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UK Engineers raise concerns over proposed switch to imperial measurements

63 points by seanhandley 4y ago

Ekaros 4y ago
What next, abandoning the decimal money? Then again, with enough inflation anything less than pound might not be needed.
- z9znz 4y ago
  > abandoning the decimal money That would serve the already-rich like Jacob Rees-Mogg as it would make it more difficult for the masses to measure the broadening inequality gap. Perhaps that is the plan, including with Brexit: the currently rich maintain as much power as possible and push the rest as far down as possible (to prevent losing their positions at the top of the hill).
shagymoe 4y ago
Wow, just when you think things couldn't get more stupid. Revert to a clearly inferior and difficult to use measurement system for what? Politics?
- afandian 4y ago
  To distract us.
- smcl 4y ago
  I can almost guarantee that this is being proposed because it performed well among a certain demographic during some focus group. So it’s a way to get a few cheap votes from the “back in my day…” crowd. It has the additional benefit of appearing like the government are doing something, while they somehow still continue to not tackle the other ongoing crises (among other things - energy prices and the recent mini-budget which cost the Chancellor of the Exchequer his job)
- phatfish 4y ago
  The metric system is too "European", and more specifically French for post-Brexit Britain. We need a patriotic system of measurement, not some foreign idea designed to take away our sovereignty.
  - heynowheynow 4y ago
    India wants to know if they should ask Pakistan to get the band back together. Also, returning to fractional sovereigns, pounds, crowns, guineas, florins, shillings, pennies, and farthings would be extremely simple. (It's the sad and cynical exploitation of tribal, nativist nationalism containing aggressive, neofascist, pining-for-the-past-more-than-usual, and anti-intellectual sentiments.)
- tremon 4y ago
  Yes! Bring back the old coins! 5 farthings to the penny, 11 pence to the shilling, 19 shillings to the pound! Much easier for everyone!
rwmj 4y ago
This is distraction and has no chance whatsoever of happening. It's best to ignore it.
- Reason077 4y ago
  That's what a lot of people said/thought about Brexit! Unfortunately, the more we bury our heads in the sand and ignore things, the more chance they have of actually happening.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    That's what we thought about the chances of Trump becoming president. But we should have learned by now that absurdities are not impossibilities and should be taken seriously.
- the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
  Like the festival of Brexit? Or leaving the single market? People said all these things won’t happen and yet they did. Shit like this keeps happening and people are not pushing back. Because it’s tiring and more comfortable to just let it happen. Yet the UK is quickly degrading as a result of all this mess.
RedShift1 4y ago
Just put imperial measurements on consumer goods next to metric and satisfy the brexiteers, no need to change everything.
- seagullrific 4y ago
  Sadly this would not satisfy - the point of Brexit isn't to make Brexiteers happy; it's to make Remainers unhappy.
- deadbunny 4y ago
  We can already do this legally. And some places do. This is just a distraction, red meat for idiots.
DigitalSea 4y ago
Why? Imperial is a terrible measurement system, inferior.
- tremon 4y ago
  For the same reason they doubled down on trickle-down economics: only dim bulbs in Westminster. Maybe Kwarteng and Rees-Mogg had a private wager to see who would be the first to be relieved of their post?
maxcbc 4y ago
I mean its a silly idea but I don’t see why systems would necessarily need updating if people chose to sell in imperial measurements. 1 - any seller would likely in any case have to list the metric equivalent anyway. 2 - all imperial measurements are now defined by metric measurements anyway. 3 - any company choosing to sell B2B in imperial measurements would likely find itself at a commercial disadvantage, as businesses in the UK almost always work in metric.
- the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
  The proposal as far as I’m aware requires businesses to also provide imperial units. That at the very least will require labelling changes and to have internal inventory systems to also need support for imperial units. It seems entirely nonsensical.
seydor 4y ago
switch to imperial? is that a typo?
ikt 4y ago
is this an out of season april fools joke?
- cstross 4y ago
  Nope, it's a genuine proposal from Jacob Rees-Mogg's department. Leaving aside that, in his mid-fifties, Mogg is probably too young to have learned imperial units at school ...
  - irdc 4y ago
    Isn't that the point? It'll be familiar to older people, thus proving how they're super to today's youth. (/s)
- kbrkbr 4y ago
  That was also my first thought. I see only cost and no benefit. Except maybe when you have a cargo cult mindset and think that returning these measures will return Britain‘s glory. Can anyone name one benefit?
gonzo41 4y ago
What the actual F. That is just insane. Brexit has been such a rolling disaster. It's constantly reminds me why compulsory voting in Australia is the best thing since sliced bread. It's just insane what the British have decided to do to themselves.
- Ylpertnodi 4y ago
  >It's constantly reminds me why compulsory voting in Australia is the best thing since sliced bread. How about letting people decide if they wish, or not, to partake in a system that is rigged on either side? A choice of 'either pile of shit', is not necessarily a choice that is acceptable to those that would prefer their bread without. I am horribly anti-brexit, it has caused me and so many I know so much grief. I hate everything about it, but you can take your 'actual F' and F yourself if you would like to force me to vote.
  - gonzo41 4y ago
