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!

@bumblingbovine49 you probably were the first year to be taught in £/p, decimalistion of money happened in 71.

A shilling became 5p, and a farling became 10p

I never stopped using it and now can use both. Very pleased 😁

I use both imperial and metric.
It’s not a problem.
In fact it’s perhaps the one thing Brits may actually be good at!
I’d sooner be bilingual but I’m working on that!

For thise asking why the abbreviation for pound is lb, it comes from the Latin libra and pondus. Libra turned into (une) livre in French for both pounds (la livre sterling) and various versions of pondus in other European countries.
I think when people say they "use" imperial measures it is more about recognising the weights and measures rather than anything beyond basic calculations.
If you try applying complex calculations I think it comes unstuck.
I was lucky enough to avoid teaching in imperial measures. If children had to use bases 3, 12, 14, 16 etc. again in maths I think people would see the archaic nonsense of imperial measures pretty quickly.

@dootball

The return the imperial measurements should make things lots easier.

To whom? What a daft comment. Brexiteer, are we?

@londonrach

I never stopped using it and now can use both. Very pleased 😁

No-one ever stopped you

@cakeinspiration

The bizarre thing is that they've made it legal to sell items using imperial ONLY, which they've spent over 20 years NOT teaching in schools (I'm 25 and was only taught in metric across 4 primary/secondary schools)

Why do people keep saying that Imperial is not taught in schools now? It's on the national curriculum. It says: "Understand and use approximate equivalences between metric and common IMPERIAL units such as inches".

You get taught about pounds, feet, miles and inches in school.

Surely if we wish to be traditional we should be measuring in perches and bushels and charging in guineas?

We could use imperial measurements under the EU.
We literally had pints of milk and our speed limit signs were in miles per hour.

This is all to distract attention from how badly Brexit is going.

You get taught about imperial measurement in school, not how to do calculations.
If, without googling and a calculator, you can quickly divide 11 stone, 5 pounds and 7 ounces by 12 then you will be fine. 😂

I used to love guineas. My granny bought her frocks and hats in guineas.

I have had a scientific education, and I am grateful not to have had to do that scientific education in imperial measures.

I was born well after decimalisation, but I was still "taught" how to convert between imperial and metric at school. I put it in inverted commas because I had used imperial measures at home for as long as I could remember.

I've also learnt to cook, and I'm glad to have done that in imperial. To me, it is easier to make shortbread as 9-6-3, flour-fat-butter than 225-150-75. Obviously I CAN do everything in multiples of 25, but it's definitely not easier than multiples of 2, 3 or 4. I can also do my times tables in multiples of 14 and 16 but that's actually because of the chemistry I studied (multiples of moles of nitrogen and oxygen) not from multiplying Oz and Lb.

The same applies to a room - if I'm trying to do areas in my head I'll use imperial because if a room is 11'8" by 13'9" - 1214 approx so 168 sq ft, less a bit so maybe 162? In reality it's 160 sq ft but as a proxy it works perfectly. And is a lot easier (for me) than having 355cm 420cm, which I'd then have to maybe convert to 3.54.2 which then I would have to do as 3.54 which is 14, then another 0.7 so 14.7m2. which is fine, and I can do that but for a general estimate feet is much easier. If I was going to sit and use a calculator I'd be very happy to do it in metric.

I don't think that finding imperial easier for estimates and day to do maths is unusual or weird. I also don't think insisting that one should use imperial for e.g. building a rocket ship is a normal attitude or what most people here are suggesting.

I was lucky enough to avoid teaching in imperial measures. If children had to use bases 3, 12, 14, 16 etc. again in maths I think people would see the archaic nonsense of imperial measures pretty quickly.

Just think how much time that must have taken up.
One of my baby's was 7lb 14, DH and I both questioned ounces in a pound then at least two of the Grandparents who were all educated in imperial question the 14 "is that not 8lb?"

@dramalamma

But you essentially are mandating that consumers have to understand both or face situations where they have no idea what they're buying! I have no idea about imperial and have no desire to learn an archaic, nonsensical system. Shop owners are already allowed to display imperial measures but they also have to display metric... that's how it should be! I wouldn't be buying from a shop that used imperial.

Have you never bought a pint of lager or driven a mile?

I can use both, but I don't see the issue for anyone who can't so long as they own a smart phone. Just use an online converter - two seconds to convert one to the other.

It was not just time consuming Lockdownbear, it was horrendously hard. Dividing into hundredweights, stones, pounds and ounces aged 7 had me sobbing at my desk. I tried showing my granddaughters and they were horrified.
But I do still know there are 16 oz in a lb. 😀
Interestingly in imperial there are 112lbs in a cwt and only 100 lbs in the US.

All the markets I go to never stopped using pounds. I always ask for x pound of apples. Kilos just mean nothing to me.

Everyone I know talks about height in feet and inches and weight in stones and pounds.

If I read that someone is x metres tall and x kilos I have no idea at all how tall they are or how much they weigh

We've always continued to use both. I wonder how many men in the UK know what their trouser size is, or women their bra size in centimetres?

We still talk in miles for distance.

I always ask the butcher for a pound of mince and he knows what I want. We serve pints in the pub - although wine is served in mls. It's a total non - story.

The history of imperial measurements is fascinating. Most were borne out of very practical needs, the most obvious being that accurate measuring devices weren't widely available, so most imperial measurements are approximations. They're also usually Mathematically pleasing with symmetry, such as extensive use of the 2,3,4,6 times tables. That made it easy to split, i.e. half and half again to get a quarter of something. The decimal 10 base system is just harder to deal with in practical terms, i.e. a 12 pack of eggs is an easy to handle rectangle, but a 10 pack would be a long thin rectangle that's harder to put in a bag or a cupboard etc. I also love the old "width" measurement of paths etc to be the width of a horses backside.

Of course, in the modern world, we need more accurate measurements, especially for small dimensions which simply never existed in the past because we didn't have the equipment to make such small things, such as in medical/scientific advancement.

But, in practical terms, imperial makes more sense for day to day activities, whether in the home or "traditional" workplace.

If you're designing a nuclear reactor control system, then you need micros, millis, etc. If you're baking a cake, you can't do it without scales if you've a metric recipe, but you can do it without scales if the recipe is imperial.

@ArblemarchTFruitbat

I can use both, but I don't see the issue for anyone who can't so long as they own a smart phone. Just use an online converter - two seconds to convert one to the other.

Exactly. For normal life, it really doesn't matter. As you say, we nearly all have the capability to do simple conventions on our phones.

Anyone fancy discussing this over 0.568 litres of beer?

I have a conversion chart in my journal, however usually i just use Google to convert my measurements.

I'm in my 30s and always use imperial. I can't remember what I learned at school. Metric has never made much sense to me. Hence why I bought a huge amount of sweets because 3kg didn't sound like a lot

When I get weighed in kg at the doctors, I always ask them to convert it for me.

@HunterHearstHelmsley

When I get weighed in kg at the doctors, I always ask them to convert it for me.

When I get weighed at the doctors I close my eyes and ask them not to tell me!