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David Cameron Says Brits Should Be Taught Imperial Measures

Posted by Soulskill on from the cripple-their-minds-while-they're-young dept.

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?

8 of 942 comments (clear)

  1. FP? by dosius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
    1. Re:FP? by geekmux · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You've forgotten about changing all the speedometers...

      Oh, you mean the speedometers that have both measurements on them already? All US cars do. Why the ignorance?

      ..and re-educating people to think of fuel consumption in litres/100 km instead of miles per gallon.

      Yes, because apparently the "E" and the "F" next to the new MPG fuel gauge means can't EFfing remember what this means anymore.

      Then you'll need to start on the railway system.

      The people who use them every single day will suddenly be lost? Forget how far it is to get home? Have you thought about the toilets yet, because they're gonna start flushing in the opposite direction. I hope people will remember how to use them.

      That will still leave the international airways system that refers to altitudes as 'Flight Level' which is height in units of 100 feet !

      Unless you're the pilot, you care about ONE altitude level when flying. Then one on the ground when you land safely.

      Yes, I mock this because Americans are forced to convert to the rest of the world all the time when traveling, and it is humanly possible. Even if the US changed every single speed limit sign tomorrow to from MPH to KPH, how hard is it to match a number on a guage in front of you to the sign posted on the road?

      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.

    2. Re:FP? by LostMyBeaver · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Bullshit!

      Vasa was built asymmetrically because it was a Swedish engineering project. All Swedish engineering projects by definition must start big, go way over-budget, become completely unusable and reach market so late that they're no longer interesting. The project then burns to ashes, rises from the ashes reborn as something amazing and get sold to someone else. As an example look at "ericsson pipe rider cable modem" on Google and you'll see a proper Swedish engineering project that went so completely shitty that it would have killed the company and ended up rising from the ashes as a patent pool on the 10,000 things they created while failing at this.

      This is why I refer to all products resulting from failed Swedish projects as Vasa Projects.

    3. Re:FP? by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Australia made the transition back in 1974.

      You'll survive.

    4. Re:FP? by thegarbz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      I for one am more impressed that a country who's citizens believe they are in the greatest and best country in the world, able to put men on the moon and build up an economy and military might that rules the world, somehow figure themselves incapable to achieve what 42 other countries around the world have done in the past 300 years.

    5. Re:FP? by Maddog+Batty · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Go and ask any timber merchant for a bit of 2 by 4 and they will know what you are talking about but then ask them for what the actual size is. They will give you two answers, one for sawn timber and one for plained timber. The answers they give will be in millimetres and neither will be anything close to 50.8mm x 101.6mm. The length will also be given in metres.

      --
      wot no sig
  2. Re:Simple answer by ChunderDownunder · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Water freezes at zero and boils at one hundred.

    What could be simpler?

  3. Re:Simple answer by jbssm · · Score: 5, Insightful

    0 is a cold winter day, and 100 is a hot summer day.

    0 C is a freezing winter day, 8 C is a cold winter day, at 35 C it's a hot summer day and at 100 C I'm getting severely burned.

    So what is the difference exactly, except that you learned a set of numbers in Fahrenheit trough your experience, and we learned another set in Celsius trough ours?