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I disagree that the UK is metric at all. They try to teach us to think metric in school but in the real world almost everything is still imperial. We hear impe

I disagree that the UK is metric at all. They try to teach us to think metric in school but in the real world almost everything is still imperial. We hear imperial units every day in this country. We hear it when we discuss body weight, driving distance, cooking, size of most things, etc.

EliRivers 14y ago
I'm British. I live in the UK. I'm in my thirties. I do a person's height in casual conversation (on forms I write it in metres) and driving distance in Imperial measurements (often; I use kilometres when I'm talking to someone I trust to know what a kilometre is, which is generally anyone under about 40). I do depth and altitude in metres, but sometimes I'll use an old chart that has feet (or sometimes fathoms, but that's the really, really old charts). Volume, mass, everything else is metric. I know my mass in kg. I've only the vaguest idea what a "stone" is. A pound? An ounce? Those are twee measurements I sometimes see in old books. I know how much a litre is. I don't even know what the metric unit of volume is. Cubic inches? That seems clumsy even for Imperial units. At the supermarket, the unit used on the fruit, veg and meat is kilogrammes. Last weekend I was comparing pork by cost per kilogramme. Which supermarket do you shop at that uses... I don't even know what you'd use. Not stones, I guess? Pounds and ounces? I remember at about age ten someone telling me the temperature in Fahrenheit, and having no idea whether that was hot or cold. I have less idea today of what it means. Where this is going is that I thoroughly disagree. Additional edits, for the fun of it: "Though I bet you don't go to Asda and ask where you can find 2.272 litres of milk." Fair enough. I do buy milk in pints. If they switched to 2 litre bottles, I'd still buy it, and frankly I'd prefer it if they did. At the moment, I have to look at the scale on the side of the milk marked in litres to see how much I'm pouring into something (because the recipe I'm using specifies litres or millilitres; maybe there's a whole dual-industry for recipes in which you get Imperial units and I get metric; I note that the recipes on the BBC list both units; Jamie Oliver's web page is metric, Delia Smith is both, Hairy Bikers are metric, I've given up looking after those high-ranking four, but I note that not one of them is this Imperial only thing you talked about). "Do you ever do mile-per-gallon approximations for your fuel economy?" Fair enough. I don't drive so this is a closed book to me. "Do you ever buy a steak at a nice restaurant?" Yes, often. I have never once specified a mass the steak is to have. That it is marked on the menu in crazy measurements has always seemed a twee restaurant kind of thing; cosmetic rather than meaningful. The meat at the supermarket is, of course, in kg. "Have you ever played golf or football?" Never golf, and football not since I was about ten. Perhaps we simply move in different circles. You're with the Imperials, I'm with the metrics. "Where are you?" Deep south. Hampshire. As a drifting aside, I note that London is now approximately 40% non-British born, so that presumably means that about 40% of people living in London have even less grasp of Imperial measurements than I do. Perhaps metric is more common in the south. Steak update: I am sure I have specified the steak by name, and its name is "Ten ounce" or "Eight ounce" or whatever. It is as meaningful to me as "Medium bowl of custard" or "large bowl of custard", for example. If you gave me a big bucket of sand and asked me to put about ten ounces of sand in a cup, I'd have no idea at all. I seem to recall that I once saw an ounce of butter and it was kind of about "this" big". I'd probably use that as a base. Ramsay: A ha. Ramsay, of course, is Scottish. Maybe Scotland isn't metric.
- jamesjguthrie 14y ago
  I didn't mention buying anything in the shops. I mentioned cooking, as in recipe instructions. Though I bet you don't go to Asda and ask where you can find 2.272 litres of milk. Do you ever do mile-per-gallon approximations for your fuel economy? Cars are still advertised with mpg values. Do you ever buy a steak at a nice restaurant? Have you ever played golf or football?
  - EliRivers 14y ago
    Points addressed as edits in my post above. For the fun of it.
- jamesjguthrie 14y ago
  I'd rather be with the metrics! I'm about to graduate with my design engineering degree, I'm so used to SI units that imperial drives me crazy, but I need to live with it. Regarding the steak point, do you never ask for the 8oz or 10oz steak? For curiosity, I'm just outside Glasgow, where are you? Edit: Gordon Ramsay recipes: http://gordonramsaysrecipes.com/ http://gordonramsaysrecipes.com/ Butter update: Butter is measured in knobs.
  - jamesjguthrie 14y ago
    Ramsay, Scottish, he wishes! Might have been born just outside of Paisley but moved to England when he was 5. He's as English as apple pie.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- mjen 14y ago
  Australian here. I think Australia has managed the metric conversion much better than most of the English speaking world. I found the miles usage for road signs in London odd, as well as the usage for pounds for vegetables in Canada. Road distances & speeds : kilometres Food measurements are always grams/kilograms & mls and litres ... except for steak & there are some hold hovers like soft drinks which are often in 330ml/600/680ml, 1.25litre, 2 litre. Milk is always litres and not just a straight conversion from ounces to litres, so always 1/2/4 litres. In addition, I think supermarkets are required to list food prices with a price/unit, e.g. $2/kg so that you can easily compare prices between brands/varieties. Hardware supplies are in metres or dual listed. Weight is always done in kilograms although older people occasionally will use stones / pounds (which usually requires clarification). Haven't heard them in quite a while. Engine power is measured in terms of kilowatts. For some odd reason we have an odd unit for fuel efficiency of litres/100km. Not sure who picked this. E.g. 8.5 L /100km. TVs are sometimes dual although mostly I'll see them in terms of centimetres although computer monitors are still in inches, probably due to the US. I think when purchasing land it's a bit of mix as you can buy land in hectares as well as acres. There's also squares which I gather is 10ft by 10ft (which is odd and everyone I know silently guesses is around 9.something metres^2). Not much into sports but pretty sure they use metres there too for Australian Football.
lmm 14y ago
As a 25-year-old living in the UK, body weight is mostly kilos (that's what my doctor uses, and what I look at at the gym) except when talking to my parents. Cooking is 100% metric; I genuinely do not know what people are talking about when they quote Fahrenheit temperatures. Lengths and weights are metric, though not clothing sizes I guess. Driving distance is the only thing day-to-day where I think in old units.
- jamesjguthrie 14y ago
  Doctors and the gym use kilos for body weight, I agree but I don't really hear people ever say "I just dropped a couple of kilograms in the last month" it's always "I've lost half a stone" I never hear Fahrenheit, which I'm glad about. Cooking is definitely not 100% metric. The cooking shows on TV still mention cup sizes, pints etc. There's so many recipe books still in imperial and colloquially we never say a 30cm baguette or a 113g burger. It's a foot-long and a quarter pounder.