    You're forced to follow all the other many, many, many rules in Britain. Yet you think you're being denied a freedom by the possibility of being required to participate in a process that results in changes to the laws that you obey. Making a choice between two bad options is pretty much the whole of life. You have been tricked into thinking that abstaining is a choice your making, and not an outcom that you've been led into by a society that's letting you down and exploiting your grievances. When everyone votes, the candidates have to generally be more competitive. More balanced and less extreme. Anyway, good luck with Brexit and the journey to the center of last century.
- sebazzz 4y ago
  > compulsory voting No. If you don't vote and you country gets destroyed by the politicians you don't get to complain - I agree on that part. However, if you are required to vote, also people will vote which don't inform themselves very well. Populists will take their votes happily, and populists are often not an improvement for the state of a country.
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Observation as a Canadian: Until the US decides to finally convert (e.g. never), the rest of the anglo-sphere will be forever stuck in an awkward inbetween zone anyways. We supposedly converted to metric in the 70s but it's only ever been half-hearted, as many trades (especially construction) continue to work in imperial measurements, and most people work in an awkward combination of the two. As Canadians we typically measure our height and weight in ft and lbs. But temperature in celsius and travel distances and speeds in kilometres and km/h. Except for cooking/recipes, where oven temperature is measured in fahrenheit and we have to deal with recipes with cups and ounces and so on. ... But recipes are also often in litres and grams. So... And most people can think of thermostat or pool/lake water temperatures in fahrenheit as well as celsius. We're supposed to be metric, but good luck finding a reasonable selection of metric screws/bolts/nuts at the hardware store. Online order. Really this is all to do with deep integration with the US economy and its own bizarre mostly-imperial-but-metric-where-it's-important. My poor father was a machinist, and originally was trained in metric Europe (Germany.) He found the whole situation extremely frustrating.
- willsmith72 4y ago
  Just to put another datapoint out there from the "anglo-sphere", Australia and New Zealand are completely metric. The one exception you could say is height, where in casual speech people sometimes say "6 foot", but if it were a medical situation it would again always be in cm.
  - cmrdporcupine 4y ago
    Sounds like distance from the US has made you saner. In terms of other English-speaking commonwealth countries, it seem South Africa is similar; heights etc. in imperial, everything else metric. That mostly describes the situation in Canada, but as I said construction trades and recipes really push people to have to have a feel for both systems.
- spoiler 4y ago
  > As Canadians we typically measure our height and weight in ft and lbs. But temperature in celsius and travel distances and speeds in kilometres and km/h. Except for cooking/recipes, where oven temperature is measured in fahrenheit and we have to deal with recipes with cups and ounces and so on. ... But recipes are also often in litres and grams. So... These statements always amuse me, as someone who grew up in a purely metric culture. I always wondered: do you ever get confused when talking in so many similar but different units, or is it second nature?
z9znz 4y ago
Are these people dead set on pushing the UK as far down the global economic ladder as possible?
zoltrain 4y ago
I mean Mogg is someone who comes across as having his finger on the pulse of society… the best description I’ve ever heard for him is “A haunted victorian drainpipe”. Ultimately the guys stake in Irish hedge-funds are served well by destabilising the pound. I can’t think of one member of the tories who isn’t in politics to make themselves even richer. Everything is grandstanding at the moment.
andrewstuart 4y ago
This is an example of the dead cat strategy, named by an Australian political strategist “throwing a dead cat in the table”. It’s a distraction so shocking that it can’t fail to divert media attention. It’s a favorite technique of Boris Johnson who is even mentioned in the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy The imperial measurement thing is a dead cat Boris threw on the table during his political descent. When you see it for what it is, you can take joy in imagining the meeting in which the politicians tried to think up the best dead cats to throw on the table and settled on this. “Yes, Prime Minister”
- zoltrain 4y ago
  100% this, all smoke and mirrors. But you can’t argue with it’s effectiveness.
  - andrewstuart 4y ago
    Once you know it’s an explicit strategy, you can watch for it and call it out when you see they’ve chucked a dead cat.
    - heynowheynow 4y ago
      It's pining for the fjords or maybe it's just stunned.
- heynowheynow 4y ago
  There is an entire category of fallacies of distraction. People, especially those of the political persuasion, use them when they don't have valid or just arguments to support their position. Personally, I prefer goat brains, monkey testicles, and the shrunken heads of vanquished enemies.
Neil44 4y ago
As I understand we we're not 'reverting', it's just not going to be illegal to use the old measures any more.
- soneil 4y ago
  It's already not illegal to use them, as long as you use metric alongside them. I don't see the problem this is trying to solve.
mytailorisrich 4y ago
Just to be precise, they have not proposed to switch back to imperial, they are proposing to allow imperial units to be used (so for instance a supermarket would be free to sell potatoes in pounds instead of kilos if they wanted to). Either way, this is indeed a distraction and it has very little chance of going anywhere.
tremon 4y ago
How many 180° turns can a prime minister manage before they fall down?
- Ekaros 4y ago
