The government actually IS doing a consultation on bringing back imperial measurements!

[Kendodd]

I thought it was a joke.
AIBU to think this is a complete load of bollocks waste of money?

The questions don't even give you the option of saying just keep metric.
Example question -
For Consumers,

a) If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items:

(i) in imperial units?

(ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent?

www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1079711/choice-on-units-of-measurement-markings-and-sales-consultation.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjchIqM1pT4AhXIPsAKHWSZBW0QFnoECAUQAQ&usg=AOvVaw05usEgoqbR2NHfgE3SzAYH

@Florenz I agree. So let's keep dual labelling and not faff about with imperial only, shall we?

Technically it's sold by litre / pint at the same time.

Both are displayed on the label.

But you do get the comparisons in cost / L (not cost per fluid ounce) and you get comparisons in other products in pounds / pence per 100 g, 1 kg etc

Being able to compare products is much easier when you use metric. As you only have to multiply by 10 or 100, rather than multiplying by 16 or 14.

Very easily

Milk delivered in returnable containers is sold by the pint as the default - that’s what you get if you have doorstop deliveries

Other milk is sold by the litre complete with the pints quantity.

In a supermarket you can buy 1.13 litres / 2 pints of milk, all they need to do is mark it clearly

@cakeorwine excellent point about making price comparisons simple in this age of cost of living crisis. Would be far harder in imperial, and so easy to bamboozle people.

Except they are always sold as one or the other depending on the circumstance. Pubs must serve beer in pints but if you buy a can of beer in a supermarket it must have the metric measurement on it. Milk is less restrictive, but it is still largely standardised on the doorstep as a pint and again must have metric measurements if bought in a shop. This keeps things relatively simple although it clearly adds some complexity which is tolerable due to scale and public acceptance. What is being advocated for here is for any trader to choose to sell any goods in either measurement system they choose, so we need to have completely parallel system of certified weights and measures rather than just a few anachronistic exceptions. That will add a lot of cost as well as be unclear and confusing and ultimately pointless.

More worryingly if this Brexit imperial units nonsense starts making its way into construction, engineering and heavy industry it will be downright dangerous. I don't want bridge engineers having to swap between imperial and metric units when doing calculations. Process operatives having to remember if it is gallons or litres of a highly explosive compound they are adding to a reactor scares me to be honest. I want nothing to do with it.

You know the so called 'metric martyrs' I wonder if they had old money (what was it called?) martyrs who refused to accept decimal money.

With the way the Uk is being run these days, I expect they’ll mandate metric-only, to the cheers of so-called patriots, only for food manufacturers to suddenly realize they’ll need to redo all of their packaging if they want to export their products.

It should be up to the company to decide what units to use, what to print on their packaging, and the consumer to choose what to buy.

If I was running a business I'd use dual labelling. But it should be my choice to make. If a greengrocer wants to sell an elderly man a pound of apples, the government shouldn't be fining him or sending him to jail, it's none of their business.

A couple of ideas:

Brexit sabotage - since those in government and civil service are unsupportive of it and are trying to make it fail/label people who voted Brexit as interesting in imperial and blue passports and whatnot.

Distraction tactic - eg from the "revelations" (they likely are revelations to people who swallow news articles) that the covid reaction was a giant con and it was a huge experiment in fear and control. calculated evil by those who claim to represent our interests. I know Mumsnet enjoyed being off work and baked banana bread, but people have lost businesses and homes.

just hyperbolic nonsense. Honestly.

no greengrocer has ever been imprisoned for selling apples in pounds. There is a requirement to include metric measurements in pricing but absolutely nothing has prevented dual pricing other than in the fevered imaginations of some brexiters.

IME, butchers, greengrocers and fishmongers tend to dual price. Supermarkets might not bother - but they can. I bet if you can find a butchers counter in a supermarket these days, it’s still possible to buy a pound of mince. The label will be in grams but you can ask for it in imperial and they’ll give you what you want.

fullfact.org/europe/metric-eu-brexit-pints-metres-pounds/

It has never been illegal to use imperial measurements. The requirement is to have metric equally prominently displayed. Nothing more.

so the small number of people making a stupid point who were prosecuted were prosecuted for not including metric. Not for using imperial. it’s different.

Personally, I think flooding the consultation with responses telling them what s bloody waste of money this is and that the freedom to use outdated systems of measurement has always been there. Just alongside SI units. It’s not a hardship and surely better customer service to include both.

if this is the benefits of Brexit… 🙄

I do! i don’t even know my weight in imperial tbh nor does it mean anything to me if someone says how many stone and pounds they are. I’m 40!

