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?

Comments

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Avery other nation has already made the trade, they switched to metric because imperial units were completely unusable when dealing internationally.
Just recently it was found out that the Vasa ship was built asymmetrically because the workers were a combination of Swedish and Dutch and there was 11 inches on a Dutch (Amsterdam specifically) foot and 12 inches on a Swedish foot, so while the difference between the feet isn't that big the difference in the inch sizes are pretty significant.
Staying with national specific units is just retarded.

The best quote from the article

[Required Snark]

Then again I could just recall that John Stuart Mill was moved to remark to the House of Commons: “What I stated was, that the Conservative party was, by the law of its constitution, necessarily the stupidest party. Now, I do not retract this assertion; but I did not mean that Conservatives are generally stupid; I meant, that stupid persons are generally Conservative. I believe that to be so obvious and undeniable a fact that I hardly think any hon. Gentleman will question it.” (My emphasis).

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.