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Metric Versus Imperial
Nov. 5th, 2003 09:52 amI've been having a, sometimes, rather heated email discussion with some friends about Metric - mostly about how, in their opinion, it is dreadful that the government are prosecuting people who are still selling in Imperial units.
I'm on the other side of the debate. I used to be quite anti-metric, until I did my degree and had to force myself to think in Metric - that and marrying a South Africa who keeps asking difficult questions (e.g. what the hell is a "Stone" anyway).
We went metric in 1971, as I recall, same year we decimalised the currency - rather than insisting on a change like we did with the money, we've let it drag on for 30 years. When I was at school the teachers avoided teaching the metric system, mostly because I don't think they understood it. There's certainly not a lot of education on it even now. For everyday purposes a pound is a half kilo, an quarter is 100g. People got used to litres for petrol, we don't seem to have missed drinking in fractions of a Gill.
However, the debate is far more heated than I thought. There's a lot of rhetoric I didn't know about for things like how much more intuitive Imperial is (nonsense, intuitive stems from having only ever used that system) - am I out of touch? Is there a great big ground swell of people wanting to only use Imperial?
I think its silly myself - but apparently its a freedom of choice issue for some people.
My problem is that weights and measures have to be standard - if they are not standard it makes life difficult for everybody, arguing over this is pointless. Or have I missed something.
I'm on the other side of the debate. I used to be quite anti-metric, until I did my degree and had to force myself to think in Metric - that and marrying a South Africa who keeps asking difficult questions (e.g. what the hell is a "Stone" anyway).
We went metric in 1971, as I recall, same year we decimalised the currency - rather than insisting on a change like we did with the money, we've let it drag on for 30 years. When I was at school the teachers avoided teaching the metric system, mostly because I don't think they understood it. There's certainly not a lot of education on it even now. For everyday purposes a pound is a half kilo, an quarter is 100g. People got used to litres for petrol, we don't seem to have missed drinking in fractions of a Gill.
However, the debate is far more heated than I thought. There's a lot of rhetoric I didn't know about for things like how much more intuitive Imperial is (nonsense, intuitive stems from having only ever used that system) - am I out of touch? Is there a great big ground swell of people wanting to only use Imperial?
I think its silly myself - but apparently its a freedom of choice issue for some people.
My problem is that weights and measures have to be standard - if they are not standard it makes life difficult for everybody, arguing over this is pointless. Or have I missed something.
