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David Cameron Says Brits Should Be Taught Imperial Measures
00_NOP writes: Children in the U.K. have been taught in metric measures in school since (at least) 1972, but yesterday British Prime Minister David Cameron suggested that they should actually be taught in Imperial measures (which are still in use officially to measure road distances and speeds, but not really anywhere else). Is this because he hasn't a clue about science or because he is catering to a particular political base?
It's time for national units to finally be put out to pasture. Both US units and UK units.
-uso.
What you hear in the ear, preach from the rooftop Matthew 10.27b
Yay for morons going for populist measures. *sigh*
You're not an empire anymore, and going back to imperial measures won't make you one.
£1 = 20 shillings
1 shilling = 12 pence
All perfectly logical if you're a UK politician.
Is this because he hasn't a clue about science or because he is catering to a particular political base?
Both.
Mostly though because so many conservatives have a "we have always done it that way" attitude. Many of them don't have a clue that imperial measures are very different from US customary ones (we have 20 fluid ounces to a pint, and the US has 16). Many also don't know their pecks from their bushels, or their furlongs from their rod, poll, or perch, but think the system must be good "because its traditional".
I think he's being an idiot.
Metric makes sense just everywhere... except in cooking.
The reason is, 125ml and 250ml have no practical relationship, while "1 cup" and "1/2 cup" do. So when a recipe calls for 1 cup of anything, you can measure that quickly. If it's half a cup, then you use half a cup, or if you have it calling for 1.5 cups, you use the 1/2cup 3 times.
With the metric measures, they're all based around "approximations" to their imperial sizes. So you have 250, 125, 75, and then... 50 and 15? Recipes never say "1/2 cup" and "OR 125ml" they're written with the assumption of the Imperial measures being used, and if you use the metric numbers, you are actually adding more than the Imperial measures, while still using the same number of eggs, and wrecking anything that uses "sifted" flour.
He's just scared of www.ukip.org !
'nuff said.
As a Breton I fully support the furthering of our national units to promote unity in these divisive times.
Why would anybody want to go back to this?
Stop the bickering about how the meter is defined and attempt to understand the strength of the metric system.
Unit conversion and arithmetic is as simple as it can be!
http://i1.wp.com/letterstosg.c...
Does not deserve to hold a place in office.
What, a fucking idiot.
No other way to put it, sorry.
will the Science curriculum go back to the foot pound second system or will they have to learn metric there?
for the lazy minded people who cannot or refuse to think.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
... also known as a dick.
This unit measure, like inches and feet, comes from a body part of a ancien dead king.
It should be moved to the trash with a considerable amount of furlongs per fortnight.
Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
Now why our democratic systems are pushing so many stupid folks to the top... I'd like to know that too. That seems to be a fundamental flaw of democracy. Scary, actually.
rockets exploded, satellites got lost in space because someone mixed up metric and imperial. So the UK wants to play no role in space technology in the future, good to know.
I don't disagree with it, but the statement "Is this because he hasn't a clue about science or because he is catering to a particular political base?" is inflammatory and an extremely biased way of making a point. You guys really need to reign in personal biases when reporting stories (or at least the editors should make an effort to edit them out of submissions). Opinionated or biased submissions give Slashdot a bad reputation. Try to be objective when reporting news.
It's just his personal opinion. He doesn't hold it strongly enough to change the legislation and reverse 40 years of education policy.
Note that this has been true from the time of Mills, 1806 - 1873, so it's not a recent phenomenon.
I would hypothesize that there is a direct correlation between conservatism and stupidity; the more extreme the conservatism, the stupider the person.
Why is Snark Required?
Clothes for both men and women are sold in inch measurements. Trousers are a waist and leg measurement, bras are chest plus a letter (indicating a half-inch increase in circumference over the chest measurement per letter), shirts, are measured in a chest and collar measurement, jackets and blazers in chest, all in inches. Even the dress, blouse, and shoe sizes are derivations of the inch.
Scotland had a chance to run away from that madness but they missed it.
... who can't understand what the fuss is about.
I don't think DC was saying *not* to teach in metric units as well, he was suggesting that maybe teaching people in the units that a vast number of people still use would be sensible. Road distances are still marked in miles, we use mph for speed indication, we buy non-bottled drinks in pints.
Remember that imperial measures were based on relationships with the human body and other natural features, it makes sense to understand them.
When I'm working I use metric units for everything, but I still say "that's a few hundred yards down the road" unless I am talking to someone from a metric country where I use metres so as not to confuse them. If someone asks me how far somewhere is I have an instant mental understanding if I tell them in miles, but even if I convert that to kilometres it is meaningless to me because I don't think in those units.
Learn both, education is supposed to be about flexibility!
-- BtB
1 Guinea = 21 shillings. Prices were often expressed in Guineas, to appear smaller compared to prices in Pounds.
Of course, politicians are shills for whoever pays them most, after all.
I left college just before the UK education system switched to what we Brits tend to think of as the French system of metric measurements. So I was brought up with yards, miles, pounds, ounces and pints. And, for that matter, shillings, half-crowns and "real" pennies (which weigh 48 to a pound & 3 to an ounce, who needs weights?). As a frequent visitor to the US, I know their variant pretty well too. Nowadays, if I'm making something, or sending measurements of things to people, then I use metric. It is a great system. But I still don't think in it, and as I am approaching retirement, I guess I never will. If it as a warm day, it is in the mid 70s (not 24C). The next road junction is 300 yards away, the next town three miles down the road, where they have a McDonalds serving quarter pounders. I drink a pint of milk in the day and of beer in the evening, and my gay friend is as bent as a nine bob note. :-) So if the youth of today want to speak with me without seeing me stop and look up for a moment as I convert each time they mention a metric measurement, they need to learn Imperial. Or they can leave me in peace and stay off my lawn. Which I don't have. But you get the picture... :-)
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=f...
Isn't it enough to teach people how to properly perform unit conversions (then show them the cell phone app)?
Within the context of science education, it is a much easier to focus on understanding the mathematical relationships which underpin theory using metric. Use of customary units (US or UK) will result in more students falling back on the use of memorized magic numbers and not proper derived constants. Understanding concepts of scale in science becomes an order more difficult as well.
