Boris Johnson reveals plan to bring back pounds and ounces: PM sees 'no reason why people should be prosecuted for selling goods in imperial measures after Brexit

Daily Mail (UK) ^ | 21:15 EST, 6 December 2019 | Jason Groves

[Olog-hai]

Boris Johnson has revealed plans to bring back pounds and ounces once Brexit is done as he attacks Jeremy Corbyn as “the most extreme Left-wing candidate produced by the Labour Party in a century” entering Number 10.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Daily Mail, the Prime Minister laid out his post-election blueprint to lift the EU ban on imperial measurements and hark back to the old system.

He said: “We will bring back that ancient liberty. I see no reason why people should be prosecuted.”

The Conservative leader added: “I think the reality is a lot of people are now educated in the metric system; we have to recognize that. But people… I understand what a pound of apples is. I also understand what a kilo of apples is. There will be an era of generosity and tolerance towards traditional measurements.” …

[pepsi_junkie]

I was in first grade in 1976 when the government decided the USA had to go metric and started forcing it into the school curriculum. A big part of the problem is that many teachers, and I dare say most first grade teachers, are not STEM oriented at all. My teacher had no idea what a kilometer was and she was asking us to guess how far a km was. We threw out all sorts of guesses based on our limited first grader world experience and she kept saying "no, much much farther". I remember vividly one location I had suggested because we had recently moved a block away from it and she said "oh no, a km is much much farther than that". According to google, that spot is actually exactly 1.5km from the school.

No wonder it failed here.

[AFreeBird]

well, Looking at my hand palm side up, I can measure exactly one inch from the tip of my index finger to the first crease of the joint.

That works for me.

[fishtank]

[Still Thinking]

I can always gage 6 inches.

[jonascord]

"Those are the pennies that used to go on the eyes of the dead."

You have to pay the Ferryman, and I've always wondered about the souls wandering about on the wrong side of the River because they had cheap relatives...

[LoneRangerMassachusetts]

It leads me to always be doing conversions in my head now whenever I have to use metric in the real world. Like "So it's 1500 km, that's about 4,500 feet and 5,280 ft/mile so it's a little over 3/4 mile."

Better start using a calculator. 1500 kilometers is nowhere near 4500 feet..you are off by a factor of 1000 from mixing meters with kilometers. This is an error one would not make with yards and miles.

[AFreeBird]

Cute. On average, most guys can.