so much easier to understand than 12%

If people can't convert simple percentages, then it's our education system which has a problem rather than the imperial/metric argument.

Tbh most people don't live in places that needs any.

And loads of people have any idea what the incline sign means whether in % or ratio!

I'm 31 and I know really use imperial measurements. Probably because I have aged parents (as my mother would say ha)

Inches for a certain body part. Metric for absolutely everything else.

I'm 15.

@Shitsandgiggles2021

Inches for a certain body part. Metric for absolutely everything else.

I'm 15.

0.0007 furlongs?

Not sure why the exact amount of beer in a glass is such a big deal. When you buy wine, you get a small or large glass, not a specific number of ml

@bonbonours

Not sure why the exact amount of beer in a glass is such a big deal. When you buy wine, you get a small or large glass, not a specific number of ml

There are standards. It used to be 125ml small one, 250ml large but iirc the standard small one changed to 175ml.

@bonbonours

Not sure why the exact amount of beer in a glass is such a big deal. When you buy wine, you get a small or large glass, not a specific number of ml

You always get a specific number of ml (in the UK).

@bonbonours

Not sure why the exact amount of beer in a glass is such a big deal. When you buy wine, you get a small or large glass, not a specific number of ml

This was true up until 1995, but since then wine by the glass may only be sold in glasses of 125ml, 175ml or 250ml in the UK. In most places, 175ml is a small glass and 250ml a large glass and very few will show 125ml glasses on their price lists.

In France/Spain/Portugal, a 250ml carafe is common even in supermarket or workplace cafeterias where you self-serve out of a pump dispenser. You can get about three small Arcoroc ballon glasses, filled to the widest point, out of one.

If my calculations are correct, large wine is 0.439938 pint😁

Same with spirit measures they are either 25ml or 35ml, instead of the fractions of gill measures of old.
I think a gill is a 1/4 of pint or 5 fluid oz.
In England a spirit was 1/6 gill or 1/5, Scotland was either 1/5 or 1/4 gill.

I'm guessing then the expression of a 'wee half' really meant a large / double / 2/4 whisky. Nothing wee about it.

I remember laughing at the barman when i was out for the first time and he served me a single shot, until I realised he isn't joking.

#immigrantproblems

@HarrietsChariot

Depends who's asking! Best friend at a sleepover, holding the ruler? I'll take 0.0007 furlongs!

Hairy-handed Russian men on the internet pretending to be a 15 year old girl so that I whip it out on cam, which he then uploads to his revenue-raising channel on Gayboystube? Always 9".