For this reason, metric units (mks or sometimes cgs) units are by far dominant in scientific papers and texts. Imperial has some presence in engineering, possibly due to a more narrow focus and more resistance to change.
When I was in school, the prof gave us a problem to solve. How much energy was used to push a weight up a slope, We used pounds force, weight, inches etc. Multiply by this funny number, divide by that. It took us almost the whole period. Just before the end, he told us to do it in Metric. We complained, but did as we were told. It took five minutes.
On the telly that evening, Laurie West was giving tomorrow's temperatures in Celsius and Fahrenheit. Eventually the latter was dropped.
David Cameron is mad. It's a pity Scotland didn't separate and take him with them!
Says it all really
I was pretty sure we already did this, even if only at an introductory level.
I remember using all sorts of measurements and translation equations to get from one to the other all the time in Math and Science classes in Scotland. In the 90s at that.
As long as it stays out of official work, science and the like, all is peachy.
Oh, and kitchens. You can take your cups and shove them up your peachy ass. IN THIS KITCHEN WE ONLY USE METRIC.
try and work will millimeters in engineering and you soon find out that thousands of an inch are the only way to measure small tolerances
What's wrong with thousands of a mm? Here in Europe, engineers, machinists and the like have happily worked with metric for ages.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Trademen were paid in pounds, gentlement in guineas.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
What a dish-faced cockwomble
n/t
// Is this because he hasn't a clue about science or because he is catering to a particular political base?
Both, I don't know, either.
And here's the brilliant thing - despite all the advances in engineering and manufacturing, televisions in mainland Europe are STILL marketed in inches, even my latest Philips Amiblight 3D 4K Android is sold as "55 pouces", with 140 cm added on in parentheses.
Even "Eurpoeans" can handle two systems of measure.
Are the Brits so daft that they can't be taught both?
It's all a storm in a (imperial) teacup.
If Cameron wants to go back to Imperial, he should also give back the Greenwich meridian. It was all part of the deal, 130 years ago, at the Washington's conference.
Yes, 130 years and the island still haven't fill its part of the deal. Money back too... twelve Pences per Shilling, twenty Shillings in a Pound and you know the Guinea. Make it mandatory for the trade market to have quotation in imperial units. No fancy decimal point. Make computer industry happy with £12-4-2 numbers! And do not forget florin, crown, farthing and all the half of them. Accounting, the new adventure of tomorrow!
So, as Greenwich meridian is to go, let's remake all the map with a new center... what about Kyoto ? or Redmont ? Hawaii ? This also includes a revision of the GPS system (and the WGS84).
He said taught, not use. There is a massive difference. Personally don't see the harm in that at all.
At least in the wool industry here, fabric is measured in microns.
considering how much the UK loves America and that they want to leave the EU, the map from 1984 is not so far away any more ;)
More time is wasted in English spelling and grammar every day than the average person spends in a year trying to convert English units to Metric units.
Hell, the metric system is an inferior measurement system to begin with. Planck/Lorentz–Heaviside units (scaled by an appropriate power of two/six/ten/twelve/sixteen -- or whatever you think the best number base would be) is superior in every respect to Le Système International d'Unités, except for current popularity. Natural units don't need blocks of platinum stored in Paris as a standard, for one thing.
91.44 - 60.96 - 91.44 just doesn't have the same ring to it.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
What will parents and grandparents do when they have only learned metric and the kids bring home work involving how many gills there are in a peck?
It's very unlikely the Conservatives will win another term thanks to UKIP, not because UKIP stand a chance but because the first-past-the-post system ensures Labour will win a handy majority.
Engineers are used to working with SI units. milliamperes, kilogrammes etc. Working in micrometres and nanometres is second nature.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
if you use cups as a size, you'll never repeat the same quantity twice, cup is only an approximate quantity,
You are quite wrong. A cup is just as exact as any other unit of measure except there are a few different versions of measures with that name depending on location. In US customary units a cup is 236.5882365 milliliters which is more precision than you will ever actually need. For legal purposes (like on nutrition labeling) a cup is defined as exactly 240ml. In the UK it is 284ml and in Japan it is 200ml. If you are making coffee it is 150ml.
Now granted you will note that all these measures are defined in relationship to liters so one might reasonably question why we still use cups in some parts of the world. Mostly tradition, comfort and conversion costs. I'd love it if we would switch to metric but I doubt it will happen in my lifetime.
one is exactly twice the other whereas 1 cup and 1/2 cup are not
Where did you get a ridiculous idea like that? 1/2 cup is by definition exactly half of 1 cup. There can be no possible other definition.
Intel is now producing chips on it's 5.51181102 × 10-7 inch fabs and that's the way it likes them - you couldn't accurately describe that with the overly complicated metric system and you know it.
So please don't come here spouting off about how metric is better.
Pff, so which part of your body is a mile long? A kilometer is as easy to understand and visualize as a mile.10 cents is about the lenght of my finger. One meter is about one big step. If I stretch my arms sideways that two meters right there. 100 meters is the distance they run real fast on TV. 50 meters is the distance between street light posts. 400m is a full lap around the track. I buy non bottled drinks in half a litre mugs, or one litre mugs, or any multiples of huge mugs of soda.
Torque is the answer. In millimeters.
Perhaps he's pandering to the old people vote, because they're the only ones who care about imperial measures any more. Well, them and engineers who have to support legacy designs. Most younger people now think of a pint as being "almost 500ml" etc. Distance is still the one that seems most intuitive to me to think of in miles, but that's largely due to familiarity with the distance of certain routes. There's no problem using km when driving abroad, and it would be a far more progressive policy to change distance measurements on signposts from miles to km.
The big issue is when you get to "1 cup of flour" or "1 cup of butter" - things that are much more easily measured by mass, or things like "1 cup of cherry tomatoes" where the amount you get will vary based on the size and density of the particular tomatoes you have today.
Butter generally has a fairly consistent density so measuring by volume is normally fine unless you are getting into specialty butters. (Pick whatever volumetric units make you happy) Flour should ALWAYS be measured by weight because there is no way to measure it by volume that is consistent. The reason we use volume units is because A) it's faster than getting out a scale and B) absolute precision often doesn't matter much unless you are baking. (in baking precision matters) If someone says to use a cup of tomatoes, they are giving you an estimate of the amount needed rather than a precise measurement. Good cooks/chefs know this. Being exact does not actually matter for most cooking and you will (and should) adjust to taste and preference. Lots of outstanding chefs (like Bobby Flay) do very little measurement when cooking because it isn't necessary. They use experience and adjust the relative ingredient quantities until they get the taste they are looking for.
