The U.K. Left The EU, And Now It's Inching Away From The Metric System Too

fuzzybuddy said:
I wonder if the Brits in the Forum believe the UK never really felt like part of Europe. To me, a non-Brit, I have an impression that some Brits feel they sold their soul out in exchange for economic rewards from the EU. Of course, that's my learned opinion- Okay, not so learned.
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good perspective... I can only speak for me personally. ..

When I was a kid at school, I always thought we were in Europe.. I'd practice writing my whole address ..ending with Scotland, Great Britain, Europe..etc.. but that was wrong.. we didn't get taught that, I just decided we were part of Europe.

When I was almost 18 we joined the EU but not actually endorsed until I was 20 in 1975.. by then I didn't even know what we'd gained from it.. except to change to metric measurements ( if indeed that was a gain)... however... all through the last 40 years our lives have been probably easier than they would be with trade etc... and cheap travel for the masses , which hadn't really been the case for the ordinary working Joe pre '73 , being too expensive..

During that 40 years membership we resisted many European directives, including changing to a new currency ( the Euro)... and tbh after travelling and enjoying mostly, many, many European countries , I never actually felt European at all.. No-one speaks our language..

It's like living in the United States of America.. and only Texas speaks English, every other state speaks a different language to it's neighbour.....and then Utah decided it will be the boss, and tell everyone.. particularly Texas how they'll live their lives, how they can't have things they've always had, like powerful Vacuum cleaners, limited power on kettles, , shopkeepers being jailed for not selling in metric measurements.

Our fisherman not permitted to fish in British waters, but European countries allowed... ... and told we must accept Millions of immigrants despite not having the infrastructure to house or school them... ( this is a tiny example )

Eventually the people rose up and said Nope.. if this is what it takes to be European then we don't want it.. we'll have our own identity back ...and we got Brexit..

Now whether that's going to be the best idea in the long run or not , has yet to be played out, but that's my own personal story..people older or younger than me might see it all differently
 

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hollydolly said:
Now whether that's going to be the best idea in the long run or not , has yet to be played out, but that's my own personal story..people older or younger than me might see it all differently
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As an outsider who knows very little about it I kind of think unity sounds better. Despite a few bumps along the way it has served us pretty well over here, since we left you anyway.

Interesting to think about how history would have changed if we had stuck with the UK. Might not have been so bad... Except I am glad not to have too much personal investment in the Prince Andrew and Charles and Dianna things...
 
Alligatorob said:
As an outsider who knows very little about it I kind of think unity sounds better. Despite a few bumps along the way it has served us pretty well over here, since we left you anyway.

Interesting to think about how history would have changed if we had stuck with the UK. Might not have been so bad... Except I am glad not to have too much personal investment in the Prince Andrew and Charles and Dianna things...
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yes but unity for you is different to us uniting with countries where they don't speak our language.. at least you all speak the same language and are presided over by the same governement.. we weren't... and none of the European countries are either. It's like the tower of babel, with all different leaders vying to be Boss...
 

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Alligatorob said:
As an outsider who knows very little about it I kind of think unity sounds better. Despite a few bumps along the way it has served us pretty well over here, since we left you anyway.

Interesting to think about how history would have changed if we had stuck with the UK. Might not have been so bad... Except I am glad not to have too much personal investment in the Prince Andrew and Charles and Dianna things...
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They're only figureheads.. they have no say in our laws.., Governement will pay them Homage by listening to their views, and perhaps take them on board and put them into practice occasionally , otherwise they're not our ''rulers'' unfortunately our Government leaders are...
 
I think most Americans have our heads around most of the metric system without having to do the math - with the notable exception of temperature. When I hear 10° Celcius, my immediate thought is that it's quite cold. Then I do rough math (C X 2 plus 30) and realize it's about 50°F. So we're talking heavy sweatshirt weather, not frozen tundra weather. My Canadian niece once went on and on about it being 0°C in Toronto. I said, "Please... that's 32 degrees - practically bathing suit weather where you are." She started laughing - thought she'd pull the wool over this Auntie's eyes and get sympathy.

A long time ago I learned and remembered:
A liter is roughly the same as a quart
A kilometer is about 2/3 of a mile
About 2-1/2 centimeters to an inch
A meter is a little more than a yard
28 grams to an ounce
A kilogram is 2.2 lbs

More than that I don't need to know off the top of my head.
 
Alligatorob said:
I think we are, on the 500 year plan...

When I started college I was surprised and happy to find my science and engineering classes mostly in metric. However when I told my father I thought we were switching he laughed and said his college classes were mostly metric too... About all it has done is to make a lot of us in the US kind of "bilingual" we understand either, but still think in imperial. And when I go fishing we still mostly use nautical miles... and my water rights are in acre-ft.
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That's the whole nine metres for sure.
 
Laurie said:
"A litre of water's a pint and three quarter" (Imperial!)

Kilometres to miles, multiply by six.
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Kilometres to miles has an easy calculation. There's five furlongs in a kilometre and eight furlongs in a mile. So, if you can do mental arithmetic it works like this.

The distance is 15 miles, that's fifteen times eight equals 120. Divided by five equals, 24 kilometres.

The other way round 32 kilometres times five equals 160 divided by eight equals 20 miles.
 
hollydolly said:
good perspective... I can only speak for me personally. ..

When I was a kid at school, I always thought we were in Europe.. I'd practice writing my whole address ..ending with Scotland, Great Britain, Europe..etc.. but that was wrong.. we didn't get taught that, I just decided we were part of Europe.

