Well, it finally happened. In my currewnt short story, I’ve sort have started going metric. I never will fully, and resented the undemocratic attempts of an unelected unaccountable group of faceless beaurocrats in another country, aided and abetted by a group of faceless idiots in the UK government and civil service to make illegal my culture and free will to use whatever system of measurement I chose. I actually find imperial easier to understand, for a variety of reasons that explain why imperial came to exist over hundreds of years of refinement.
That’s by-the-by now. I’ve used the measurement of metres per second for the first time, because metric is, at least, the measurement system of physics. So be it. I suppose it would have come eventually. Call me stubborn, but it would have come a whole lot quicker if I hadn’t had undemocratic beaurocrats who most people alive and of voting age today never got a say on trying to make imperial measurements illegal to use. When there is so much serious crime in the World, what kind of a bunch of cretins instead ignore solving and prosecuting real crimes but instead hound a grocer in sunderland because he sold apples in pounds and ounces at the request of his customers who wanted to buy them that way because it was easier for them to understand?
Sorry to rain on your parade, hon but I have to point out one problem:
The Weights and Measures Act 1985 does not make the use of imperial measures illegal per se, it makes it illegal to only use Imperial measures. They must accompany metric measures (which, admittedly, the law requires be given prominence) if they are to be used at all.
The problem the so-called ‘metric martyrs’ had was not that they couldn’t serve people in imperial measures, it was that they were too fucking stupid to agree to also allowing people to buy produce in metric. They simply refused point blank to display and serve metric measures and they got what they deserved because of it.
I’d also like to point out that a significant number of British people never liked Imperial measurements and I don’t believe there is a single child in this country who would thank you for taking away their much simpler system of metric measurements.
Personally, I despise the seemingly arbitrary nature of Imperial measurements. What exactly is “a sixteenth”? How many inches are in a foot? How long is a foot anyway? I can measure out a metre with no trouble but I couldn’t tell you how long an inch is, or how long a foot is (I’m pretty sure it’s not as long as my foot is!).
The issue of defining Imperial measurements has been cause for concern for centuries and gave rise to a phrase in legal circles that “the law should not be determined like the Chancellor’s foot”, i.e. law needed certainty, and couldn’t simply change on the whim of one man, like it seems Imperial measures could. Who decided the standard?
At least with metric you know where you are.
Sorry to be raining on your parade too. It’s not the weights and measures act we’re talking about, it was something else that turned up in 1996/7 courtesy of implementation of European policy.
People resent being told with fear of punishment not to do something that people have done for hundreds of years. They resent money being wasted to enforce in a draconian manner a law no-one really wants whilst at the same time real criminals are not being caught because it is too much like hard work to do real policing and the courts are a waste of time that work against the Police and the interests of the people.
I looked it up before posting, hon. The bulk of the case rested on the Weights and Measures Act, which implemented an EU Directive to harmonise weights and measures across the country*ahem*union.
I agree about the disproportionate policing, however. We need criminals caught, not police power being wasted on civil misdemeanours. However, it wasn’t police being misused in this case – it was council beaurocrats being jumped-up little nobodies. Sometimes that’s just as bad as misuse of police, of course. Just look at the Bin Nazis for proof.