Posted on 09/17/2021 10:04:59 AM PDT by billorites
The British government has announced that U.K. businesses will once again be allowed to sell their products in traditional, British units of measurement, like pounds and ounces, instead of the metric system.
This move is a win for freedom-loving people everywhere, and the restoration of customary units should be a cause for jubilation in the streets.
The metric system has its origins in the French Revolution, as a way to stick it to the Ancien Régime. It didn’t go international until 1875, when a group of diplomats got together in Paris (which, historically, is a pretty good indicator that a bad decision is on the way) and signed the Treaty of the Meter. That treaty established the BIPM, an intergovernmental organization with a French name, to oversee a new, worldwide measurement system.
Just like that, with the strokes of a few pens, centuries of history began to be erased. The French Revolution may have been over, but the mindset of the revolutionaries lived on. The French Revolution was a time when men were, in the words of Edmund Burke, “pull[ing] down more in half an hour, than prudence, deliberation, and foresight can build up in an hundred years.” The top-down imposition of the metric system did just that by erasing customary units.
By “customary units,” I don’t just mean the U.S. customary system, but any unit of measure derived through custom. If you read about the origins of customary units, you’ll find that many of them are based on specific occupations, like brewing, farming, and surveying. They were invented by people doing their jobs who needed a way to measure things. They developed units of measure that were useful to them and persuaded others to adopt them for ease of commerce. Customary units eventually became standardized through a bottom-up process.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
I remember that too. I think it was in the Carter Administration, a big push to switch over to metric. We learned it in school, and I remember even seeing some road signs with metric on them. Didn’t last long though, maybe a year or two.
Ironically, 10 years later I moved to Japan and had to re-learn it all over again for real, because metric was all there was.
Huh. Like in Muhammad Ali?
Lol, me too! God bless Britain for doing this! Now,I can watch F-1 races without straining my brain to convert kph into mph lol
“The insistence on its use always seemed somewhat pretentious to me”
It was by people who thought units of 10 were somehow intelligent.
Or just over 1/2 a Smoot.
I’m super high brow, I use Kelvin or Rankine...
Knowledge of the Rankine scale will win you a beer in any meteorologist bar.
A little less than a Skosh.
Is there such a thing? Perhaps on top of Mt. Washington?
The Dozenal Society of America
In the 1970's, this secretive organization managed to infiltrate Hollywood to disseminate propaganda to indoctrinate America's youth!
Just like that, with the strokes of a few pens, centuries of history began to be erased.
We know in the U.S.A. we see it every day it’s why we don’t have any statues books disappear...........................
They told us that soccer would become the most popular sport too. Oh yea and Esperanto would become the world’s language. Lol.
No. No more. We are reverting to Cassius Clay.
I remember back in the CARTER mis-administration when the Metric System was supposed to replace the US system.
All the “back to earth” magazines started using it, but the average AMERICAN rejected it completely.
I remember when soda pop went to the metric system. We all had a distrust of the new two Liter bottles of New Coke.
But when I was in junior high school, we were taught and urban legend--that Fahrenheit based his scale on a cold day in Danzig, Pomerania, where he had grown up. The weather on that particular day was so cold that he figured that it could not get any colder, so he designated the temperature as 0.
Even though this story was in the textbook, I didn't really believe it because I knew that Danzig, being in Eastern Europe, probably experienced much colder weather, quite often.
I'm sick & tired of having "American made" vehicles that require standard AND metric tools to work on. It's completely senseless. I should have a "right" to one set of tools.
Even though it’s less scientific, I prefer Fahrenheit to centigrade. Triple digits indicate uncomfortably hot weather while single digits indicate uncomfortably cold weather.
The report is misleading.
The UK is only allowing sales to the public of things like beer and loose vegetables to be sold in imperial as well as metric measurements.
While in the EU it became illegal to sell certain products in the UK in only imperial measurements.
Petrol (gas), birth weights, pre-packaged foods etc. will continue to be measured and/or sold using metric (SI units).
The UK never changed from using miles to kilometres on roads.
These changes make it more complicated.
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