When I was almost 18 we joined the EU but not actually endorsed until I was 20 in 1975.. by then I didn't even know what we'd gained from it.. except to change to metric measurements ( if indeed that was a gain)... however... all through the last 40 years our lives have been probably easier than they would be with trade etc... and cheap travel for the masses , which hadn't really been the case for the ordinary working Joe pre '73 , being too expensive..
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That's not a bad take on what our membership entailed Holly, but one the most important factors, arguably, was the 1975 referendum. The general feeling was about two to one in favour of leaving, but the prime minister of the day, Harold Wilson, assured everyone that membership was nothing more than a loose trading arrangement. He knew that it wasn't, in fact politicians of all persuasions knew that the objective was to create a United States of Europe, based loosely, on the USA model. As that aim slowly unfolded, resentment grew and grew.

Your explanation of why that didn't work more or less sums up the argument for those who voted to leave.
 
horseless carriage said:
the objective was to create a United States of Europe, based loosely, on the USA model.
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That does seem a good analogy, and at first the US was much as Holly said a loose confederation "with all different leaders vying to be Boss...". However as Holly also points out our original 13 colonies all spoke the same language and had similar ethnic origins. We also faced the necessity of a hostile world and without unity our survival would have been much less certain. So we were forced into a union (note the u in United States was not capitalized in the Declaration of Independence, not sure a real Union was envisioned at first). The EU is very different, the US model is not likely to work.

It does still seem to me like some kind of unity would be in Europe's interest, but I have no dog in your fight... If the EU falls apart maybe we could rejoin the UK? LOL
 
horseless carriage said:
Kilometres to miles has an easy calculation. There's five furlongs in a kilometre and eight furlongs in a mile. So, if you can do mental arithmetic it works like this.

The distance is 15 miles, that's fifteen times eight equals 120. Divided by five equals, 24 kilometres.

The other way round 32 kilometres times five equals 160 divided by eight equals 20 miles.
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That makes it MUCH easier, thanks!
 
Alligatorob said:
.................... It does still seem to me like some kind of unity would be in Europe's interest, but I have no dog in your fight... If the EU falls apart maybe we could rejoin the UK? LOL
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Who says the UK is in Europe? You do. I do. But when Brits come over this way they usually say, "I'm going over to Europe." So, you say the UK is in Europe and so do I, but they ....... not so much.
 
horseless carriage said:
Kilometres to miles has an easy calculation. There's five furlongs in a kilometre and eight furlongs in a mile. So, if you can do mental arithmetic it works like this.

The distance is 15 miles, that's fifteen times eight equals 120. Divided by five equals, 24 kilometres.

The other way round 32 kilometres times five equals 160 divided by eight equals 20 miles.
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You think this is an EASY calculation? :p :D Maybe if one needs precision.

For most people, estimates are close enough. If @hollydolly says she went to a town 30 KM away I could instantly divide by 3 and multiply by two to understand she was about 20 miles from home.

Same the other way around. If it's 25 miles away, I know the math is approximately 25 plus 2/3 of 25. So, 25+16 or even 25+8+8 = 41 KM.
Good enough.
 
The British change to decimal was a rip off.

All they to do was say that there now 5 pence the shilling and get rid of the penny and half penny cupronickel coins

Everything else could have stayed the same!
 
StarSong said:
You think this is an EASY calculation? :p :D Maybe if one needs precision.

For most people, estimates are close enough. If @hollydolly says she went to a town 30 KM away I could instantly divide by 3 and multiply by two to understand she was about 20 miles from home.

Same the other way around. If it's 25 miles away, I know the math is approximately 25 plus 2/3 of 25. So, 25+16 or even 25+8+8 = 41 KM.
Good enough.
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LOL...but as you know I would only ever say Mile and not KM's... because we don't use KM"s in this country for distance on our roads...:sneaky:
 
hollydolly said:
3rd sept 1963... when the roads were relatively free of traffic ..Imagine if they decided to change it today over 50 years on with the traffic that's on the roads now..:eek:

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It was 1967. Anyway, they thought there would be little traffic at that hour but no .... everyone wanted to do the switch! An interesting tidbit at the very end of this video is the issue with learning to even walk to the right!
 
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Verisure said:
It was 1967. Anyway, they thought there would be little traffic at that hour but no .... everyone wanted to do the switch! An interesting tidbit at the very end of this video is the issue with learning to even walk to the right!
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oops yes I knew that, I was thinking of the 3rd sept ..and wrote 63 instead of '67
 
hollydolly said:
LOL...but as you know I would only ever say Mile and not KM's... because we don't use KM"s in this country for distance on our roads...:sneaky:
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You can argue that the mile is metric. Perfectly feasible.
milestones.jpg
The Romans laid good metalled roads to move soldiers and supplies quickly across their Empire: they measured distance to aid timing and efficiency, possibly marking every thousandth double-step with a large cylindrical stone. 117 still survive in the UK. The Latin for thousand was ‘mille’ from which we get millennium, meaning a thousand.

The Roman mile consisted of a thousand paces as measured by every other step as in the total distance of the left foot hitting the ground 1,000 times. The ancient Romans, marching their armies through uncharted territory, would often push a carved stick in the ground after each 1,000 paces. Well-fed and harshly driven Roman legionaries in good weather thus created longer miles. The distance was indirectly standardised by Agrippa's establishment of a standard Roman foot in 29 BC and the definition of a pace as 5 feet. An Imperial Roman mile thus denoted 5,000 Roman feet.
 
Robert59 said:

The U.K. ..... It's Inching Away From The Metric System Too​

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I don't believe that. I think Freddie understood the direction Britain was taking when he sang:

“ … I'm burnin' through the sky, yeah 200 degrees
That's why they call me Mr. Centigrade,
Because I’m sharper than the sharpest blade,
Don't stop me, don't stop me, don't stop me … “

Freddie Mercury.jpg
 
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