…NOT JUST A CRIMINAL OFFENCE, BUT IN SOME CASES DOWNRIGHT DANGEROUS?
Because it’s far more sensible to have £:s:p, yards: feet: inches, gallons: quarts: pints, tons: hundredweights and quarters, stones: pounds: ounces. Obviously.
Still, the Daily Mail seems to think he’s a bit of a hero, and I bet the Daily Diana is fizzing it didn’t get the story first. It would probably recommend him to the queen for a knighthood.
Oh, yes, then there was this bloke who seems to be unaware of just how utterly ridiculous Boris Johnson is, not to mention David Davis and the unbelievably hapless idiot Liam Fox, and that they are all led by someone with the well-deserved nickname “Mayhem”.
Talk about zero diplomatic know-how or ability!
Really, Prof Tomkins, have a wee word with yourself, will you? At the moment you are a liability.
MUNGUIN'S NEW REPUBLIC 
What an eejit.
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It’s a bit like “I had to learn Latin and Ancient Greek at school, so why shouldn’t you?”.
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Mensura et numero et pondere disposuisti.
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Ah, Munguin Reipublicae manet in traditione classica.
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Just three words on this: Mars Climate Orbiter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure)
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So, what yer saying, Michael is, if you’re going to Mars make sure you’re not taking a half a kilo of sugar and half a pound of tea… otherwise you’ll run out of one before you run out of the other, yeah?
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That eejit must surely be breaking the law … even if it is just stealing road signs he is still breaking the law. He may not like the idea of everything in Km:M:cm, L:Cl, Kilos etc but we have them now and so we use them. I don’t care much for decimalisation of everything but hey I live with it, all be it I transfer (as my gran did in 1972) everything back into “old” currency and measurements. Hey that’s just me I still like the old system. In my view it makes you use your brain which sadly the decimalisation system doesn’t. Everything is too easy to count these days in the “old” days you really had to stop and THINK. Nowadays so long as someone can count, in effect, up to ten the can get a job. In the “old” days you really needed to know how many pennies were in a shilling, how many shillings in a pound, inches in a foot, feet to a yard etc. Interestingly enough though there is still one currency unit from the “old” days that is still used today … think I’ll tease Munguin with this one and NOT give him the answer just now. LOL
With regards to the E.U. and who knows what Tris I think you may find this piece interesting, especially the wee video at the bottom.
http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2016-travels-through-brexit-britain/?utm_content=brexit&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&cmpid%3D=socialflow-facebook-brexit
Interesting enough even though most people did not recognise either man in the photographs once they found out who they were I think most, if not all, though Guy Verhofstadt was the winner in any negotiations. LOL
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Imperial is easier to work with in your head, hands and eyes. Easier to estimate and stuff. And you can divide by three in it.
Metric is easier to do maths with. Blame the Romans for it being in base 10. If we’d gone with the Babylonian base 12, imperial and metric wouldn’t be so different.
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Thanks for that simple explanation Illy.
Now I know why I always preferred Lbs and ounces, £:s:d etc … I’m Babylonian at heart! LOL
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Water freezes at 0° and boils at 100°, a natural decimal system, I think the Romans were on to something…
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I just think it’s “miles” simpler to base everything on 100.
Mind you Napoleon took it too far…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
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That’s actually by design.
The scale for centigrade/celsius was defined by the freezing and boiling points of pure water, sometime after the Roman Empire fell, hence the base 10. Fahrenheit was originally defined similarly, but for either blood or salt water (the two have very similar freezing/boiling points, so its hard to be sure).
It might still be defined by the boiling and freezing points of pure water at a specific pressure, actually, I’d have to look it up to be certain…
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Not only do we have classicists here, but scientists too… What’s an intellectual crew like you lot doing on a down market website like this?
🙂
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OK Illy. I’m glad we have someone to blame.
I believe that the person we should blame for the half-hearted conversion to metric, was Geoffrey Howe. I seem to remember that in later life he regretted not going the whole mile (or kilometre).