  I would guess that in British system quite many. As the members of party have no interest to move with new election when they aren't sure they are going to win. So PM needs to end up pretty unpopular before they make any moves for replacement. Also considering current situation, I don't think there is too many that want to be in the shoes just yet.
- Ylpertnodi 4y ago
  Prime-ministers are seleceted by the party in power, and they are selected by a minority of that party when required (Boris losing power - out, Liz losing power - soon out), so they will make as many 180° turns - and returns - as is required by the party that was voted into power so that same party remains in power. Yes Minister - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLm2X6sFa48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLm2X6sFa48
LightG 4y ago
Even if this is a distraction tactic ... Is there value to the distraction if it makes the entire country look like a bunch of idiots? RIP Britain. A deeply embarassing end ...
tzs 4y ago
OT: Can I ask a question about something that has long puzzled me about Brexit? Note: I'm not asking about whether or not Brexit was a good idea. No matter where you stand on that, let's assume for the sake of argument that there were terrific arguments for both staying in the EU and leaving. My puzzlement concerns the specific question asked on the 2016 referendum, which was > Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? with the options being remain or leave. If you wanted the UK to stay in the EU, then clearly "remain" was the right choice for you. Remaining didn't require the UK to do anything, so if you voted "remain" you were voting for something with a highly predictable outcome. Leaving, on the other hand, requires a lot of action over the next several years. There were many quite different ways a post-EU UK could turn out, and much disagreement among the people who wanted to leave as to which of those ways they wanted. There could be changes of government over the years it takes to implement so even if you were confident that the people now in power would work toward an implementation of the kind of Brexit you wanted, they might not be the ones in power when it comes to actually finishing the thing. If you wanted to leave then it seems to me that the best choice would still be to vote "remain" because this particular referendum was terrible. Instead, work to elect politicians who would offer a better referendum. Something like this: > Should the United Kingdom develop a concrete proposal to leave the EU and then hold a referendum on that, and if that referendum passes negotiate a final deal to leave the EU, and then hold a final referendum on whether to implement that final deal?
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  Unfortunately that would have required a nuanced political discussion, something that traditionally has been lacking in the UK Brexit wars.
- StewardMcOy 4y ago
  The missing piece here is that the referendum was designed by people who wanted and expected remain to win. David Cameron, the PM at the time, was facing a minor rebellion within his own party from a faction of MPs that were anti-EU. They weren't a majority of the party, but they were large enough to cause trouble. A couple years prior, he had faced a similar problem from Scottish nationalists, so he approved a referendum on Scottish independence. He was against independence, but when Scotland voted to remain a part of the UK, it weakened the arguments of the Scottish nationalists, making his job easier. He figured he could do the same with Brexit. Nobody seriously expected leave to win. Problem was, it turned out there was a lot of money in leaving the EU. It would make tax dodges easier for the ultra-rich, and it would allow disaster capitalists to make a killing by shorting the market. So money flowed into the leave campaign from wealthy donors hoping to make a killing. As a result, leave ran a much slicker campaign. All this might not have been enough for leave to win, but people were also pissed off at the government for years of austerity policies and a flagging economy since the 2008 crash. Lots of people, saw the vote as a way to express their displeasure in the government. Some of those who voted leave never expected it to win. SO yes, you're right. The referendum was poorly worded and poorly planned. This was evident in the immediate aftermath. The House of Commons could not agree at all on what to do. A large chunk still backed remaining, but not a majority. Lots of MPs decided that, even though they knew Brexit was a bad idea, their constituents had voted for it, so they needed to switch sides. They didn't all switch to the same side though. Some wanted a no-deal Brexit. Some wanted to remain in the customs union and single market. Others wanted different arrangements. There was no majority for any course of action, because the referendum didn't describe a course of action, and it paralyzed UK politics for years.
323 4y ago
UK is a confused place. I still don't know whats the "official" temperature scale - F or C. In the same paper, I would see the weather map with C, but the title with F (heatwave of xx F). Or the reverse, or both. Or in the same shop you can buy milk in liters, or in pints.
- atdrummond 4y ago
  I lived in London and Castletown (IoM) for years and only ever felt like C was used. I remember distinctly because of how often I had to force myself to make the the calculation for conversion between the two whenever any topic of temperature came up early in my time there.
- antihero 4y ago
  Anyone that isn’t ancient uses Celsius.
- bitcharmer 4y ago
  I feel like you're making this up. No one here uses Fahrenheit.
  - 323 4y ago
    This summer, DailyMail, one of the biggest newspapers: > Title: Britain goes into meltdown over 106F hottest day EVER that is set to hit on Monday and Tuesday > Subtitle: Parts of London set to hit 41C (106F) next Monday and Tuesday - smashing all-time UK record of 38.7C (101.6F) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11019683/Britain-enjoys-sun-gets-hot-Temperatures-hit-80F-hitting-86F-tomorrow.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11019683/Britain-en... > Summer is officially here! North East braces for sweltering 96F heatwave after Memorial Day as revelers flock to the beaches and parks to cool down https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10868043/North-East-braces-sweltering-96F-heatwave-Memorial-Day.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10868043/North-East...