Basically, no, the kitchen is exactly the place I want metric measurement - it is if anything the best example around a house of where you need accurate scientific style measurement.
Metric is no more accurate than US customary units. A cup in the US has a very specific volume. Like you I'd prefer metric units but it doesn't gain me anything from a precision standpoint.
I find that thousands of an inch are a pretty good way to measure huge tolerances. *Thousandths* of an inch are much better for measuring small tolerances. But microns do just as well really.
1 cup of flour is trivially measured by volume: Just grab the "1 cup" cup from your set of measuring cups, scoop up flour from your storage container, level.
And if you do that you are going to get a different amount of flour every single time. Flour is a powder with a LOT of air in between. If you are looking for consistency you MUST measure flour by weight because you'll get different packing densities by the method you recommend. Sometimes it doesn't matter but when it does you have to use weight, not volume. ALL professional bakers measure flour by weight and never by volume.
US recipes usually don't use "cups" of butter, they use "sticks" of butter. If you live where butter isn't sold in US sticks (113.4 grams), you're screwed.
A stick of butter is 8 tablespoons or approximately 120mL. You're only screwed if you are clueless.
Well seeing as both are in use in Britain, rightly or wrongly, then teaching both is just common sense, no?
He said taught, not use. There is a massive difference. Personally don't see the harm in that at all.
People tend to use what they are taught. By your logic we should we teach creationism in science class. After all there is a massive difference so what's the harm right?
Teach the official standard in school. If families want to teach customary units then leave that up to them.
...or the Welsh. or the Cornish. or infact most people from England excluding the anglo-saxon hotbeds of Yorkshire and Norfolk.
He was speaking in term of converting units. You'd rather he said
A change you "cannot feel" is approximately a bit more change than a change you "can feel".
Doesn't he know that the imperial measures are defined in metric? Like 1 *F=5/9 k? By the way, I suggest that /. should require all temp measurements to be stated in kelvin, since it doesn't accept the 'degree' symbol.
Linux is for people who don't mind RTFM.
The real worrying stuff is here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-p...
It is simply so that they don't have to print two boxes, and they sell more TV's in the US.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
What I don't understand is why on Earth the British ever *stopped* using Imperial measures. What was the point of having average people switch to a completely different system that provides them with no practical benefit? Scientists and engineers use a base 10 measurement system but they learn it in school along with all their other training and it's very easy to pick up. Average people don't need it! Should we all learn Latin because biologists use Latin to name species?
What DOES matter is preserving one's culture. The Imperial system is critical to British cultural identity and must be restored for that purpose.
Of course... in engineering and sciences, we already use metric across the board.
Sadly not true in US engineering. We all use metric but LOTS of engineering is in other units in the US. At my company we specify all dimensions in feet and inches because that's how our supply chain generally functions. Sure we could use metric but all the drawings from our customers are in US customary and most of the dimensions from our suppliers are too. We're not a big enough firm to really move the needle on that.
It's in daily life which the simpler imperial measure system makes sense.
"Simpler"? Imperial and US Customary units are many things but simpler is not among them. You may be comfortable with them but that is not the same thing.
I just don't see how knowing both is a problem.
Knowing both isn't a problem. Needing both IS a problem. It creates needless complexity and opportunities for error.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/cameron-wants-imperial-measures-back-4349892
Actually, there's quite a few ways the Imperial (or English) system is better. They're why in the U.S. we've turned down changing. Poor, pitiful Carter was the last president to try. It's the difference between so-called rationale systems built on a single principle and a system built up over time based on experience and what works.
The single principle for metric is that it is based on ten, making conversion between measures quick. Other than the almost accidental fact that the volume and weight of water are easily converted, it has no other advantages. None.
The downside of metric is also that its based on ten for a reason based on nothing but our five fingers/two hands number system. Look around and you'll find that almost no other measurement system does that. All use variations of 12, 16, 36, 64, and 360. That's because 10 is only divisible by 2 and 5. Those numbers are divisible by a host of numbers. The 36 inches in a yard can be evenly divided by 2, 3, 4, 6, 12 and 18. The first three are very useful in construction. That's why the construction industry and homeowners in the US haven't budged an inch on metric.
The idea that the ease of unit conversion makes metric better isn't true either. I worked in a hospital that was all metric. Power of ten mistakes were very common because metric muddles together units and names them in so-called rationale ways that are easily confused. I saw a little boy almost die from a heroin overdose because a resident made a power of ten mistake that the nurse did not catch. That's perhaps why, around the world, the English system is used for air traffic control. There mistakes are disasters. Altitudes are in feet. Speed is in nautical miles. Bearings in degrees, a 360-unit system that thankfully the experience-less French philosophers who invented metric didn't mess with, perhaps because they had so little experience with the sea they didn't notice it.
Metric has been a bad idea from the start because it was based on a principle that has little to do with day-to-day life and ignored untold centuries experience about what works best. We in the U.S. have been smart not to adopt it. You in Europe have been fools to get it shoved down your throat by bureaucrats who don't actually build things.
The US has it right. Use that awful metric system when computers do the calculating and conceal most of the stupidities of metric. But when the work is hands-on like construction, stick the time-tested, experience-proved English system.
My own suspicion is that metric champions, in their heart of hearts, know their system is a loser. That's why they don't want it taught in the UK. It's why they want to force it on everyone. Failure doesn't like competition. A stupid idea doesn't become less stupid by being widely adopted. You want to do something right, turn to experience not to French philosophers who had a fettish about ten but couldn't build a bookshelf from an Ikea kit.
American (US) engineer here. We already learn metric in elementary school alongside american units. Most high school science is in metric and my college curriculum was almost exclusively metric (for convenience of doing calculations, if for nothing else).
The problem isn't education, the problem are the uneducated folks or other sheeple who have entrenched interests in maintaining the status quo because it will require less effort and less capital investment. (Laborers and their bosses, people who make tools sized in american units and other manufacturer).