Fortunate to be a child of the overlap era, so I'm perfectly comfortable with both Imperial and metric, so I don't really care which businesses choose.

Strong preference for Imperial myself because the units are far easier to envisage inside my mind, but if people insist on using metric it doesn't really pose any problem. Never understood why people can't learn both to be honest, it isn't particularly difficult.

I don’t know my weight in imperial. It’s meaningless to me too. I’m over 40.

I don’t talk about pints of milk either. It comes in imperial measures. But I never refer to as a pint of milk or whatever. And I measure it out in millilitres.

The concept of a pint as a unit of measurement to me is more or less meaningless in my life. It’s just a quaint notion used to refer to servings of beer. To understand the volume of liquid relative to other liquid, I think in metric.

No one is being locked up for any of this. What a stupid claim 🙄

I don't think so. At least not for long.

I am 60 so I can remember the change to decimal currency and can still just about work out what the "old money" equivalents were.

For a brief period people had aids to work out how much things were for comparison. However I guess it was immersion. You had to use the "new money" so people did very quickly get used to it.

FWIW I find metric martyrs a bit strange. Even as an old fart of 60 almost all of my education was delivered in metric. I can work in both but would mostly use metric by choice. Why wouldn't you?

Talk of the government changing back amuses me. I mean seriously how many people these days have the arithmetic skills for that?

My Dad was born in 1920 and worked in the building trade. He took the metric system in his stride when it came along. Why wouldn't you?

@Eleganz engineers use SI units, a few in the US use imperial but generally SI.

"Talk of the government changing back amuses me. I mean seriously how many people these days have the arithmetic skills for that?"
If people had no choice but to use imperial they would pick up the skills very quickly.

What an absolutely pointless requirement.

Tbh, that statement sums up the whole position of the imperial fetishisers. It’s got nothing to do with improving anyone’s life. It’s just about making a point and making life harder for others so they can feel
superior.

Florenz · Yesterday 23:45
It should be up to the company to decide what units to use, what to print on their packaging, and the consumer to choose what to buy.
^^
If people had no choice but to use imperial they would pick up the skills very quickly.

You’re contradicting your own arguments.
You say that businesses & customers should have to have a choice, but then if it could cause someone difficulty then they will learn an enforced imperial system

How come it’s such a problem then for people to have been able to pick up metric?

Or could it have been so hard to pick up metric because businesses and customers have not been forced into metric and can happily display both systems ?

My best guess would be the people who voted for Brexit because they felt it would "make Britain Great again"

You say that businesses & customers should have to have a choice

Well they say that, but they don't really mean it. After all, why should laws just stop at what units are used to sell shit by ? Why not scrap the laws around what additives you can use. Or about allergy labelling - or indeed ingredients labelling ? After all, shouldn't manufacturers be free to sell what they want, and let consumers decide ?

Ultimately, the chances of the UK somehow reverting to mandated imperial measures is the square root of fuck all. The closest we will get is to change the font of the existing laws, and sell that as a "Brexit Benefit" while hardcore Brexiteers scrabble around to find someone to read it to them, and an Express headline that uses the word "Brexit", "Quaking", "EU powerless", "unlocks" along with a quote from Ben Habib.

Meanwhile normal folk will continue to use their dual labelled measuring jugs and scales however they most feel comfortable as they plop the 250g of mince they bought from a shop into a recipe that calls for half a pound and wonder what all the fuss is about.

engineers use SI units, a few in the US use imperial but generally SI.

Nobody in the USA uses imperial measures. They use "English" measures. For example, a gallon in the USA is equal to 0.8 of a gallon in the UK.

And nobody in the UK uses the full set of imperial measures of weight, in which a pound of feathers is heavier than a pound of gold (or a pound of heroin) because there are three separate sets of weights within the imperial system.

Seems the internet is listening ...

www.southwalesargus.co.uk/news/23359531.cwmbrans-fortey-family-break-sunflower-guinness-world-record

Their latest attempt weighed in at 6.44kg (14.21 lbs) – the equivalent of two newborn babies, a bowling ball, or three Chihuahuas.

three Chihuahuas
Disgracefull - the only acceptable measurement should be British Bulldogs. Don't want these bloody foreign dogs cluttering up our weights and measures.