    - stoobs 4y ago
      The Daily Mail online has been branching out into the US for a while, hence covering things in language catering for an American audience. Temperature measurement in the UK is measured in Celcius, Fahrenheit is not a thing here.
KineticLensman 4y ago
As reported in [0], the UK Government survey asked consumers: “If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items: i) in imperial units ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent.” There was no option iii) for using metric only (except a freeform entry field). Talk about biased. I suppose we should be thankful that the recent self-inflicted destruction of the UK Govt's credibility has at least probably saved us from having to learn fortnights, furlongs and firkins again. Silver linings etc etc. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/18/metric-system-imperial-measures-consultation-brexit https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/18/metric-syst...
- Ylpertnodi 4y ago
  ...not convinced 'fortnight' is actually imperial (as opposed to just old): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fortnight https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fortnight Middle English fourtenight, alteration of fourtene night, from Old English fēowertȳne niht fourteen nights. (First Known Use of silver lining - 1871, same source) ...and as for etc (Et cetera), may I offer you my contrafibularities.
  - KineticLensman 4y ago
    Yes, I wasn't being totally serious. Pro-metric people sometimes jokingly refer to the 'imperial' 3F system by analogy with the SI system and others. I think 'Fortnight' is rapidly falling out of use in British English. I would be much more likely to say 'a couple of weeks'
NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
Everybody's shitting on Imperial, U.S. customary, or whatever you want to call them units... Allow me to give a slightly different perspective: as a scientist, if I'm doing chemistry then metric is the way to go. Conversions are easier, centigrade and Kelvin just make a lot more sense... But for many day-to-day things I think the Imperial units are better. Temperature? Fahrenheit is a 0-100 scale, where 0 is pretty much as cold as it gets in temperate climates, and 100 is pretty much as hot as it gets. A mile is 5280 feet? Wtf? Well, it's 1000 paces (each pace bringing you back to the same state, so two steps = 5.28 feet). I don't know if any good work has been done on it, but my guess is people who were raised with inches are better and quicker at estimating length than people who were raised with metric. Millimeters are too small, cm are also too small (and nobody uses them really). Inches are a good, intuitive unit for measuring human-scale stuff given our cognitive constraints, I'd guess. Does anyone know of work looking at this?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Dayshine 4y ago
  As a counterpoint: I find the implicit imprecision caused by having poor/no divisibility a constant frustration in my day-to-day life. For volume: US based recipes very often resort to "1 cup", and I generally find they're rounding a long way from... say... 3/4 cup. In metric, people don't tend to round more than 10ml at a time, so you'll see 120ml, not 100ml when they mean 120ml. For distance: "About an inch" is the most useless instruction in DIY or crafting. People seem to be very reluctant to use the awkward and 3 fifths or w/e you end up with in imperial. When you say "people are better at estimating", are you adjusting for the reduced precision?
  - NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
    > When you say "people are better at estimating", are you adjusting for the reduced precision? No, I wasn't thinking about it that way. I was imagining a task where you get people to estimate the length of various objects by looking at them, and just take the mean error. So the size of the units wouldn't matter. If someone wanted to say 1.33268 inches, I'd let them. Concerning divisability: it depends on how you think about it. Many people found dividing in half, and half again, etc. to be intuitive, and it is intuitive in e.g. woodworking (because physically dividing in half is easy), but yeah...in a lot of applications I just want to be able to move decimal points around. For volume in recipes: you're right. I think the problem with the U.S. here is that we use volume in recipes at all. Weight! Use weight! Flour is many different densities... But yeah, recipes are in general trash. For your case, you'll usually see cups and tablespoons (...lol) like "1 cup plus 2 tablespoons". For distance: "about an inch" makes a lot of sense to people raised with inches. It doesn't strike me as weird at all. Concerning awkward 3 fifths: imperial wouldn't use fifths, it'd be divisions by two. So half, quarter, eighth, etc. There are some specific cases, like a bottle of liquor is often called a "fifth" because it's approximately a fifth of a gallon, but that's specific to that application.
lozenge 4y ago
This is a non story. The consultation is on whether to allow weights and volumes of goods to be sold using imperial measures. There is no suggestion of switching engineering or construction to use imperial.
- daveoc64 4y ago
  That's already legally possible to put imperial measurements on things now. The consultation asked whether people wanted to switch to imperial measurements only, alongside other less sensible options.
jacknews 4y ago
LOL, they're having a larf. Of course it's a ridiculous proposal, and so an obvious smokescreen to keep the plebs discussing irrelevancies. But on top of that, the particular proposal, to revert to an olde-worlde measurement system, is surely a troll at all the olde people who were conned into voting for this ridiculous mess.