Interestingly enough, I did visit a country in my youth that was making a national switch from american units to metric. Jamaica. Lots people complained about vendors capitalizing on the ignorance of the populace to surreptitiously raise prices for things like gasoline.
As a foreigner, i think that David Cameron's suggestion is a stupid one. Having endured 8 years of the GWB administration, i know sympathize for you poor Brits having to endure such a git like Cameron as the head of your government. A nutless monkey could probably do a better job. Seriously. A nutless monkey.
ITS far easier to teach people metric and then they can actually get to doing math....
going backwards in time to idiot math er imperial is just more proof he needs be taken to a mental ward
America knows it isn't special.
I live in the US and a good portion of the US population does think it is special. They are wrong but they do honestly and earnestly believe it. "Greatest country in the world" and all that nonsense.
America is lazy and hates change.
America is anything but lazy though you are correct that many of them do hate change. Americans work more hours than almost anyone else in the world on average so lazy isn't a label that really fits. But people in general do not like change.
Metric is taught in most schools, especially those in science.
Foreign languages are taught in most schools too and yet only a minority of native born americans are bi-lingual. Doesn't matter what is taught in schools if it isn't used in the real world.
By the end of the century America will be Metric too.
I do not share your optimism on that though I wish it would happen. Officially we do use metric but I don't see the US switching to metric for daily use in my lifetime and I'd honestly be surprised if it happened in the next 100 years. Maybe it will but I'm dubious.
An ounce of gold surprisingly "weighs" more than an ounce of feathers because gold weights are in Troy units (1 oz=31g) whereas feathers are Avoirdupois (1oz=28g).
But a pound of feathers weighs more than pound of gold, because Troy pounds have only 12 ounces.
If I know the size of a cm, I can make a container for a litre of water. Once I fill it, I can weigh it to get a kilogram. That's why metric makes so much sense.
Learning more than one system of measurement doesn't sound like such a huge burden, especially if there's an emphasis on how to convert. I don't have a good intuitive sense for conversions between US and metric systems because they were taught to me separately. If, when they were initially introduced, there had been an emphasis on conversion, that would have helped. Also, teaching the conversions helps with some simple math too.
Beyond the reason of 'that's what I grew up with', how is the Fahrenheit scale more comprehensible than the Celsius scale?
It isn't. It's just what people have learned to use in every day life. They know what a day that is 70F will feel like. They know that 350F will get them the right cooking temperature in the oven. If you tell them it is 21C outside they have no mental framework to put that information into even though it is the same as 70F.
Leave stupid units and measures to the Americans. There is no sense in using anything other than the metric system (which is why the Americans are not using it.)
I think East Anglia on the whole might be a hotbed of the Angles, if not the Saxons.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
So, we've got:
1. Speeds (mph) and fuel (mpg in an X gallon tank)
2. Lumber (2x4)
Let's add a few more:
3. Milk (pints)
4. Beer (pints)
5. Ingredients in menus (pounds and ounces)
6. Human weight (stone, pounds and ounces)
7. Human height (feet and inches)
8. Vehicle heights for bridge clearances etc. (feet and inches)
9. Time (hours, minutes and seconds)
10. Date (days, months, years)
And that was just stream of consciousness, without a pause to think of other examples.
Seriously, standards are great. They help us to communicate unambiguously. And we have standards in the UK, and they are what I just listed. No-one here goes to the supermarket to buy 227g of cheese and 1.14L of milk. No-one goes to a car showroom and asks whether the fuel economy around town is better than 7.84L/100km, and most people's instinct would be that a higher number was better even if they had that reference point. A few people might describe their height in metres, but most people would say something like "five foot nine".
For projects where international collaboration is required, sure, agree a standard up-front, and it might as well be SI. Likewise for scientific and engineering applications, everyone is a professional and can agree to use SI. But for day to day life? You'd better hope someone going to a supermarket or a pub knows the same units as everyone else, because asking for 0.28L of beer at a crowded bar isn't going to make you any friends.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Imperial has some presence in engineering, possibly due to a more narrow focus and more resistance to change.
Imperial and US Customary units are used in engineering almost entirely due to economic considerations of having an installed base. Switching all your supply chain and documentation to a different measurement system (even a better one) is a HUGE cost with a payback that is measured in many years if there is one at all.
and drugs. Oh and milk/beer/petrol for some reason but other liquids come in litres. Get the dealers to go metric and it will all finally fall in.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
This is due the fact that the UK was almost over a few days ago, that's all.
Apparently the metric system is the tool of the devil!
That's what they want you to think.
All I see here is imperial proponents having serious issues with the metric system, where the ones using the metric system has no issues with the imperial, when expressed as fractional metrics. I don't have an issue whatsoever with 1 pint expressed in either litre or ml. Nor a pound expressed as grams. Its all the same to me, and I know exactly what it is. Same with miles to m or km. A mile is 1657 metres, or 1.657 km. Working in engineering - a mm is 25.4 times as accurate as an inch to begin with, and we can still subdivide by any power of 10. Fractional inch is not limited in precision, nor is mm or any of the si units, they are just inherently less awkward to use from start, as almost all share the same base and relation to each other. 1mm is 1/1000th of a metre. 1m x 1m is a square metre. 1m x 1m x 1m is a cubic metre, or 1000 litre. For clean water, 1L, 10*10*10cm is a good approximation for 1kg (difference is about 3mg 0.003g ) which is too small to count for anything but scientific work.
Airlines work in 'flight levels' (units of 100ft)
Distances at sea are universally measured in nautical miles (1minute of arc along the equator)
Speed at sea is universally measured in knots (natical miles/hour)
Only the US and Japan have the colours of navigational buoys the 'wrong' way round (red to starboard and green to port)
Only the US uses their bastard volumetric measurement; their pints and gallons are not even Imperial measure.
More seriously, Imperial measures are easier for mental arithmetic - they have lots of nice factors; decimal units are easier for computers - uniform structure for programming.
I love when metric advocates insist that, as one of the last holdouts, the US should switch to the metric system "because everyone else has". I'll do that right away when we likewise get rid of all those pesky marginal languages and adopt English, for all the same reasons.
