Unilateral Declaration of Metrication

[Slim]

Older British readers might, like myself, remember the days when it was usual to receive pocket money in shillings. A shilling was a unit of currency equal to 12 pence, and there were 20 of them to the pound. Aren't you glad we got rid of that nonsense?

And yet, more than half a century later, we persist with a system of measuring distances that's similarly cumbersome. One of His Majesty's miles is equal to 1760 yards, or 5280 feet. Where's the sense in that? It is starkly obvious that the metric system, in which units are represented in multiples of ten, conforming to simple decimal arithmetic, is more intuitive and sensible. It's very easy to work out at a glance for example that 0.77km is equal to 770 metres. It's much easier to do distance arithmetic in your head.

But perhaps equally significantly - at the moment, here in the UK, we're using two systems simultaneously; sometimes in the same breath. You could talk about driving ten miles to take part in a 5000 metre race for example. One building materials site sells 2" x 2" timber in metre lengths. The UK military already uses the metric system in some circumstances, I believe. Science and engineering certainly does, as an established international standard. So does athletics.

So where's the sense in maintaining both; in teaching our children two separate systems when one would do nicely? And wouldn't it be nice to drive through France or Holland or Spain and not to have to get used to a different set of measurements on the road signs?

I understand the counter-arguments. The cost of replacing or amending the road signs and speed limits. The difficulty of getting used to it.

Perhaps some might consider the old measurements to be part of our national identity. Well, so's the blitz spirit. Doesn't mean we have to sleep in bomb shelters in the present day.

In any case: the advantages considerably outweigh the disadvantages, in my view. Clearly, proper metrication in the UK is long overdue.

But governments of all complexions have just ignored the situation for decades.

So it's time for ordinary people to take matters into their own hands. From this day forth, I will no longer use the old imperial measurements. I have already converted my GPS watches, bike computers and Strava account to measure distances in km. I'll do the same for Google Maps. I may even convert the mile counter on my Volkswagen. I will refer only to metric distances. I implore my fellow Brits to do the same.

Fun facts:

The metre isn't as old as you might think; it was defined by the French Academy of Sciences in the 1790s, so that the distance from the North Pole to the equator would be equal to 10,000,000m. The actual distance represented by a metre has changed very slightly since then, but only by 0.1 nanometres since 1960.

The modern definition of a metre (since 1983) is the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1/299,792,458 of a second. A mile on the other hand is defined as 1760 yards, the yard being defined as exactly 0.9144 metres. So the old imperial distance units are defined in terms of metric distances.

[The Picnic Wasp]

Although the industry I worked in for most of my working life was always based on the metric system, one still had to remain "bilingual" as most of the customer base would make enquiries and place orders in imperial. The real fun started when dealing with American suppliers. They don't sell timber by the cubic metre or even the cubic foot. No, they used the thousand board foot method. To simplify, one thousand board feet is equivalent to a thousand linear feet of 12" x 1" measure, expressed as a multiple or part of that quantity. So, 1000 b/ft = 83.333 cubic feet. Divide that by 35.315 (the number of cu ft in a cu metre) and you arrive at the magic number of 2.3597 which helps you through the working day. Other countries/continents have their own methods and eccentricities which kept me on my toes most of the time. Good for the grey matter I suppose but worryingly I might be beginning to forget some of it. I totally agree that we should be entirely metric but I must admit to still being able picture miles and pounds measure more easily but that's just an age thing. I think some dirty jokes work less well in metric though.