Ministers plan post-Brexit return of imperial pounds and ounces | Hacker News Reader

Ministers plan post-Brexit return of imperial pounds and ounces

independent.co.uk

26 pointsthrow0101a29 comments

...I am still baffled by the continued existence of the legacy systems of units. Every single other country (well, except the rest of the British Commonwealth, and the US, I guess) managed to switch to SI without crippling their economies. Nope, our situation is unique, no can do.

Yes, I get it that it's expensive and laborious but unless the UK economy shrinks to 10% of what it is now, it's not going to become cheaper and easier, it'll only become more and more expensive. As the saying goes, "the best time to plant a fruit tree was 20 years ago; the second best time is right now".

For me it's not an economic thing, it's that the metric units aren't that useful for everyday things. Sure, converting between them is easy, but there aren't centimeter sized things, meter sized things that I use every day. There are a bunch of things in integral sizes of inches and feet, though. And 1 cup is a lot easier measurement for cooking than 235 mL. The SI units are arbitrary divisions of arbitrary quantities (size of the earth, etc.) There's nothing that makes them inherently better, just that they are computationally easier. Since science uses quantities with no connection to everyday sizes, this is an advantage, but it's not an advantage for daily life.

That said, I assume this is just the UK wanting to distance itself from Europe. Basically a continuation of the impulse that lead to Brexit.

The SI units are not arbitrary quantities -- they are all physically derived quantities from water. For example, 1L of water weighs 1kg and and takes up 1000cc. Its density is 1000 kg/m^3. Simple.

235mL is just as easy to measure as 1 cup or 0.000992063492063492 Hogshead, you use your measuring cup.

They are absolutely inherently better! They are an advantage in daily life.

This is a very retrograde move. Imperial units are absurd and make calculations more difficult / less accurate.

Edit: The Kg is arbitrary (you need a single arbitrary base), but everything else is derived from physical phenomena, including seconds: "The second is defined by taking the fixed numerical value of the cesium frequency ∆Cs, the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the cesium 133 atom, to be 9,192,631,770 when expressed in the unit Hz, which is equal to s^–1."

Even the kilogram is defined via physical constants these days (https://www.bipm.org/documents/20126/41483022/SI-Brochure-9...., pages 21 and 205 in the PDF).

SI units ARE arbitrary in the context of humans. A foot is derived from a physical size of human feet. So the size of the units is human-scaled in ways that SI never are.

That said, in engineering school we never used imperial, only SI. And it was far easier. But that's not the general public.

Related to this:

Fahrenheit: Human-scaled temperature

Celsius: Water-scaled temperature

Kelvin: Atom-scaled temperature

235 mL? What is even that? A standard glass [0] is 200 mL if filled up until the lower rim, 250 mL if filled to the brim.

And I assure you, if milk is sold in 1 L bottles, flour in 500 g/1 kg packs, butter in 200 g packs, etc. then the sizes of things absolutely do start to be proportional to each other.

Oh, and by the way, the width of my palm is precisely 10 cm, it's very handy (heh).

[0] https://i.imgur.com/LK3RrYu.jpg

> And 1 cup is a lot easier measurement for cooking than 235 mL.

On the other hand, 2 dcl is a lot easier measurement for cooking than 0.704 cups.

>And 1 cup is a lot easier measurement for cooking than 235 ml...

Really? What size cup is that... a tiny dainty bone china teacup?... big ceramic builder's mug?

While we're at it, we might as well bring back spans and cubits. After all, everyone's hands are the same width and everyone's arms the same length </sarcasm>

Actually, much of the British Commonwealth is fully metric, Australia for example.

It is their choice, but this is a step backwards for standardization. How much waste and how many mistakes have been made from mixing up units.

"an era of generosity and tolerance towards traditional measurements", it reads like satire.

It genuinely sounds like an absolute piss-take to me.

If you need to be generous and tolerant towards users of traditional measurements, that makes them very narrow-minded and stuck-in-their-ways, doesn't it?

Yes, they voted for it.

I will always love metric units. One day we will bid miles a fond goodbye.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Martyrs

This headline reminds me of one of my favorite WSJ headlines (from 2017):

> English Vigilantes Use Ladders, Sticky Letters to Exterminate the Metric System

http://www.wsj.com/amp/articles/english-vigilantes-use-ladde...

It's still metric-based, just a conversion factor added. [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_yard_and_pound

This is an article in The Independent, my once beloved paper which is now simply a vehicle to twist any given news item to fit its relentless and tiresome Brexit = Bad narrative. We get it, Indy, but you're not achieving anything.

This is simply the government changing the law to allow anyone who may be so inclined to sell in Imperial to do so without threat of the law. That's it.

This isn't Brexit Britain taking back up the Old Ways and rescinding metric, of course not. Most people my generation and older have barely the vaguest handle on how imperial units work anyway (beyond weed deals in my twenties...). Metric's going nowhere.

So what is the point of them doing this then?

Culture war basically - so they can continue to soak up the votes of the reactionary right. A bit like the Texas abortion law, but without the horror.

Yes. Waste of time and money.

Some people like buying milk in pints, food in ounces, lengths of materials in inches and feet; Some people like selling the same. Now they can do so and it's not illegal for them to do so. That's it.

I don't care either - it's a non-story.

You can actually do most of this today; you just need to have the metric equivalent amount at least as visible on the packaging and pricing labels to satisfy the EU rules. Milk is still sold in pints (technically some multiple of ~0.57 l, but near enough), some foods (e.g. jam) are still sold in 454g (i.e. 1 lb) amounts. All changing the rules does is allow you to remove the metric sizing, and I'm not convinced there's any burning desire for that. (The "metric martyrs" were largely against the additional work to add metric prices alongside Imperial ones; most places today no doubt use software to generate the price labels and will just keep things as-is.)

It's a huge waste of time to do this just because some people that are about to die "like" buying things in bizarre units.

What's a waste of time, exactly?

No one is obliged to use the old units.

On one hand, Britain has never entirely abandoned these so OK. But it's NOT a step forward either.

You’re right. We’re in some weird limbo state where:

1. A persons height is in feet (except when the doctor measures it)

2. A persons weight is in stones and pounds (except when the doctor measures it)

3. Travel distance is in miles (even road signage)

4. But races are run in metres

5. Flour is measured in grams

6. Sugar is bought by the kilo

7. Water is bought by the litre

8. But drank by the pint (in some glasses)

9. Milk is always bought by the pint

10. As is beer in the pub

11. And fruit is by the kilo

12. Cocaine is sold by the gram

13. Or by the ounce in larger quantities

14. Weed is either by the gram or a fraction of an ounce

15. Temperature can either be in Fahrenheit or Celsius depending on how we want to complain about the weather

I’m not sure if there’s much rescuing such a dire situation but I doubt this move will help matters!

Who gives Fahrenheit in the UK!?

Older people when it’s too hot e.g “it’s gonna be 80 degrees outside today”

Newspapers do it too apparently:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/dec/29/new...

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