Note bene: I am an American who works in logistics for a European parent firm. I *constantly* convert between lbs/kg, sqft/sqm, miles/km and even more esoteric measures like lbs/ream to g/sqm. It's not a big deal, and has probably improved my facility with 'daily math' substantially. I don't really see the point of 'evangelizing' one measure system over another, since it's largely a matter of what you're used to anyway.
-Styopa
It's because Cameron is a friggin' moron who should be thrown out of office as fast as possible. He is personally (with the help of other quisling MP's) ushering Britain into a new dark age.
Oh, you mean the speedometers that have both measurements on them already? All US cars do. Why the ignorance?
Nope. In fact when we took our GERMAN car to germany, I had to swap out the cluster because it only read in MPH.
So being taught another language is Good and another measurement system is Bad?
To understand the past, including literature and some old science and engineering, people ought to know what the old units were, about what the metric equivalents are! And where to find exact conversions. Going forward, things ought to be metric; but we still will need inch based tools to work on old stuff.
It's not about what system of units you are using, as long as you are aware of which one it is.
You should be able to understand how to convert between systems with ease.
So he's either an idiot our up to something evil? It couldn't possibly be because he's older... was taught imperial when he was in school... and humans tend to go with what they know?
There's plenty of evil in the world, there's no need to manufacture new evil out of thin air.
A tall person is over 6 foot. that has a nice ring to it. 1.8 metres is not human friendly. A foot is about the size of an adult foot, it makes sense.
Which is why adding the "Hopper" unit makes a lot of sense. The metric system needs a foot like unit.
http://www.technologicalservicescompany.com/journal/category/the-hopper
BTW. One of the first things I teach my engineering interns is that the best ruler is the one you always have on you. Your foot is approximately 12 inches (30 cm - 1 hopper). Your hand is about 4 inchs (10 cm). Your thumb width is about an inch (20 to 25 mm)... and I encourage them to calibrate their personal measurements for when it really matters. Works great.
STIG doesn't do 0 - 100 km/hr, he does 0 - 60 mp/h, just like God and Clarkson intended.
Most of America uses decimal.
Canada uses decimal. Mexico uses decimal. Central-American countries use... Well, a very strange mix, lets leave them aside for a bit ;-) But from Colombia until Chile and Argentina, every country uses decimal.
Maybe we should also get the USA to choose a proper country name, as all of us who live in the same continent will continue to insist we are Americans.
its "pennies", "pence" is the new money
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
As an American, I'm tougher than the Europeans, and I can prove it. I can take heat up to 104 degrees. The Europeans are in trouble when it's only 40!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
and they'll take 1609.34 meters. 0.473 liters is 0.473 kilograms the world around. Centimeterworm, centimeterworm, measuring the marigolds... The whole 8.22 meters... 28.35 grams of prevention is worth 0.453592 kilograms of cure. He's done it! He's broken the 240 second 1.6 km! "Express'd in the condition, let the forfeit Be nominated for an equal 453.592 grams Of your fair flesh, to be cut off and taken In what part of your body pleaseth me." HBO. Next up. 1.8288 Meters Under. "You're gonna lose that smile / because all the while / I can see for kilometers and kilometers..."
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
I seriously hope you don't work in engineering.
try and work will millimeters in engineering and you soon find out that thousands of an inch are the only way to measure small tolerances.
Really? REALLY? Ever heard of the micrometer (um) ? A bit smaller than a mil, but feel free to use 25.4 of them...
Well, I have to agree with your post. "Both" is indeed the answer.
But I thought you might find it interesting to know that the US system was created after the metric system, and was purpose-built to facilitate conversion to and from all the existing systems of the time. It is a little more anthropomorphic than metric; (metric is of course base ten to match our numeric notation, that is in turn based on the count of our fingers) because the units are human-sized, for example a cup is a convenient size serving for most people, a tea spoon is an appropriate size for stirring a cup, and a tablespoon an appropriate size for soup or stew, etc. The designers of the US system (who included Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin among their number) didn't use the procrustean French concept of making the humans adapt to the measurement system, or insist on parity with the whimsical English tradition (20 p in a shilling, and 21 shillings in a guinea, right?) of their upbringing, nor did they wholesale adopt the internationally accepted Spanish system of the time - there's a tremendously boring report to Congress by Jefferson that explains the whole thing. They chose units of 12 (and, in practice, units of 16 - the 1/16 inch fraction is tremendously useful for human-sized creatures) for the same reason that Dr. Fahrenheit set his scale the way he did; to simplify division for practical tasks such as running sawmills, cutting stone, centering windows, plowing furrows, etc. It is intended to be useful to the gentlemen farmer-philosopher-mechanics that the American upper classes aspired to be at that time. Today the American upper classes aspire only to increase their economic power, so the system's no longer aligned as much with our values.
The US system is not traditional, nor is it inferior to metric; it is different from metric, and designed to be more flexible (in 1700s terms, granted) and much more accessible to the common man. The metric system, like today's SI system, was designed for educated elites who could afford expensive technologies, and of course today the common man has a great deal of technology easily available. But they both have their places, and such diversity is a good thing in real life.
Now the US method of writing dates, month-day-year? That's just fucking madness, and there's absolutely no excuse for it. If something needs to be killed, it's that horrible nonsense. ISO dates forever!
Science uses the metric system universally, even in the UK and the US, and outside science, it hardly matters. In particular, while the thought of dealing with non-metric units may seem daunting to people raised on metric, to people raised on imperial units, it's just another unit; if you have inches, miles, feet, and acres, having one more length unit hardly makes a difference.
Advocacy of the metric system seems to be more a kind of political shibboleth. Keeping non-metric units is a matter of national pride, an expression that a country is rich and powerful enough not to have to give in to international uniformity. Advocating metricization is something people use to appear more rational and more scientific, and people from countries who are already metricized like to use it to express their silent resentment at the fact that other countries have been able to maintain a larger level of independence.
Let's send this guy to Mars. And let *him* make the calcs... in Imperial units. Looking forward to that.
I have a feeling any "conversion" would be about as difficult to handle as your cable company changing the channel lineup around. Perhaps a few weeks of grumbling, but eventually you get used to it.