63 points by seanhandley 4y ago

What next, abandoning the decimal money? Then again, with enough inflation anything less than pound might not be needed.

z9znz 4y ago
> abandoning the decimal money That would serve the already-rich like Jacob Rees-Mogg as it would make it more difficult for the masses to measure the broadening inequality gap. Perhaps that is the plan, including with Brexit: the currently rich maintain as much power as possible and push the rest as far down as possible (to prevent losing their positions at the top of the hill).

shagymoe 4y ago

Wow, just when you think things couldn't get more stupid. Revert to a clearly inferior and difficult to use measurement system for what? Politics?

afandian 4y ago
To distract us.
smcl 4y ago
I can almost guarantee that this is being proposed because it performed well among a certain demographic during some focus group. So it’s a way to get a few cheap votes from the “back in my day…” crowd. It has the additional benefit of appearing like the government are doing something, while they somehow still continue to not tackle the other ongoing crises (among other things - energy prices and the recent mini-budget which cost the Chancellor of the Exchequer his job)
phatfish 4y ago
The metric system is too "European", and more specifically French for post-Brexit Britain. We need a patriotic system of measurement, not some foreign idea designed to take away our sovereignty.
- heynowheynow 4y ago
  India wants to know if they should ask Pakistan to get the band back together. Also, returning to fractional sovereigns, pounds, crowns, guineas, florins, shillings, pennies, and farthings would be extremely simple. (It's the sad and cynical exploitation of tribal, nativist nationalism containing aggressive, neofascist, pining-for-the-past-more-than-usual, and anti-intellectual sentiments.)
tremon 4y ago
Yes! Bring back the old coins! 5 farthings to the penny, 11 pence to the shilling, 19 shillings to the pound! Much easier for everyone!

rwmj 4y ago

This is distraction and has no chance whatsoever of happening. It's best to ignore it.

Reason077 4y ago
That's what a lot of people said/thought about Brexit! Unfortunately, the more we bury our heads in the sand and ignore things, the more chance they have of actually happening.
- z9znz 4y ago
  That's what we thought about the chances of Trump becoming president. But we should have learned by now that absurdities are not impossibilities and should be taken seriously.
the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
Like the festival of Brexit? Or leaving the single market? People said all these things won’t happen and yet they did. Shit like this keeps happening and people are not pushing back. Because it’s tiring and more comfortable to just let it happen. Yet the UK is quickly degrading as a result of all this mess.

RedShift1 4y ago

Just put imperial measurements on consumer goods next to metric and satisfy the brexiteers, no need to change everything.

seagullrific 4y ago
Sadly this would not satisfy - the point of Brexit isn't to make Brexiteers happy; it's to make Remainers unhappy.
deadbunny 4y ago
We can already do this legally. And some places do. This is just a distraction, red meat for idiots.

DigitalSea 4y ago

Why? Imperial is a terrible measurement system, inferior.

tremon 4y ago
For the same reason they doubled down on trickle-down economics: only dim bulbs in Westminster. Maybe Kwarteng and Rees-Mogg had a private wager to see who would be the first to be relieved of their post?

maxcbc 4y ago

I mean its a silly idea but I don’t see why systems would necessarily need updating if people chose to sell in imperial measurements. 1 - any seller would likely in any case have to list the metric equivalent anyway. 2 - all imperial measurements are now defined by metric measurements anyway. 3 - any company choosing to sell B2B in imperial measurements would likely find itself at a commercial disadvantage, as businesses in the UK almost always work in metric.

the_mitsuhiko 4y ago
The proposal as far as I’m aware requires businesses to also provide imperial units. That at the very least will require labelling changes and to have internal inventory systems to also need support for imperial units. It seems entirely nonsensical.

seydor 4y ago

switch to imperial? is that a typo?

ikt 4y ago

is this an out of season april fools joke?

cstross 4y ago
Nope, it's a genuine proposal from Jacob Rees-Mogg's department. Leaving aside that, in his mid-fifties, Mogg is probably too young to have learned imperial units at school ...
- irdc 4y ago
  Isn't that the point? It'll be familiar to older people, thus proving how they're super to today's youth. (/s)
kbrkbr 4y ago
That was also my first thought. I see only cost and no benefit. Except maybe when you have a cargo cult mindset and think that returning these measures will return Britain‘s glory. Can anyone name one benefit?

gonzo41 4y ago

What the actual F. That is just insane. Brexit has been such a rolling disaster. It's constantly reminds me why compulsory voting in Australia is the best thing since sliced bread. It's just insane what the British have decided to do to themselves.