EliRivers 14y ago

I'm British. I live in the UK. I'm in my thirties. I do a person's height in casual conversation (on forms I write it in metres) and driving distance in Imperial measurements (often; I use kilometres when I'm talking to someone I trust to know what a kilometre is, which is generally anyone under about 40). I do depth and altitude in metres, but sometimes I'll use an old chart that has feet (or sometimes fathoms, but that's the really, really old charts). Volume, mass, everything else is metric. I know my mass in kg. I've only the vaguest idea what a "stone" is. A pound? An ounce? Those are twee measurements I sometimes see in old books. I know how much a litre is. I don't even know what the metric unit of volume is. Cubic inches? That seems clumsy even for Imperial units. At the supermarket, the unit used on the fruit, veg and meat is kilogrammes. Last weekend I was comparing pork by cost per kilogramme. Which supermarket do you shop at that uses... I don't even know what you'd use. Not stones, I guess? Pounds and ounces? I remember at about age ten someone telling me the temperature in Fahrenheit, and having no idea whether that was hot or cold. I have less idea today of what it means. Where this is going is that I thoroughly disagree. Additional edits, for the fun of it: "Though I bet you don't go to Asda and ask where you can find 2.272 litres of milk." Fair enough. I do buy milk in pints. If they switched to 2 litre bottles, I'd still buy it, and frankly I'd prefer it if they did. At the moment, I have to look at the scale on the side of the milk marked in litres to see how much I'm pouring into something (because the recipe I'm using specifies litres or millilitres; maybe there's a whole dual-industry for recipes in which you get Imperial units and I get metric; I note that the recipes on the BBC list both units; Jamie Oliver's web page is metric, Delia Smith is both, Hairy Bikers are metric, I've given up looking after those high-ranking four, but I note that not one of them is this Imperial only thing you talked about). "Do you ever do mile-per-gallon approximations for your fuel economy?" Fair enough. I don't drive so this is a closed book to me. "Do you ever buy a steak at a nice restaurant?" Yes, often. I have never once specified a mass the steak is to have. That it is marked on the menu in crazy measurements has always seemed a twee restaurant kind of thing; cosmetic rather than meaningful. The meat at the supermarket is, of course, in kg. "Have you ever played golf or football?" Never golf, and football not since I was about ten. Perhaps we simply move in different circles. You're with the Imperials, I'm with the metrics. "Where are you?" Deep south. Hampshire. As a drifting aside, I note that London is now approximately 40% non-British born, so that presumably means that about 40% of people living in London have even less grasp of Imperial measurements than I do. Perhaps metric is more common in the south. Steak update: I am sure I have specified the steak by name, and its name is "Ten ounce" or "Eight ounce" or whatever. It is as meaningful to me as "Medium bowl of custard" or "large bowl of custard", for example. If you gave me a big bucket of sand and asked me to put about ten ounces of sand in a cup, I'd have no idea at all. I seem to recall that I once saw an ounce of butter and it was kind of about "this" big". I'd probably use that as a base. Ramsay: A ha. Ramsay, of course, is Scottish. Maybe Scotland isn't metric.