The bigger problem is actually in documentation and tooling. The big costs in converting aren't in changing some signs which is really more of a political problem than anything else. It's really just a bunch of old farts who don't want to change. Thing is that old farts rarely forget to vote so politicians aren't going to do anything about the problem until they all die. Unfortunately by the time they do die there is now a new generation of old farts that doesn't want to change.
The bigger problem is in converting all the documents (work instructions, legal documents, product drawings, etc) and all the tooling to SI/metric. There is an enormous cost to doing that and that is the biggest economic obstacle to overcome. It can be done but there is precisely zero political will in Washington to make it happen. If it does happen in the US the change will be very slow. Some progress has been made but the big steps have yet to be taken.
Dealing only in KPH is sufficiently hard for someone like myself raised with MPH that even if i switch my GPS / speedometer to KPH, I still have to do the mental conversion back into MPH to get a feeling for "how fast is that".
A couple of weeks of driving in a KPH based country and you'd get over it. It just takes a little experience is all.
Yes. Because the Conservatives want to win over UKIP voters by emphasising that they are not just going to not join the Eurozone, but also bring back Britain's original currency. I think we should call our Prime Minister David "Shilling" Cameron.
Is the "conservative" party the party of "stupid"?
Sure teach them, just like we do Roman numerals. It's good to know, since imperial units will be in old (otherwise still valuable text books and fiction) for ever.
Its called micron.
And that's why one uses metric. A thousands of anything isn't used, because it has a name.
Anybody interested in this issue should look at http://www.metric.org.uk/
It gives a lot of information about how stupid the imperial system is in general, and in particular in its implementation in Britain.
It's not due to him not knowing about science, it's due to him not doing enough math, probably because he doesn't know enough science to ever apply any information about th-- oh, you got me.
Metric is for people who work with measurements. But if you never actually do anything, then you don't need metric.
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
you're right: "28 grams of prevention is worth a half a kilogram of cure" sounds MUCH better.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
French are quite proud of the meter. It isn't an inheritance of internationalisation, but internal progress. It's a memory from the Enlightenment and Revolution, letting go of the royal measure of the king's inch or feet.
Also, fractions of inches are awful to read for metric people.
That's really the definition of conservative, not changing just for the sake of change. Why is it so important to censor a piece of history? What's so scary about pints and yards that you feel the need to censor those parts of history?
Imperial measurements are actually quite interesting. This is a cool study I found http://www.ancient-origins.net/opinion-guest-authors/imperial-measures-and-pyramids-001856?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+AncientOrigins+%28Ancient+Origins%29
Until they make tape measures in the UK DIY Stores that only read in metric I will continue to use "Impetric" for whatever D.I.Y job I am tackling. If it is small and to a high degree of accuracy I tend to use mm but if its something like popping together a garden shed I tend to use feet and inches and then mm for the last bit. "The door frame needs to be 6 feet and 40mm, works for me as all of the measures here have both on them.
1) Those that use the Metric System; and
2) Those that have landed a man on the Moon.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
Micrometres are overkill as a replacement for thou. All that is needed is 0.1mm increments for most cases, as you rarely encounter tolerances less of than 4 thou, and if you do, you can go down to the 0.05mm or 0.025mm levels.
try and work will millimeters in engineering and you soon find out that
thousands of an inch are the only way to measure small tolerances.
Well, this explains why no other country in the world has any engineering products of worth.
German cars, Japanese skyscrapers, Swiss watches, Korean electronics, etc. - all shit.
No still, but again. TVs used to be sold using the diagonal given in cm. On the other hand, computer screens were always (?) sold in inches. However, since flat screen TVs have become common, they have been marketed in inch. I don't really understand why - after all, cm are the bigger number.
I think everyone should be taught imperial measures as well , specifically miles,yards.feet and inches
All these measurements are still in daily use , try and work will millimeters in engineering and you soon find out that
thousands of an inch are the only way to measure small tolerances.
That's true actually, because we all know it's completely impossible to subdivide a millimetre. It's already been divided out of the metre! Split it any more and it'll shatter!
No attempt at ethical or social seduction can eradicate from my heart a deep burning hatred for the Tory Party. So far as I am concerned they are lower than vermin.
The UK starts driving on the right side of the road.
I don't see a problem with both being taught. Even though metric makes more scientific sense, Imperial is practical because it is in common use.
... they should quit using Imperial measures, adopt metric, and they should also stop using English and adopt Esperanto.
In general, trying to follow a US recipe that needs some level of accuracy is basically impossible.
That is so not true that I think you are trolling. If not you must be an engineer because you are worrying about levels of precision that simply rarely matter. It's not even remotely difficult to follow a US recipe unless you are wildly incompetent. Few recipes require highly precise measurement and the recipes that do need a high level of accuracy are written to reflect that fact. Professional bakers and competent cooks/chefs know when to use weight versus volume and they know when it doesn't actually matter. Experienced cooks often don't even need to measure. My grandmother can whip up all sorts of fantastic baked goods without measuring a thing because she has decades of experience and knows what the dough is supposed to look like. Professional chefs like Bobby Flay rarely measure anything. Watch a few episodes of Iron Chef and tell me how many measuring cups you see. It won't be many I assure you.
If you're trying to bake bread, you'd better have a metric recipe, or you're screwed.
Is that so? Then explain mister smarty pants how we somehow manage to bake huge amounts of very yummy bread despite the lack of this supposedly vital metric system.
Hell I'm even a huge proponent of switching to metric and I think your argument is complete nonsense. There are a few places in cooking were high precision is necessary (baking mostly) and NONE of them require metric measurements. US Customary units work just fine. You can argue against using Imperial/US Customary and I'll be right there with you. But your claim that it is impossible to follow a US recipe tells us about your competence as a cook but nothing about the relative merits of metric vs imperial measurements.
I want to know what the children were taught before 1972? If it is not imperial or metric, then what units of measurement did they learn?
The reason there is 12 inches in a foot, is because 12 has more whole divisors. You can do 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 without decimals. (same reasoning behind many of our measures. 12 hour day / 12 hour night, 60 minutes/60 seconds (both divisible by 12)
A 3rd of a foot is 4 inches. A third of a meter is 33.333333333333333333333333333333333 cm
Miles and acres are both derived from furlongs (660 feet - also divisible by 12)
Keep pushing, little man, but star systems will continue to slip through your fingers the more you squeeze.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
he really is a horrible Prime Minister.
