EU gives up on 'metric Britain'

Haircut

Haircut

Haircut

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
3,926
Location
SW London
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6988521.stm

Well, it looks like we'll be able to keep our pints and our miles per hour for the time being.
I actually have mixed feelings about this, sure it's nice that we keep our traditions and things but maybe it would be better if everything was standardised.

Personally I can work pretty easily in both metric and imperial units, but I was wondering what everyone else thinks, particularly our younger (< 20) members.
Are you able to work in both units, or do you prefer one and what would you like to see for the future?
 
I'm 18 and have no trouble... my dad however, at 60 seems to think a CM is about 8 inches and a KM means a thousand miles :p
 
The EU must learn to recognise the bloody-mindedness of the British population :)

Personally, I have no problem converting between the two systems. However as a scientist I can only go with the logical Metric system. That said, I don't see any harm in continuing to use imperial units in an informal capacity (miles, pints, stones+lbs etc).
 
Im pretty good in both. On the news though, they did say its now at the discretiion of the UK government rather than the EU, so thats not to say it wont ever happen anyway.
 
I'm in favour of everything changing to metric bar mileage. I'm just not as familiar with kilometers in every day contexts.
 
bcjames said:
On the news though, they did say its now at the discretiion of the UK government rather than the EU, so thats not to say it wont ever happen anyway.
Click to expand...

There is strong support in this country for keeping the Imperial units system (at least for certain things). No national Government will risk alienating such a large group of people for a relatively trivial matter. Without the EU pressure, there will be no change, although I expect the education of school children to continue to be fully metric.
 
norm said:
I'm in favour of everything changing to metric bar mileage. I'm just not as familiar with kilometers in every day contexts.
Click to expand...

That's the easiest conversion, though :p

Miles -> Kilometers = multiply by 8 and divide by 5. Both easy numbers to work with :) Vice versa for kilometers -> miles of course...
 
I use a mixture of imperial and metric without even thinking about it, as i'm sure most of the population do. Keep it as it is I say.
 
Duff-Man said:
The EU must learn to recognise the bloody-mindedness of the British population :)

Personally, I have no problem converting between the two systems. However as a scientist I can only go with the logical Metric system. That said, I don't see any harm in continuing to use imperial units in an informal capacity (miles, pints, stones+lbs etc).
Click to expand...
Exactly.... as a scientist you need to generally use imperial, metric and scientific! And inter-convert! Ahhh!
 
Imperial is a load of rollocks and makes absolutely no bloody sense unless you're using it to count eggs, tbh! <3 Metric, it's far more sensible... Saying that though, I prefer MPH to KMPH but that's only because it's what I'm used to seeing.
 
I'm used to using both. But it makes no sense to keep a mixed system. The move to purely metric would be a good one IMO.

Changing from mph to km/hr would require some fairly major planning. I can't see that particular change being easy.
 
I work on a basis of scale...

If it's too big to pick up or hold then it's measured in feet or yards.

Fiddly things are metric.

Fluids are metric.

*n
 
I'm all for the government to move to a full metric system (road signs, official use, education etc) but there's no need to enforce its use for general daily life. If a greengrocer wants to use lbs and oz, so be it, I see no harm in that.
 
Everything should be done in metric as imperial is far to outdated.

As an example most people do not know how many feet are in a mile (5280), but most people know its about 1500m (1609m really)
 
Sweetloaf said:
Thank god for that, I currently travel 25 miles to work, 40km would be way too far:eek:
Click to expand...

:p

5280 feet equals one mile... that's silly (although I'm sure there is reasoning behind it). With a Kilometer, even the name of it tells you how many "sub-units" (meters) it is, and it's a much more sensible number than 5280!

Yeah after thinking about it, I'd be perfectly happy to get used to KMPH for the sake of being sensible with numbers ;) Like I say, imperial doesn't make sense to me.
 
I grew up with metric, then came here with imperial. Metric is a lot more precise and makes more sense. 1000g = 1000ml (of water) = 1kg. Imperial is a bag a bag of sugar.....what bag size sugar ? :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom