Imperial Fogies

G

Green Horse

Guest
We seem to have two Irelands when it comes to measurements. There are still die-hard fogies out there who wont let the illogical and confusing imerial system die a long overdue death.

Its taken long enough to have kilo's in our supermarkets and kilometre speed limits - thankfully its happened at last - and what a good system it is.

Why then do we still get the newspaper media mentioning miles, ayrds, feet and inches? I'm in my 30's and I don't ever remember anywhere seeing 1 yard. Why do people refer to it? It doesnt make sense.

And as for stones? What a weird measurement. Kilgrams please and thanks.

Will we ever see the elite horse-racey crowd conforming to the norms and discarding their ridculous furlongs? The untouchables?

Time to lose the 'pint' too I reckon, or else round it off to a half litre.

Debate please?
 
Whatever about getting rid of the imperial measurements, I just wish people would stick to one or the other. I was getting a tradesman to measure up a room for a new stud wall and door frames etc... he gave the measurements for the stud wall in feet & inches but the measurements for the door frames in metres! Talk about confusing.
 
Green Horse said:
Time to lose the 'pint' too I reckon, or else round it off to a half litre.
Click to expand...

This'll never happen - apart from the touristy value of the traditional pint, half a litre is less! There'd be uproar and outrage all over the place.
 
Next time you're in a shop look closely and you may notice that milk is still variously sold in 500ml and 568ml (i.e. 1 pint) cartons - often for the same price and obviously meaning that the latter is better value. Beer could be sold in 568ml measures and the imperialists could be kept happy.
 
I think feet and inches will be around for a long time yet! As someone who works in the building industry I can vouch for the fact that feet and inches are still used on site and with abandon... you can see why: " I need 20 8'x4' sheets of 3/4" WBP and 30 4x 11/2" 16' lenghts for tomorrow" is instantly familiar to all on the site, translate that into metric and it becomes: "I need 20 2.4x 1.2m sheets of 19mm ply and 30 100mm x 38mm 4.8m lengths.." A bit of a mouthful. Metric is always used on building plans but when ordering materials (particularly timber, concrete blocks and sheet materials) imperial figures are quite often substituted, or used in conjenction with their metric counterparts. A lot of the timber that comes into this country comes from North america where imperial dimensions rule so invariably this timber is graded and sold by the foot, inch and cubic foot. Most people on a site are familiar with both but when setting out or marking up work will generally be using metric as the drawings they work from are in metric.
 
Our house was flooded ... the plumber had used an imperial sized washer on a metric sized pipe. Get rid of inches altoghether.
 
Your plumber should have spotted/ known the difference. Why did you have metric pipe in your house anyway? I'll bet it was one of the copper tail pipes from the kitchen tap, made in Spain or Italy and 15mm in diameter as opposed to 1/2". Aaahh but then again a 1/2" olive won't fit a 15mm metric pipe, but a 15mm olive will fit loosely on a 1/2" pipe- is this what happened??? Sorry to be pedantic I'm just interested in the plumbing arena!
 
Yes you are being pedantic ... maybe it was the other way around ... the pipe was smaller than the washer/nut ... It was used on a pump for an underground irrigation system. The plumber in his wisdom decided it would be sufficient to pad out the difference with plumbers tape ... needless to say he's gone into liquidation since ... pardon the pun.
 
Try reading American engineering drawings. Not only do they use the Imperial system but they use fractions as well. It's idiotic!
 
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