You must truly be either a stupid fucking idiot who had never set foot in an engineering school or some demented sadistic troll. Ever heard of microns? Or nanometers? Even is the last time you heard someone measure a virus or bacteria or nanobot in thousandths of an inch? You fucking retard.
Laughable. Sad. Yet laughable. Go back to fucking your sheep.
Switch back to that first. Then worry about the rest of the metric system.
Have gnu, will travel.
It's not just the signs that would need changing, the roads would have to be re-engineered to be metric, and any buildings that used imperial measure would have to be torn down before too long in order to cope with the lack of imperial measure lumber and hardware.
But, the UK could probably do it. The US is basically always going to be imperial measure. The amount of infrastructure that we have in the imperial system is huge. Now, if the Europeans want to compensate us for the infrastructure that we have to tear down and the huge cost of switching our materials over to metric sizes, they're free to do that, but it's not worth trillions of dollars of investment because Europeans are too stupid to be able to comprehend the imperial system of measure.
Give them a centimeter and they'll take a kilometer.... sigh...
He's a politician, so:
Yes.
That's all :-)
Who controls the British crown?
Who keeps the metric system down?
That dude, that dude...
No, microns are the only sensible way to measure small distances.
Is 1563649 a prime number?
You're inadvertently making a pretty good point: metric units' system of prefixes is just a bizarre reimplementation of scientific notation that uses arcane prefixes attached to the name of the thing you're counting to express quantities, instead of just using numbers.
Did England land a man on the moon? I had no idea. Typical of them not to boast about it. Jolly good, carry on.
because whatever you use becomes familiar. As a Canadian I was taught exclusively metric units throughout school, but am now more familiar with Imperial measurements. Why?: Because my workplace (the railroad) never switched over and my hobby (woodworking/model railways) still uses mainly Imperial units (which system is a 2x4 based on?). It then extends farther into your life, I used to count my weight (I know it's really mass, hate away) in kilograms, but now I find pounds to be more familiar.
This doesn't mean I don't still use Metric or am unfamiliar with it, but Imperial gradually became my go-to reference.
Yes, of course it would be very useful for our already suffering science base to have a whole bunch of children taught a system that is not used in science and engineering at all, and hasn't been for many decades. Cameron is intellectually pathetic, with the typically inflated self-confidence of the public school system. The worrying thing is, that this ballooning of the self confidence of really very stupid people, makes them do things that they are really not capable of, like governing.
Actually, I can't bring myself to feel angry at poor Mr Cameron. He, and several members of his front bench (eg. Jeremy Hunt), are actually so intellectually deficient, that I feel sorry for them.
What can I say? Metric is a great measuring system. Kilometers are much easier to understand than miles. What incredible hogwash coming from politicians. Civility is a joke.
The article is in response to David Cameron's opinion that he'd prefer school children to learn Imperial units instead of metric as their first means of measuring the world. It's what he wants 6 year olds to learn.
I'd agree it would be interesting to give people an insight into old measurements for those folk who want to work with equipment that still has legacy imperial hardware around that they might encounter, e.g. 16-20 year olds starting an apprenticeship in some engineering domains. But I don't think working with imperial measurements is the same level of priority as the majority of other subjects that 6-11 year olds should learn. Unless you live in the USA or Liberia (I think these are the only two countries in the world to use imperial measurements as their main system?). And I definitely don't think rocket scientists should learn them, we all know how well that US Mars spacecraft faired when there was a mixup on the US side between imperial and metric measurements ;-)
> It couldn't possibly be because he's older... was taught imperial when he was in school... and humans tend to go with what they know?
No.
I was born the same year as him and we were all taught metric units in England from the beginning of school, imperial units were never used. We were introduced to it in passing when we were aged about 8 or 9 as a funny old system that people used to use so we might come across from our older relatives it but not something we should pay very much attention to . Britain in the late 60s early 70s was still optimistic and looking to a scientific new future, white heat of technology and all that, and metric measurement was seen as part of the scientific new future (remember we had decimalisation of our currency at the same time, 1971, so we'd moved to 100 pennies to the pound from 12 pennies to the shilling, twenty shillings to the pound: imperial units were out of fashion). Metric measurement was pretty well known even by our parents at the time who'd gone to school in Imperial times (literally: pre 1947 when India, Pakistan and Burma were part of the empire, run from London) and taken for granted.
Of course I should be fair and note that according to wikipedia, DC went to an exclusive private school from the age of seven so perhaps they had rum ideas about education and believe the empire was about to return and taught the kids a dead measurement system... but if it followed the national guidance on curriculum, he would have learnt metric.
We still have a passing knowledge of imperial units in the UK, folk still know a handful, but it's a very partial and incomplete understanding and the majority of people under 50 would look at you as being a bit crazy if you said you wanted them to work in pounds and ounces and feet and inches. Most of them wouldn't know how many pounds were in a hundredweight or feet in a furlong.
DC is trying to out UKIP the UKIP and gain favour with the over 60s Little Englander vote.
The primative Negroid race, dining on monkey brains and gorilla scrotum, have given the world Ebola. The cure for Ebola would be to use our poison gas stocks to cleanse Africa of the Negroid. Once Africa is purified, it can then be repopulated by humans.
My vote would be for teaching the metric system in math and science classes, and teaching the imperial units in history and social studies classes. We should not scrap knowledge of the past. We can respect the fact that the mile and furlong go back to ancient Rome, and make sure children know the history. But at the same time, it would be nice to have a system that is logical.
The problem with converting everything to the metric system is, not everything can be expressed in it using whole numbers. As was pointed out above, a tall person is over 6 feet tall. Maybe people just need to increase their size to an average of 2 meters :-)
Life's a lot like money-- you spend it, then it's gone. Spend wisely.
The arcane prefixes are what make metric units easy to use, without having to invent new names for the same quantity at different scales (inches, feet, yards). "1E-3 liter", "a thousand grams", "a hundredth of a meter" are quantities you'll encounter every day, but these don't exactly roll off the tongue. "Milliliter", "kilogram" (or kilo) and "centimeter" are used in everyday life instead. And once you know what a kilogram is, you know what a kilometer is as well.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I asked the resident baked goods engineer at home, and she does indeed use the more correct version shown in the link.