Ylpertnodi 4y ago
>It's constantly reminds me why compulsory voting in Australia is the best thing since sliced bread. How about letting people decide if they wish, or not, to partake in a system that is rigged on either side? A choice of 'either pile of shit', is not necessarily a choice that is acceptable to those that would prefer their bread without. I am horribly anti-brexit, it has caused me and so many I know so much grief. I hate everything about it, but you can take your 'actual F' and F yourself if you would like to force me to vote.
- gonzo41 4y ago
  You're forced to follow all the other many, many, many rules in Britain. Yet you think you're being denied a freedom by the possibility of being required to participate in a process that results in changes to the laws that you obey. Making a choice between two bad options is pretty much the whole of life. You have been tricked into thinking that abstaining is a choice your making, and not an outcom that you've been led into by a society that's letting you down and exploiting your grievances. When everyone votes, the candidates have to generally be more competitive. More balanced and less extreme. Anyway, good luck with Brexit and the journey to the center of last century.
sebazzz 4y ago
> compulsory voting No. If you don't vote and you country gets destroyed by the politicians you don't get to complain - I agree on that part. However, if you are required to vote, also people will vote which don't inform themselves very well. Populists will take their votes happily, and populists are often not an improvement for the state of a country.

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Observation as a Canadian: Until the US decides to finally convert (e.g. never), the rest of the anglo-sphere will be forever stuck in an awkward inbetween zone anyways. We supposedly converted to metric in the 70s but it's only ever been half-hearted, as many trades (especially construction) continue to work in imperial measurements, and most people work in an awkward combination of the two. As Canadians we typically measure our height and weight in ft and lbs. But temperature in celsius and travel distances and speeds in kilometres and km/h. Except for cooking/recipes, where oven temperature is measured in fahrenheit and we have to deal with recipes with cups and ounces and so on. ... But recipes are also often in litres and grams. So... And most people can think of thermostat or pool/lake water temperatures in fahrenheit as well as celsius. We're supposed to be metric, but good luck finding a reasonable selection of metric screws/bolts/nuts at the hardware store. Online order. Really this is all to do with deep integration with the US economy and its own bizarre mostly-imperial-but-metric-where-it's-important. My poor father was a machinist, and originally was trained in metric Europe (Germany.) He found the whole situation extremely frustrating.

willsmith72 4y ago
Just to put another datapoint out there from the "anglo-sphere", Australia and New Zealand are completely metric. The one exception you could say is height, where in casual speech people sometimes say "6 foot", but if it were a medical situation it would again always be in cm.
- cmrdporcupine 4y ago
  Sounds like distance from the US has made you saner. In terms of other English-speaking commonwealth countries, it seem South Africa is similar; heights etc. in imperial, everything else metric. That mostly describes the situation in Canada, but as I said construction trades and recipes really push people to have to have a feel for both systems.
spoiler 4y ago
> As Canadians we typically measure our height and weight in ft and lbs. But temperature in celsius and travel distances and speeds in kilometres and km/h. Except for cooking/recipes, where oven temperature is measured in fahrenheit and we have to deal with recipes with cups and ounces and so on. ... But recipes are also often in litres and grams. So... These statements always amuse me, as someone who grew up in a purely metric culture. I always wondered: do you ever get confused when talking in so many similar but different units, or is it second nature?

z9znz 4y ago

Are these people dead set on pushing the UK as far down the global economic ladder as possible?

zoltrain 4y ago

I mean Mogg is someone who comes across as having his finger on the pulse of society… the best description I’ve ever heard for him is “A haunted victorian drainpipe”. Ultimately the guys stake in Irish hedge-funds are served well by destabilising the pound. I can’t think of one member of the tories who isn’t in politics to make themselves even richer. Everything is grandstanding at the moment.

andrewstuart 4y ago

This is an example of the dead cat strategy, named by an Australian political strategist “throwing a dead cat in the table”. It’s a distraction so shocking that it can’t fail to divert media attention. It’s a favorite technique of Boris Johnson who is even mentioned in the Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy The imperial measurement thing is a dead cat Boris threw on the table during his political descent. When you see it for what it is, you can take joy in imagining the meeting in which the politicians tried to think up the best dead cats to throw on the table and settled on this. “Yes, Prime Minister”

zoltrain 4y ago
100% this, all smoke and mirrors. But you can’t argue with it’s effectiveness.
- andrewstuart 4y ago
  Once you know it’s an explicit strategy, you can watch for it and call it out when you see they’ve chucked a dead cat.
  - heynowheynow 4y ago
    It's pining for the fjords or maybe it's just stunned.
heynowheynow 4y ago
There is an entire category of fallacies of distraction. People, especially those of the political persuasion, use them when they don't have valid or just arguments to support their position. Personally, I prefer goat brains, monkey testicles, and the shrunken heads of vanquished enemies.

Neil44 4y ago

As I understand we we're not 'reverting', it's just not going to be illegal to use the old measures any more.

soneil 4y ago
It's already not illegal to use them, as long as you use metric alongside them. I don't see the problem this is trying to solve.

mytailorisrich 4y ago

Just to be precise, they have not proposed to switch back to imperial, they are proposing to allow imperial units to be used (so for instance a supermarket would be free to sell potatoes in pounds instead of kilos if they wanted to). Either way, this is indeed a distraction and it has very little chance of going anywhere.

tremon 4y ago

How many 180° turns can a prime minister manage before they fall down?