jamesjguthrie 14y ago
I didn't mention buying anything in the shops. I mentioned cooking, as in recipe instructions. Though I bet you don't go to Asda and ask where you can find 2.272 litres of milk. Do you ever do mile-per-gallon approximations for your fuel economy? Cars are still advertised with mpg values. Do you ever buy a steak at a nice restaurant? Have you ever played golf or football?
- EliRivers 14y ago
  Points addressed as edits in my post above. For the fun of it.
jamesjguthrie 14y ago
I'd rather be with the metrics! I'm about to graduate with my design engineering degree, I'm so used to SI units that imperial drives me crazy, but I need to live with it. Regarding the steak point, do you never ask for the 8oz or 10oz steak? For curiosity, I'm just outside Glasgow, where are you? Edit: Gordon Ramsay recipes: http://gordonramsaysrecipes.com/ http://gordonramsaysrecipes.com/ Butter update: Butter is measured in knobs.
- jamesjguthrie 14y ago
  Ramsay, Scottish, he wishes! Might have been born just outside of Paisley but moved to England when he was 5. He's as English as apple pie.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
mjen 14y ago
Australian here. I think Australia has managed the metric conversion much better than most of the English speaking world. I found the miles usage for road signs in London odd, as well as the usage for pounds for vegetables in Canada. Road distances & speeds : kilometres Food measurements are always grams/kilograms & mls and litres ... except for steak & there are some hold hovers like soft drinks which are often in 330ml/600/680ml, 1.25litre, 2 litre. Milk is always litres and not just a straight conversion from ounces to litres, so always 1/2/4 litres. In addition, I think supermarkets are required to list food prices with a price/unit, e.g. $2/kg so that you can easily compare prices between brands/varieties. Hardware supplies are in metres or dual listed. Weight is always done in kilograms although older people occasionally will use stones / pounds (which usually requires clarification). Haven't heard them in quite a while. Engine power is measured in terms of kilowatts. For some odd reason we have an odd unit for fuel efficiency of litres/100km. Not sure who picked this. E.g. 8.5 L /100km. TVs are sometimes dual although mostly I'll see them in terms of centimetres although computer monitors are still in inches, probably due to the US. I think when purchasing land it's a bit of mix as you can buy land in hectares as well as acres. There's also squares which I gather is 10ft by 10ft (which is odd and everyone I know silently guesses is around 9.something metres^2). Not much into sports but pretty sure they use metres there too for Australian Football.

lmm 14y ago

As a 25-year-old living in the UK, body weight is mostly kilos (that's what my doctor uses, and what I look at at the gym) except when talking to my parents. Cooking is 100% metric; I genuinely do not know what people are talking about when they quote Fahrenheit temperatures. Lengths and weights are metric, though not clothing sizes I guess. Driving distance is the only thing day-to-day where I think in old units.

jamesjguthrie 14y ago
Doctors and the gym use kilos for body weight, I agree but I don't really hear people ever say "I just dropped a couple of kilograms in the last month" it's always "I've lost half a stone" I never hear Fahrenheit, which I'm glad about. Cooking is definitely not 100% metric. The cooking shows on TV still mention cup sizes, pints etc. There's so many recipe books still in imperial and colloquially we never say a 30cm baguette or a 113g burger. It's a foot-long and a quarter pounder.