Scooping ingredients directly from the container only works with fairly incompressible things like (white) or salt.
Probably the best way to make it happen is for the government to provide some tax benefits to companies willing to do the conversion, and allow the transition to occur a bit more naturally over time.
I think the best way for it to happen is for certain key parts of industry to demand the conversion. Let's say hypothetically that Ford, GM, Chrysler, Boeing and Caterpillar all demanded that their supply chains convert to metric. Doesn't have to be all at once but over the course of some years. All drawings, fasteners, etc has to meet a global standard. Heck, make it a part of ISO9000 or TS16949. That would force wide swaths of industry to convert whether they like it or not.
The government is already doing this to a significant degree. Suppliers to the military and government can and should require metric. However they should take it to the next level. Require all packaging of food products to be in metric units. Start by requiring the metric unit to be prominent and then slowly phase out the US Customary units over time.
The tough one will be the construction industry. They are soooo ingrained to non-metric measurements that getting them to switch is going to be a bear because there is no single company or group aside from the government that can mandate the change.
If you have a screw with a 1 inch head you use a 1 inch tool to manage it.
No one is going to ask you to call that screw a 26.xx mm screw, now will the tool be renamed.
I think you misunderstand me. I'm not talking about simply relabeling drawings to be metric. It would be pointless to simply label things differently. I'm talking about actually designing the products using existing metric standards going forward. Instead of using a 1/4" screw you use a 6mm (M6) screw when you design the product. Lengths are specified in drawings in metric. Wire gauges are mm^2 instead of AWG. Etc. The goal is to get to one set of measurements, one set of tools. Not one set of measurements with two sets of tools.
Maybe having to learn odd measures is a good introduction to units analysis and the need to pay attention. As a discipline not a set of facts. Just sayin', there may be more going on here than just imperialistic rhetoric.
"There is no god but allah" - well, they got it half right.
He didn't actually say anything of the sort. I'm not a fan of his by any means, but to be fair, the question posed was (something along the lines of) 'which do you prefer, imperial or metric?'. This was in the context of the interviewer Evan Davies trying to achieve his openly stated aim of giving the British public a firm image of David Cameron. The conjecture at that point in the interview was that he can sometimes seem somewhat woolly in his stated views, and it's difficult to see how he's going to appease both the right and the centrist elements of his party. He then went on to answer that question by saying that he personally prefers pounds and ounces. This has thus been put through the press grinder and now it's 'David Cameron Says Brits Should Be Taught Imperial Measures'. He doesn't, it's simply nonsense.
If it is the law, follow the law. If folks don't like the law, change the law then follow it.
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
Intel is now producing chips on it's 5.51181102 × 10-7 inch fabs and that's the way it likes them - you couldn't accurately describe that with the overly complicated metric system and you know it.
So please don't come here spouting off about how metric is better.
How about billionths of a cubit? A millionth of a palm?
The world adopted metric, and you can either be stubborn and refuse to accept it, or recognize how that standard makes possible the kind of global commerce and scientific advances that fuel new vistas for humanity. It's just not 1947 anymore. We can't force Imperial down the throats of the world.
Now, repeat after me: metric is NOT a fad. See! Doesn't that feel better?
There was a hugely incompetent event some years back wherein one US space engineering company used non metric measurements for calculating angle and arrival info for a Mars probe and all others used scientific metric of course..like any sensible group. The very expensive probe bounced off the atmosphere and well, now only metric is used for such projects..duh? Cameron is an idiot for suggesting such a reactionary idea but of course the nature of being a Conservative is that kind of mindset. I suspect the IQ of a Conservative be they UK or Canadian or American is down ten points from the mean.
What he says and what he does are never in line.
He's finally cracked. Bring on the men in white coats.
Patriotism in UK is a favorite device of persons with something to sell.
Casteism
uh... actually, "Pence" is the collective subunit, "Penny" is the singular subunit usually and only correctly referring to 1p coins. The words NEW PENNY were inscribed above the portcullis of the 1p coin up until 1981. From 1982 the inscription changed to ONE PENNY. The 2p coin changed from "NEW PENCE" above the plume and "2" below to "TWO PENCE" above and "2" below in 1982. From 2008 all British coins started to be minted with sections of the Dent-designed Royal Shield on various values which, when placed together, formed the entire shield (the key for which jigsaw is represented on the reverse of the £1 coin). Both the 1p and 2p coins lost the numerals on the reverse to make room for the shield segments, leaving "ONE PENNY" and "TWO PENCE" to fill the whitespace.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
here in England, yarns and cordage are usually measure by breaking strain.
(I shit you not, I have a spool of Dacron that's rated at 75kg, it's barely thicker than 35lb fishing monofilament. In fact I'd say it's thinner. Look for "Terko Satin", there's just one site I can find that actually sells the stuff, and it's by the mile. $Deity, that stuff is amazing - I just finished canvas stitching a custom trailer cover for my bike with the stuff)
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
I think we shoould do all our math in hex code
Better than Blair and Brown.
So anyone who disagrees with the OP "hasn't a clue about science." Wow. You could not ask for a better example of ignorance, arrogance, and projection, all at the same time. Yes, the metric system has numerous advantages over the imperial one, and yes, it would be much better for almost everyone if those remaining places that have not adopted it would do so. But to say that anyone who doesn't "hasn't a clue about science" says only that the OP hasn't a clue about science. It is a method of learning about the world and universe around us. It is NOT a priesthood. It is not a popularity contest. And it is not a fixed, unchanging, dogmatic body of conclusions, verified by a circle-jerk of industry- and government-funded "peer review." There will be far too little real science done until people, including even some people who unjustifiably fancy themselves to be "scientists," get this through their amazingly ignorant heads.
Nonaggression works!
Stupidity like this is what re-affirms David Cameron is just one more religious nationalist. He seems to be having an identity crisis which is pushing him from the EU, UN, immigration ,and basically anyone that he doesn't see as whitish British.
The funny thing about the situation is David Cameron himself isn't British. The modern British identity is built on myths of a connection to ancient Brits (who were a distinct people from Scots, Angles and Saxon). Cameron and his supporters are turning the clock back on globalism in lew of return to savage religious tribalism. They are better than the Taliban but not by much.