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!

I understand that people still use miles pints, stones, ounces, yards, feet and inches for everyday things. When I am dressmaking I might calculate that I need about a yard of fabric which luckily is near enough also a metre.
I certainly don't measure five eighths of a inch though. Do people still do that?
I like the fact that my elderly French neighbours still talk about acres and that I can buy une livre of potatoes at the market. It has a cetain charm 250 years after metrication.
Having lived through both systems I have to say that I would hate imperial measurement to become standardised though.

You would have to be 55 years old to have been formally educated in the UK in anything other than metric. The desire to cling on to such an antediluvian system is utter nonsense except to underline that 1) the UK's exceptionalism knows no bounds and 2) the general population is basically so innumerate that many seem both able and willing to wilfully disregard what they're taught anyway.

"Global Britain"? Fuck off. The only thing that amazes me is that we don't win even more medals in rowing because sitting on our arses going backwards seems to be not just an innate part of our national character but an actual aspiration for so many.

And I say that as someone who grew up with cattys and taels.

American units aren't Imperial, they're 'American customary units' and quite a few are significantly different despite having the same names, especially the fluid measures. It was Britain which went newfangled and 'rationalised' them in the 18th century I believe.

No point in explaining that there is a difference. Many just enjoy having a pop at Americans for whatever ridiculous reasons when they have absolutely nothing at all to do with this nor care.

Well it's a start perhaps they could follow it up with reintroducing pounds, shillings and pence. I found a bag of pre-decimal coins in a drawer and I'd like to be able to use them.

And I think I have a medieval grout somewhere too.

Groat not grout!

God knows why a pound is abbreviated to lb.
Libra is Latin for scale/pound.

On another note only thing the EU mandated was a clear sign of what something costs per kilo or per litre to stop shops from tricking consumers into paying more. Those bastards.

I never stopped using imperial! I just can’t think in metric.

I don’t care what people use…. whatever works for them.

@MrsTulipTattsyrup

And as far as I understood it, one could always display prices for one’s produce in imperial measures as long as one also did so in metric. Yet another thing the EU supposedly stopped us from doing, but they actually didn’t.

Yep. It’s not as if anyone was ever stopped by the metric police from buying a pint or a pound of mince.

I switch easily between the two. Unless you’re getting into gills or chains, in which case you’re on your own. (And I’d hazard a guess the majority of those celebrating this ‘win’ don’t have a clue either.)

I'm late 50s, we did imperial worksheets in maths at school but they were quickly withdrawn (when I was about 7 I think?) and we moved over to metric & decimal as it was being brought in. I measure my height in metres, weight in kg and do cooking in whichever system that the receipe calls for because I have a button on my scales that shows measurements in g, lb, ml etc. - before I got that I had a set of imperial and a set of metric weights with balance scales. I buy petrol in litres and the satnav shows distances in km (because I've set it to) I don't instantly relate to the temperature if it's expressed in °F as I've been used to °C all my working life.

When my nephew was born in 1998, his weight was recorded in kg

I am x stone and pounds but 165cm high. I have a 15 pound turkey at Christmas and use half a kilo of sugar to make my meringues. I travel in miles and measure petrol in litres. I drink a pint of beer at the pub and buy a 1.5 litre bottle of soft drink at the supermarket.

Basically I don't care and I can not understand why in when there's still a world pandemic, Brexit and all its ensuing problems and God alone knows what else the government are legislating about pounds and ounces

@svalberg and yet when DD was born in 2006 and DS in 2011 they were both recorded in pounds and ounces. Interestingly they were both exactly the same weight but that's by the by!

@NiceGerbil

The best reason I can think of. Is that it gives market sellers an excuse to really belt out 'Pahnd a pahnd'

🤣🤣🤣🤣 brilliant!

Anyone fancy discussing this over 0.568 litres of beer?

Is there any fundamental reason 0.568 litres of beer is a more attractive unit than say half a litre?

I understand that it's less beer, but if you want more beer and don't want a "half" then a litre is more than a pint.

That's the second post that's made the point that an imperial-sized unit looks clumsy when expressed in metric.

Why would you do that? Why would you not just sell things in simple metric quantities?

I never got the logic of imperial units and love simplicity of metric.
1000 meters is 1km
1760 yarda in a mile. And which mile? It's not just one mile.😭

In metric you just add zeroes or take them off. Incredibly simple.

Is there any fundamental reason 0.568 litres of beer is a more attractive unit than say half a litre?
Because half a litre wouldn't fill a pint glass so people would feel cheated.

@Porridgealert

Is there any fundamental reason 0.568 litres of beer is a more attractive unit than say half a litre? Because half a litre wouldn't fill a pint glass so people would feel cheated.

It would if they were doing proper heads on some beers like they supposed to have😂

[quote listsandbudgets]@svalberg and yet when DD was born in 2006 and DS in 2011 they were both recorded in pounds and ounces. Interestingly they were both exactly the same weight but that's by the by![/quote]
Ah, well, he was recorded in that there London...

I imagine the ones who feel cheated by half a litre not quite filling a pint glass haven't realised that their Special Brew is in 440ml cans.

You can also see plenty of them in Portugal, ordering "pints" and not noticing that a caneca is, in fact, 400ml.

A Pound in money was originally a lb in weight of silver coins. Any coins would do, from any country.

I'm 34 and I use imperial.

I'm also reminded of the story of the Gimli Glider, a notorious Air Canada flight in the mid Eighties where a Boeing 767 was loaded with 22,000 lb of fuel which was then entered into the computer as the 22,000 kg which was actually required. Somewhat inevitably, the plane ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet over Manitoba. Fortunately, the co-pilot had done air force time at a nearby base which, while no longer active and therefore not on any flight maps, still had a runway which was actually being used as a race track, and the pilot was an experienced glider pilot as well so knew techniques which commercial pilots are never trained in.

The investigation recommended Air Canada switched immediately to an all metric fleet because - astonishingly - it somehow found the mixed Imperial-metric fleet to be somewhat more dangerous.

@dootball

The return the imperial measurements should make things lots easier.

For who? The over 80's?

I'm only in my 30s but baking and measuring are always done in imperial for me. It's how I was taught to do it by my parents.

Can't stand it when you get a recipe that's half metric half imperial. (Even worse if they throw in american cups)

But I still go into the wee sweet shop down the road from me and ask for a quarter of liquorice comfits.

Fabulous. I will be buying kilogram bags of sugar with pounds of apples which obviously will make life much easier when i pay for them on schillings.

Because of courses the EU banned the sale of using scales with both measurements on.