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LOL very good story.
I do recognise David…although frankly I wish I didn’t
Would the old monetary unit that we still use today be one of these pound things>?
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I still think I’m fourteen stone rather than ninety kilos. I go for a pint or dozen with my mates. Which is why I’m fourteen stone.
But that silly old bugger should be charged with theft, vandalism and endangering members of the public. Or at least put in chains and flogged with a rod to an inch of his life, furlong as it takes…
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I know it was long after the Romans, and that all scales are manufactured, but it’s still a nice “coincidence”; one which the Romans would have appreciated.
The metric system makes a lot of sense and, in my opinion, is easily understood; though its of no use in the measurement of time, as the French discovered.
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You know all those tricks with multiples of ten you get taught? The work exactly the same with multiples of 8 in base 8, and multiples of 12 in base 12.
The complicated thing is when you’re working with something that naturally wants to be in *not* base 10, but you’re writing everything in base 10. Talk to any programmer – that’s why programmers work in base 16 and invented the “numbers” A-F (numbers written in base 16 can be mapped easily to base 2, you don’t need to do any column shifting, you just replace each base 16 numeral with 4 digits in base 2 and you’re done)
Base ten makes no sense, btw. You can’t even divide by 3 or 4 in it without getting into a mess, *only* 2 and 5. Base 12 lets you divide by 2,3,4 *and* 6.
—
It’s no coincidence, when the person who set out the scale, explicitly defined it as “0deg is the freezing point of pure water, 100deg is the boiling point of pure water, set your thermometers so that that is the case”, and chose those numbers to make things easy, because he was using base 10 numeric symbols.
Incidentally, g (acceleration due to gravity at the surface of the earth) was originally supposed to be 10 (not 9.85 or whatever it is where you are), so the sums would be easy (base 10 numeral systems again – still the Romans’ fault). Then they used that to set some other scales, then they realise that they’d gotten g wrong, and that g wasn’t a constant, so now all physics students have to multiply by 9.85, instead of the nice easy 10 it was supposed to be.
—
Oh, and it would be nice if you responded to the right comment.
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Cela n’a pas bien marché!
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LOL LOL
I still think in miles, and feet… and stones, and I look at my car’s consumption in MPG, but buy my petrol in litres.
But when I’m abroad I genuinely do very quickly change to litres, kilos and kilometres…
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Conan
Erm ! perhaps at fourteen stone you should prolegomenon conan with FATTY
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And what weight are you Niko?
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Says the “Bob Hoskins lookalike”…
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Sick Tomkins didn’t illustrate his latest tweet with a picture of human suffering?!
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Not this time… He must be slipping.
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Yes Mr Tompkins, the totally professional, clued up and trustworthy Tory government are putting oor pair wee SNP to shame with their lack of know how and integrity. NOT!
The guy stealing the signs, well it’s already been said. He is a living stereotype.
The metric v imperial thing? It all depends what you were brought up with. It would seem that systems of measurement leave a powerful imprint in your brain making it hard to change. Many years ago I was a toolmaker who used imperial and was comfortable doing fractions in my head but millimetres are so much easier in practice so I use them now. It took a bit of doing though.
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Of course it takes time to change, but I agree it is so much easier once you have.
As for Tomkins, he’s really just becoming a figure of fun, what with his daft tweets and his taking time off to do another job.
And to think of the stick that Philippa got when she did some life saving operations in her holidays.
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Base 10 is perfect. Most humans have 10 fingers. As to the weights and measures, 1 kg of water is 1 litre is 100 cm squared. Calculating and estimating is easy in whatever measure you are used to, but in metric system even novices can calculate volumes and prices.
Its a kind of English exceptionalism that thinks their old measuring system was the best. And why is an American gallon 3.78 litres and a British one 4.54?
