Dear Stephen,
I don't disagree with what you say, but I would like to elaborate on a
few points. I will intersperse some remarks.
On 15/08/2009, at 6:16 AM, Stephen Davis wrote:
Well....for example in the UK, the vast majority of retail sales
are done in metric units, grams, litres, etc,
Not only most retail sales but also all, repeat all, wholesale sales.
Traders do not trust the old pre-metric mess of measures when they are
buying. Old pre=metric measures are exclusively for selling to people
(the public) who do not understand their potential for cheating.
yet our public roads all use miles and yards.
UK public roads are surveyed, designed, and built using metric units
exclusively. These are then described by signs that have miles, yards,
feet, and inches written on them in characters measured to the nearest
millimetre. This is half of Maggie Thatcher's statement that 'We saved
the mile and the pint for Britain.'
Most young people have only ever used centimetre rulers at schools,
aand have actually done so since the 1970's,
As the children of the UK are being trained in the use of centimetres
the majority of job descriptions chose to use millimetres for their
daily work. I have not analysed jobs in the UK, but in Australia, 83.5
% of jobs use millimetres, 10.4 % use centimetres, and the remaining
6.1 % rarely use length measures at all.
yet the majority of people weigh themselves in stones.
I have argued that an inexpensive solution to this is to provide a set
of bathroom scales in kilograms only to every classroom.
Then there's the ridiculous right to display quantities in pounds
and ounces even though everything has to be legally measured on
metric scales. I believe that,also, on UK roads, a mixture of SI
units such as metres and yards is permitted in some circumstances
and absolutely illegal in others.
Frankly....its a mess!
I agree that it is a mess, but it is a mess that could be easily
solved with a few regulation changes. The issue is that in her
statement that 'We saved the mile and the pint for Britain.' Margaret
Thatcher changed the inevitable metric transition in the UK from a
simple straightforward technical change into a highly-charged
emotional and political farce.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide. that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com
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