The Good Old Days

Now that we're going back to pounds and ounces, bushels and pecks, groats and florins, which other relics of the past should we reinstate? I'll start you off with Izal toilet paper. Nothing beats the feeling of a shiny piece of baking parchment smearing poo round your nethers.

If anyone needs conversion charts for fruit and veg shopping, it's quite easy.
0.0kg = 0.0lb
0oz = 0g
0 pints = 0 litres

 

Can someone explain to me why we go back to this? Surely a practical joke?

 

Because we only went metric half heartedly.

We should of either not bothered like the US or done it properly like Australia did.

 

I always wonder why we didn't go the route of Australia. The imperial system is not logical or intuitive, also as most countries had moved to metric it made sense to do it.
Having been born mid 70s at least I grew up with metric in schools and shops. Yet my mother always complains she doesn't understand it, metric is hardly new.
I think the problem in this country is that we have a horrible tendency to look back rather than forwards, but I largely attribute that to the baby boomer generation. After the Brexit vote my mother actually stated to me that hopefully we get the old empire back!
The tabloid press didn't help either, supporting idiots like the metric martyr for example but they had a general tendency to stoke up resentment to foreign concepts anyway.
Forgetting about pints, it's not a major measurement other than in pubs, once the baby boomer generation population dwindles further I reckon imperial measurements will slowly die off. Although it would be expensive but there should be a plan in place to replace road signs in the UK to kilometres and metres.

 

i don’t agree. If you’re used to thinking of distances in miles, because that is what road signs, sat navs or Google Maps give you now, why would you change? I don’t think it makes any difference how old you are. A 20 year old driver isn’t going to look at a road sign and mentally convert the distance into kilometres. What’s the point of wasting millions of pounds on changing that?

Other metric measurements are much more embedded.

 

The timing of these announcements is always suspect, this one to draw attention away from the £20 reduction in universal credit.

However, thing in itself doesn’t bother me much. All it really does is make Metric Martyr types immune from prosecution if they want to sell in imperial measures. I can’t say I give a hoot if that’s what they want to do and wouldn’t want them prosecuted.

And as I said on another thread, in all sensible endeavour we will remain metric, but poetically we’ll continue to talk in miles and lbs etc. It’s the UK’s version of being bilingual, a poor substitute for actually being bilingual.

 

Because the present isn’t up to scratch for many.

Some also fear the future and are encouraged in those fears to indulge their nostalgia. We never had nuffink but there wasn’t all this crime (yes there was).

For others it’s a way of exerting cultural control.

 

White dog poo

 

And who is going to tell The Proclaimers they need to walk 804.67 kilometres and then 804.67 more? Going to be well fed up.

 

I disagree back! Keeping imperial measurements because some 20 year old is used to it is like the tail wagging the dog

 

But it’s not just the 20 year old - it’s everyone.

Why spend millions of pounds in changing something that no one wants changed? There are much better uses for our taxes.

 

I wouldn’t worry about it, I don’t know how true it is but the instructor on a speed awareness course I did once said a lot of country roads are only National speed limit because of the cost to change the signs.

 

Dunno I'm 52 and never been taught anything other that metric. I'm also a scientist (who, as a profession, were very early adopters of metric). So they are the units I know. The 12 years I spent living in Lithuania have had a marked affect on my metrology - I still find myself driving and converting in my head road sign distances from miles to km (speeds less so).

OK so lets make it cost effective. New government sign policy: when road signs have to be repainted/replaced add in brackets the speed/distance next to the imperial figures in metric (with the units). When they need replacing move onto total metric units.

 

Blame the bloody Vikings for all that duodecimal nonsense....the Anglo-Saxons had a perfectly good decimal system before our Norse cousins brought in dividing things by 3 and 4 etc...
I don't see any problems with shops displaying metric and imperial side by side if they want.

 

It can be a bit confusing for the first few kilometre-miles after crossing the NI-RoI border!

 

I'm a bit older but have only been taught metric too. But I'm not sure your in head conversion of miles to km is common, certainly I don't do it. Perhaps I am wrong.

Your solution sounds fesible but there are still some road signs out there in rural areas that must come from the 50s if not before, so this would probably take an awful long time (assuming that the more modern signs last as long - they probably don't!).

 

We should go the whole hog. Pounds shillings and pence.

Quick test - see how long it takes you to work out: £13 10/7d less £4 11/9d.

 

BRING BACK THE GROAT!

 

It all worked fine for me. Mind you, pre-decimalisation I never had more cash than could buy four fruit salad and a couple of shrimps on the way home from school so the maths was easy.

 

What's the conversion from diesel subs to nuclear subs?

Multiple by six mad Frenchman?

 

Yes that would be the acid test.

 

Remember how many things were priced at 19s 11d just to keep it below £1?

 

I never had a pound before decimalisation.

 

Who did? You just had to look longingly at the Airfix Superfortress model in Woolworth's......

 

Wait, for real? I thought that was just a joke.

Because that's exactly what it is: a joke.

 

Just a tad under £9.

Do I get a prize?

 

You don't get to work in my imaginery greengrocers.

 

A trip to B&Q will make a whole lot more sense when we can go back to buying 2by4 instead of 51mm x 102mm

 

Harsh.

 

That reminds me of my father going to the states in the 70's and asking if they have any 4 by 2, reply was no we don't have 4 by 2 but we have 2 by 4.

I still think in feet and inches, its miles per hour , a pint of bitter, my weight in stones and pounds, my height in feet and inches and waist size in inches.

 

In the supply of goods everything is metric. From bricks to champagne. Only culturally we have kept a few high profile products in imperial. Pints of beer in pubs, most milk, but even then more supermarket milk is sold in litre and two litre containers than individual pints. If you include 2 and 4 pint containers imperial still outsells metric volumes of cows milk.

I think by law all public highway signage has to be in miles and yards, even though roads are built to metric measurements as specified in construction contracts.

Of course if we went back, it would be to Imperial measurements as defined by parliament in 1824. Real hardcore is to go back to the pre 1066 system which of course was influenced by the Roman Empire like the Anglo Saxon Amber (Latin Amphora) with its 4 bushels of liquid or 32 pints.

With any luck Boris will rid us of the hateful Gregorian Calendar, which we foolishly adopted in 1752 some 180 years after the Spanish, French, Italians, Poles and Low Countries. And we can get back to having new year starting as it should be on 25 March. Why in 1752 we followed the example of Scotland who changed the start of the year to 1 January in 1600 is a mystery.

We could also return the financial year back to where it should be, aligned with the calendar year. All that Gregorian calendar jiggery pokery that resulted in the 11 missing days in September 1752 being added at the end of the old calendar year, and thus pushing the financial year forward 11 days from 25 March to 05 April. It’s hopelessly inefficient having calendar years out of step of financial accounting. A nonsense that needs correction ASAP, by reverting both the calendar and financial years back to the traditional English 25 March.

 

We’ll you can **** off back to Lithuania. If you were there for 12 years don’t you need a licence or voucher or similar to live here post brexit anyway ?

 

The metric system makes sense for most things and it's unlikely if will change but some stuff does make more sense in imperial measures. The changes just make this easier to do.

For example.

People's height in feet & inches
Beer and milk in pints
Burgers and meat in lbs & oz quarterpounder anyone?
Miles for transport and speeds.
Yards for golf distances.

 

Months of the year are also better in imperial, I can never quite work out which 2 are removed to make a metric 10