Ekaros 4y ago
I would guess that in British system quite many. As the members of party have no interest to move with new election when they aren't sure they are going to win. So PM needs to end up pretty unpopular before they make any moves for replacement. Also considering current situation, I don't think there is too many that want to be in the shoes just yet.
Ylpertnodi 4y ago
Prime-ministers are seleceted by the party in power, and they are selected by a minority of that party when required (Boris losing power - out, Liz losing power - soon out), so they will make as many 180° turns - and returns - as is required by the party that was voted into power so that same party remains in power. Yes Minister - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLm2X6sFa48 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLm2X6sFa48

LightG 4y ago

Even if this is a distraction tactic ... Is there value to the distraction if it makes the entire country look like a bunch of idiots? RIP Britain. A deeply embarassing end ...

tzs 4y ago

OT: Can I ask a question about something that has long puzzled me about Brexit? Note: I'm not asking about whether or not Brexit was a good idea. No matter where you stand on that, let's assume for the sake of argument that there were terrific arguments for both staying in the EU and leaving. My puzzlement concerns the specific question asked on the 2016 referendum, which was > Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union? with the options being remain or leave. If you wanted the UK to stay in the EU, then clearly "remain" was the right choice for you. Remaining didn't require the UK to do anything, so if you voted "remain" you were voting for something with a highly predictable outcome. Leaving, on the other hand, requires a lot of action over the next several years. There were many quite different ways a post-EU UK could turn out, and much disagreement among the people who wanted to leave as to which of those ways they wanted. There could be changes of government over the years it takes to implement so even if you were confident that the people now in power would work toward an implementation of the kind of Brexit you wanted, they might not be the ones in power when it comes to actually finishing the thing. If you wanted to leave then it seems to me that the best choice would still be to vote "remain" because this particular referendum was terrible. Instead, work to elect politicians who would offer a better referendum. Something like this: > Should the United Kingdom develop a concrete proposal to leave the EU and then hold a referendum on that, and if that referendum passes negotiate a final deal to leave the EU, and then hold a final referendum on whether to implement that final deal?

KineticLensman 4y ago
Unfortunately that would have required a nuanced political discussion, something that traditionally has been lacking in the UK Brexit wars.
StewardMcOy 4y ago
The missing piece here is that the referendum was designed by people who wanted and expected remain to win. David Cameron, the PM at the time, was facing a minor rebellion within his own party from a faction of MPs that were anti-EU. They weren't a majority of the party, but they were large enough to cause trouble. A couple years prior, he had faced a similar problem from Scottish nationalists, so he approved a referendum on Scottish independence. He was against independence, but when Scotland voted to remain a part of the UK, it weakened the arguments of the Scottish nationalists, making his job easier. He figured he could do the same with Brexit. Nobody seriously expected leave to win. Problem was, it turned out there was a lot of money in leaving the EU. It would make tax dodges easier for the ultra-rich, and it would allow disaster capitalists to make a killing by shorting the market. So money flowed into the leave campaign from wealthy donors hoping to make a killing. As a result, leave ran a much slicker campaign. All this might not have been enough for leave to win, but people were also pissed off at the government for years of austerity policies and a flagging economy since the 2008 crash. Lots of people, saw the vote as a way to express their displeasure in the government. Some of those who voted leave never expected it to win. SO yes, you're right. The referendum was poorly worded and poorly planned. This was evident in the immediate aftermath. The House of Commons could not agree at all on what to do. A large chunk still backed remaining, but not a majority. Lots of MPs decided that, even though they knew Brexit was a bad idea, their constituents had voted for it, so they needed to switch sides. They didn't all switch to the same side though. Some wanted a no-deal Brexit. Some wanted to remain in the customs union and single market. Others wanted different arrangements. There was no majority for any course of action, because the referendum didn't describe a course of action, and it paralyzed UK politics for years.

323 4y ago

UK is a confused place. I still don't know whats the "official" temperature scale - F or C. In the same paper, I would see the weather map with C, but the title with F (heatwave of xx F). Or the reverse, or both. Or in the same shop you can buy milk in liters, or in pints.

atdrummond 4y ago
I lived in London and Castletown (IoM) for years and only ever felt like C was used. I remember distinctly because of how often I had to force myself to make the the calculation for conversion between the two whenever any topic of temperature came up early in my time there.
antihero 4y ago
Anyone that isn’t ancient uses Celsius.
bitcharmer 4y ago
I feel like you're making this up. No one here uses Fahrenheit.
- 323 4y ago
  This summer, DailyMail, one of the biggest newspapers: > Title: Britain goes into meltdown over 106F hottest day EVER that is set to hit on Monday and Tuesday > Subtitle: Parts of London set to hit 41C (106F) next Monday and Tuesday - smashing all-time UK record of 38.7C (101.6F) https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11019683/Britain-enjoys-sun-gets-hot-Temperatures-hit-80F-hitting-86F-tomorrow.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11019683/Britain-en... > Summer is officially here! North East braces for sweltering 96F heatwave after Memorial Day as revelers flock to the beaches and parks to cool down https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10868043/North-East-braces-sweltering-96F-heatwave-Memorial-Day.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10868043/North-East...
  - stoobs 4y ago
    The Daily Mail online has been branching out into the US for a while, hence covering things in language catering for an American audience. Temperature measurement in the UK is measured in Celcius, Fahrenheit is not a thing here.

