Return to Imperial units consultation - are we wasting money on returning to imperial units

[Clive Page]

Some idiot on the last government (there are so many of them I can't remember which) decided to try to grab a few votes by forcing the government to issue a consultation on a return to imperial units instead or, or in addition to, metric ones.

Today (Friday 26th) is the last day to fill in the consultation, but as it is clearly designed to get the answer "yes we want to return to Victorian England" the questions are very strange, and it's hard to answer if you just want to tell the government to be sensible and leave well alone. But all the same, there is a danger that most of those filling in the survey will be from the Metric Martyr movement or allied loonies, so I just filled it myself. I'd encourage others to do the same if they also don't see any point in wasting money on returning to imperial units.

[Brian Gaff]

I like imperial, and see no reason why we cannot have both. Brian

[Brian Gaff]

It does seem to be a long way down the line to engage in this. Surely for commercial reasons, putting in both measurements is good commercial sense, you should not need some government department to dictate that? Brian

[The Natural Philosopher]

No one is going to force the return of imperial as the only legal standard. It is merely that use of them as an alternative will no longer be illegal

[NY]

As long as metric is used for anything scientific/engineering which needs calculations and accurate measurement, and imperial is confined to "folk units" such as "I'm about 5 foot 10" or "I weigh about 12 stone" (I wish!!!).

I'm a bit of a Luddite (I tend to be at least one "technology" behind bleeding edge) but the one thing I wish we'd confined to the dustbin of history in 1971 (decimal currency) is the imperial system.

I can only think in two bases: 10 (obviously) and 16 (hex). At least hex has the advantage over the various imperial units that it uses a single character for digits > 9, so you always have one character in each column.

For me (and other people may feel the opposite) ease of calculation is *far* more important than whether units are "human sized" or make a perfect square/rectangle when packing in boxes.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well you shouldn't impose your innumeracy on other people - I can think happily in decimal, hexadecimal, octal,duodecimal, sexagesimal, and convert pretty reliably between fractional inches and millimetres, and grams and ounces. As well as Fahrenheit and Celsius

You just have to practice.

Its not 17.46 hours. Its 28 past 5.

[Ponyface]

that questionaire is without doubt the most loaded survey I have seen from a government department.

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

i liked the farling spent a few as a wee kiddywink....liked the one with the chooky birdy on it.....and 240 pennies to the pound made a lot of sense...half crowns were my fav

[alan_m]

+1 A career in engineering' now retired and metric all the way, in various jobs. Base 10 and base 16 used all the time.

[Tim Lamb]

In message [e-mail]>, Clive Page [e-mail] writes

Been there! Done that:-)

[Rod Speed]

Brian Gaff [e-mail] wrote

More fool you.

Pointless complication. Who cares how many bushels, pecks and knots your grocerys and cars do ?

[Rod Speed]

But does it make any sense to have to continue to teach imperial currency and imperial weights and measures in schools ?

[Jeff Layman]

Absolutely no to both measurements being used.

Just about all the world other than the USA uses the metric system. And the US system of volume measurement is different from our imperial measurements. Of course, the road to hell (or, should I say, "orbit to hell"), is paved with good intentions:

[charles]

I'm sure there must be a link to slavery somewhere. That would rule it out

-totally.

[Jethro_uk]

I believe they have now moved almost exclusively to metric in science and behind the scenes (most packing has metric on it).

And their direction of travel is away from metric anyway. They still have to do a lot of business with Mexico and Canada.

[Jethro_uk]

I suspect they will simply use the number of respondents (regardless of results) as the "proof" they need.

[Jethro_uk]

I heard someone comment that they were not going to pay a kings ransom for their offspring to learn archaic units at Eton ...

[Jeff Layman]

"Almost" in science isn't good enough after the Mars Climate Orbiter fiasco!

? Didn't you mean /towards/ metric?

[SteveW]

For a chunk of my engineering career, I designed control and instrumentation systems that were installed in the Middle East. They tended to use American standards and so Imperial was very common (we still used UK gallons). These days, everything is for UK installation, so we use Metric.

However, at home, I use a mix, as appropriate. It makes much more sense to use Imperial for a lot of DIY, as the house was built in Imperial units and so the hall is 8' wide and 8' sheets of plasterboard will do the ceiling and the walls. The doors are 2'6", etc.

If I'm making something, such as a cupboard, I'll use whichever gives the easiest figure, either Imperial or Metric - and even sometimes a mix, such as 3'3" + 4mm (that's a random set of numbers, which I'd actually use just metric for, as it's 995mm).

[Clive Arthur]

<snip>

Some years ago, a colleague told me that his daughter had been measured at school and was 1 metre 6 1/2 inches tall or somesuch. He queried this at the next open day and the reason was that there's a 1m rule fixed to the wall and a hand-held imperial measuring thingy used atop that.