Common standards are good. Easy to calculate, logical systems for weights and measures are good. Don’t encourage these nutty Farage-ists. Everyone under 60 knows metric or both. Lets not make life any harder for the less numerate than we have to. 12 pennies in a shilling, 20 shillings in a pound: what’s 3 and tuppence plus 1 and 6 plus 4 and thruppence? And add 20% VAT? Decimal is much easier.
( 8 and 11pence – just under 45 pence -and you could have bought 107 MacGowans caramels for that in 1970 ).
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You couldn’t beat a dainty, though you did have to; against the curb to break it. Mmmm tastey.
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What did THAT do to your teeth?
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“Base 10 is perfect. Most humans have 10 fingers.” So you need to take your socks off to count to twenty?
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I can count to twenty and a half if I take *all* my clothes off.
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lol
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LOL. I knew there was a reason I found converting to decimal easy… it’s the fingers and toes thing!
107 … goodness. How fat would that have made you… and how many teeth would you have lost!?
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100 cubic cm. 10 x 10 x 10. Bloody wine again!
Hangs head in shame ….
Scottish too, supposed to be edjukatid.
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LOL…
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Wee flying saucers with sherbet in them yummy. I can feel my teeth going black just thinking about them.
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Thrupenny lucky tatties with wee plastic sodgers fae Hongkong embedded in them. Tuppenny bars of Cadbury’s milk chocolate. Hendry’s juice. Jamboree Lucky Bags. Buying Ten Players and a quarter gill of whisky at nine years old.
*Sigh*
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Is that when you started to go off the rails… 9?
Wait till Niko reads that!
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Love it, Dave.
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Illy, I would respond to the right comment if this system on WordPress wasn’t so unpredictable.
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still no doubt if he (tosser) took down a low bridge sign and a school bus came along
causing injury to the children the Daily Nazi would cheer !
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Well, they seem to have found an excuse for Jo’s assassin. The creepy bunch of scum.
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As the bus probably wouldn’t have been built in Eng—Britain, and there would have been a high proportion of ‘immigrant’ children born here on it, I’ll give you that. But how would it affect house prices, and would Nicola Sturgeon be to blame?
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Duh, silly question. It would have been Humza to blame.
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But what about Licorice Imps – surely they were mingin’?
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Not if you like licorice, Gary.
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No insult intended Tris with my last of course; but they really were bowf.
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Oh that’s fine with me. Can’t stand licorice.
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Hours ago, you said this:
“I just think it’s “miles” simpler to base everything on 100.
Mind you Napoleon took it too far…”
I have tried to do the metric system just because. I am still struggling.
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I guess what you learned at school is always the most automatic to you. Anyway, when we come out of the EU we can go back to Groats and Furlongs and Chains… 🙂
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Here we go Lord Advocate puts in written submission.
Claim of Right 1689 and Article XVIII of Treaty of Union take centre stage.
Scotland the immovable object meets the irresistable force of Brexit.
Pffff the UK is gone.
Tra la la boom tee ay.
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Should be “ible” not “able”.
Aaron Banks Tory backer calling for #ThrowScotlandOut
Bugger I need more popcorn.
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I’ll back that.
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Aw, what a shame. How I’ll miss it…
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If this idiot wants to go back in time,why stop at LSD etc.
What about Roman measures or stuff before that?
Some English people prefer to forget that they were once ruled by the Italians before the French Norse men took over.
Very selective memories.
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Then we’d have to get Conan to come to the shops with us and translate everything…
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Caveat venditor.
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LOL Caveat Emptor?
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Illy,
Although many believe it to be the case, I’m afraid gravitational acceleration at surface of the Earth was not originally meant to be 10 meters per sec per sec. It just happens to be close to that.
The meter was defined by the French, to be one ten millionth of the distance from the Equator to the North Pole.
The units of time have been long established and are based on astronomical events, rotation of Earth = 1 day, 365 and a bit days to orbit the Sun.
The closeness to 10 at the Earth’s surface is just coincidental.
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Crikey, that’s complicated to a non scientist. but really interesting! Thanks chicmac.
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