KineticLensman 4y ago

As reported in [0], the UK Government survey asked consumers: “If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items: i) in imperial units ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent.” There was no option iii) for using metric only (except a freeform entry field). Talk about biased. I suppose we should be thankful that the recent self-inflicted destruction of the UK Govt's credibility has at least probably saved us from having to learn fortnights, furlongs and firkins again. Silver linings etc etc. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/18/metric-system-imperial-measures-consultation-brexit https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/18/metric-syst...

Ylpertnodi 4y ago
...not convinced 'fortnight' is actually imperial (as opposed to just old): https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fortnight https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fortnight Middle English fourtenight, alteration of fourtene night, from Old English fēowertȳne niht fourteen nights. (First Known Use of silver lining - 1871, same source) ...and as for etc (Et cetera), may I offer you my contrafibularities.
- KineticLensman 4y ago
  Yes, I wasn't being totally serious. Pro-metric people sometimes jokingly refer to the 'imperial' 3F system by analogy with the SI system and others. I think 'Fortnight' is rapidly falling out of use in British English. I would be much more likely to say 'a couple of weeks'

NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago

Everybody's shitting on Imperial, U.S. customary, or whatever you want to call them units... Allow me to give a slightly different perspective: as a scientist, if I'm doing chemistry then metric is the way to go. Conversions are easier, centigrade and Kelvin just make a lot more sense... But for many day-to-day things I think the Imperial units are better. Temperature? Fahrenheit is a 0-100 scale, where 0 is pretty much as cold as it gets in temperate climates, and 100 is pretty much as hot as it gets. A mile is 5280 feet? Wtf? Well, it's 1000 paces (each pace bringing you back to the same state, so two steps = 5.28 feet). I don't know if any good work has been done on it, but my guess is people who were raised with inches are better and quicker at estimating length than people who were raised with metric. Millimeters are too small, cm are also too small (and nobody uses them really). Inches are a good, intuitive unit for measuring human-scale stuff given our cognitive constraints, I'd guess. Does anyone know of work looking at this?

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Dayshine 4y ago
As a counterpoint: I find the implicit imprecision caused by having poor/no divisibility a constant frustration in my day-to-day life. For volume: US based recipes very often resort to "1 cup", and I generally find they're rounding a long way from... say... 3/4 cup. In metric, people don't tend to round more than 10ml at a time, so you'll see 120ml, not 100ml when they mean 120ml. For distance: "About an inch" is the most useless instruction in DIY or crafting. People seem to be very reluctant to use the awkward and 3 fifths or w/e you end up with in imperial. When you say "people are better at estimating", are you adjusting for the reduced precision?
- NoImmatureAdHom 4y ago
  > When you say "people are better at estimating", are you adjusting for the reduced precision? No, I wasn't thinking about it that way. I was imagining a task where you get people to estimate the length of various objects by looking at them, and just take the mean error. So the size of the units wouldn't matter. If someone wanted to say 1.33268 inches, I'd let them. Concerning divisability: it depends on how you think about it. Many people found dividing in half, and half again, etc. to be intuitive, and it is intuitive in e.g. woodworking (because physically dividing in half is easy), but yeah...in a lot of applications I just want to be able to move decimal points around. For volume in recipes: you're right. I think the problem with the U.S. here is that we use volume in recipes at all. Weight! Use weight! Flour is many different densities... But yeah, recipes are in general trash. For your case, you'll usually see cups and tablespoons (...lol) like "1 cup plus 2 tablespoons". For distance: "about an inch" makes a lot of sense to people raised with inches. It doesn't strike me as weird at all. Concerning awkward 3 fifths: imperial wouldn't use fifths, it'd be divisions by two. So half, quarter, eighth, etc. There are some specific cases, like a bottle of liquor is often called a "fifth" because it's approximately a fifth of a gallon, but that's specific to that application.

lozenge 4y ago

This is a non story. The consultation is on whether to allow weights and volumes of goods to be sold using imperial measures. There is no suggestion of switching engineering or construction to use imperial.

daveoc64 4y ago
That's already legally possible to put imperial measurements on things now. The consultation asked whether people wanted to switch to imperial measurements only, alongside other less sensible options.

jacknews 4y ago

LOL, they're having a larf. Of course it's a ridiculous proposal, and so an obvious smokescreen to keep the plebs discussing irrelevancies. But on top of that, the particular proposal, to revert to an olde-worlde measurement system, is surely a troll at all the olde people who were conned into voting for this ridiculous mess.