Burning Lemons

The laptop I’m typing this on was sold to me as being 2.75cm thick. The milk I poured on my cereal this morning came out a 1 pint bottle. I’m going to get in a car later and travel at 70mph. Tomorrow I will go to a school that 4 years ago taught me to measure in square metres, kilos and litres.

Britain appears to be the only country that still uses two systems of measurement. We still use the imperial system for some things (cartons of milk) and metric for other things (cartons of juice). The metric switchover began 40 years ago and is still not complete. To give you an idea how long this has been going on my mum (now 48) was taught using the metric system, but still we have failed to finish switching over.

Many people in Britain point to the case of a grocer who was (I think) sent to jail 5 years ago for refusing to sell his goods in metric weights as a sign of the country going mad. This however was not a sign of legislation having a problem. The man good sell his goods in pounds as much as he liked. He just had to offer measurment in a metric alternative as well.

So why don’t we change? Well most governments see the change as something that would lose them vital votes without making a huge difference in the position of society so no-one, especially now fells the need to make the change.

But while I believe that the change would not be instantly popular I think that it will in the long term make the functioning of the country far smoother and easier