UK Engineers raise concerns over proposed switch to imperial measurements(newcivilengineer.com) |
UK Engineers raise concerns over proposed switch to imperial measurements(newcivilengineer.com) |
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
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”
Personally, I prefer goat brains, monkey testicles, and the shrunken heads of vanquished enemies.
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.
As British we typically measure everything in metric, including oven temperatures and recipes. Except for road distances and speeds, which are miles and mph. Unless it's an e-bike which always seem to be km/h. And most modern cars do have dual units, showing km/h in case you drive over to Ireland or the continent.
Oh, and a few things like milk and beer are sold in pint-sized containers, but must clearly state 568 ml on the bottle.
Our speedometers can all switch, too these days. For travel into the US. Even Google maps will switch units right after you cross the border.
FWIW MPH has the advantage that it's easier to estimate travel times based on typical 60MPH hwy speed. A minute per mile more or less. 100KMH is more easily divisable etc. but doesn't map to time units as well. So in a way, I kind of enjoy driving in the US.
(In terms of localization stupidity, I find it obnoxious that Google's navigation can smoothly handle the transition into the United States, but cannot handle the mixed French/English nature of signage in Canada. I suppose I should have raised this as a bug when I worked there, but I find it awful that after over a decade of having text-to-speech facilities in both languages, Google can't handle bilingual countries and butchers mixed signs and gets completely fucked when driving into Quebec. Also Google photos thinks "thanksgiving" is end of November, despite me being in Canada.)
Basically it all comes back to the construction trades. If you own a home, and tools to work on it... you're stuck with imperial.
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?
Especially since we are taught metric exclusively in school. But then get into the real world or deal with "adults" and find so many things in imperial.
The most annoying thing inside homes is that everything is tuned for metric system. So you end up with things like xxx37cm, so annoying to line up.
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.
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.
It was interesting to watch ourselves slowly become "bilingual" over several months as we got used to what we needed to wear when it was 30° (F or C) outside.
I do wish countries (especially ours) would go all in.
Except for the pint. I always thought that was a good, allowable exception. :)
Edit: liquid medicine are sometimes given in metric teaspoons/tablespoons but always always have the metric measurement beside. So that’s clear at least.
(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.)
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).
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.
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-syst...
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.
I think 'Fortnight' is rapidly falling out of use in British English. I would be much more likely to say 'a couple of weeks'
Unfortunately, the more we bury our heads in the sand and ignore things, the more chance they have of actually happening.
But we should have learned by now that absurdities are not impossibilities and should be taken seriously.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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?
Either way, this is indeed a distraction and it has very little chance of going anywhere.
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.
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.
The others are a fairer point, although we do actually sell liquids in litres or millilitres, but for some things it just happens to be some multiple of 568..
Weight is KG, unless it's a person, in which case it's Stones and Pounds.
Distance is fun, It's Miles on journeys, but metric for everything else, unless you're talking about people's height, then it's feet and inches.
It sounds confusing, but when you live here it's not something you really have to think about, you just switch rather effortlessly.
> 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-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...
When it's cold they can instead say the temperatures have plummeted below zero (C).
They just use whatever adds the most drama.
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.
The consultation asked whether people wanted to switch to imperial measurements only, alongside other less sensible options.
Maybe Kwarteng and Rees-Mogg had a private wager to see who would be the first to be relieved of their post?
Is there value to the distraction if it makes the entire country look like a bunch of idiots?
RIP Britain. A deeply embarassing end ...
Yes Minister - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLm2X6sFa48
Also considering current situation, I don't think there is too many that want to be in the shoes just yet.
Leaving aside that, in his mid-fifties, Mogg is probably too young to have learned imperial units at school ...
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?
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.
So we do an experiment where we have people look at, and maybe handle, random objects and then ask them to estimate the length. Does imperial / metric make a difference? My guess is no, but I have significant probability weight on yes...maybe 20%. And wouldn't that be cool!
I think however that we must have only one referential because it simply makes things difficult when communicating (similar to currency rates). We should have chosen °F for temperature because they are more optimal (no changes for science, easier in everyday life) but metric for distances and weights.
Distances and weights are often added, which is a problem for non metric units. We all remember the train starting from one city at 13:45 and the other at 9:12 and the time they meet. Super simple in metrics, super hard in train time.
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.
The goal of the brexit referendum was to catch the voters that were leaving the conservative party for the ukip party, and give them a reason to vote conservative again.
It wasn't expected to pass, it wasn't expected to be remotely close. It was expected to shore up the conservative party so they wouldn't be dragged into another coalition.
The wording of the referendum needs to be seen in that light. It was intended to give ukip voters what they wanted to hear. "should we think about talking about thinking about maybe doing something" wouldn't have achieved that goal.
Temperature measurement in the UK is measured in Celcius, Fahrenheit is not a thing here.
They're nice and vague enough that it's like .. if I go from 10 stone to 11 stone, I need to care. If I go from 10 to 10.1 I don't need to care. I don't convert them to pounds or kilos because I don't want to know the answer, it just adds anxiety that I don't need.
The funny thing is I'm otherwise metric-all-the-things. But for body weight, the lack of precision lets me focus on the trends instead of worrying about the details.
From my d&d days (when we mix and matched Italian and English material) I remember that 2.5lbs is about 1kg, but that's a very rough approximation. Similarly I remember that 10ft is ~3m.