This is an example of the dead cat strategy, named by an Australian political strategist “throwing a dead cat in the table”.<p>It’s a distraction so shocking that it can’t fail to divert media attention.<p>It’s a favorite technique of Boris Johnson who is even mentioned in the Wikipedia article <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy</a><p>The imperial measurement thing is a dead cat Boris threw on the table during his political descent.<p>When you see it for what it is, you can take joy in imagining the meeting in which the politicians tried to think up the best dead cats to throw on the table and settled on this.<p>“Yes, Prime Minister”
Observation as a Canadian: Until the US decides to finally convert (e.g. never), the rest of the anglo-sphere will be forever stuck in an awkward inbetween zone anyways. We supposedly converted to metric in the 70s but it's only ever been half-hearted, as many trades (especially construction) continue to work in imperial measurements, and most people work in an awkward combination of the two.<p>As Canadians we typically measure our height and weight in ft and lbs. But temperature in celsius and travel distances and speeds in kilometres and km/h. Except for cooking/recipes, where oven temperature is measured in fahrenheit and we have to deal with recipes with cups and ounces and so on. ... But recipes are also often in litres and grams. So...<p>And most people can think of thermostat or pool/lake water temperatures in fahrenheit as well as celsius.<p>We're supposed to be metric, but good luck finding a reasonable selection of metric screws/bolts/nuts at the hardware store. Online order.<p>Really this is all to do with deep integration with the US economy and its own bizarre mostly-imperial-but-metric-where-it's-important.<p>My poor father was a machinist, and originally was trained in metric Europe (Germany.) He found the whole situation extremely frustrating.
Wow, just when you think things couldn't get more stupid. Revert to a clearly inferior and difficult to use measurement system for what? Politics?
I mean its a silly idea but I don’t see why systems would necessarily need updating if people chose to sell in imperial measurements.<p>1 - any seller would likely in any case have to list the metric equivalent anyway.<p>2 - all imperial measurements are now defined by metric measurements anyway.<p>3 - any company choosing to sell B2B in imperial measurements would likely find itself at a commercial disadvantage, as businesses in the UK almost always work in metric.
As reported in [0], the UK Government survey asked consumers: “If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items: i) in imperial units ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent.”<p>There was no option iii) for using metric only (except a freeform entry field). Talk about biased.<p>I suppose we should be thankful that the recent self-inflicted destruction of the UK Govt's credibility has at least probably saved us from having to learn fortnights, furlongs and firkins again. Silver linings etc etc.<p>[0] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/18/metric-system-imperial-measures-consultation-brexit" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/sep/18/metric-syst...</a>
I mean Mogg is someone who comes across as having his finger on the pulse of society… the best description I’ve ever heard for him is “A haunted victorian drainpipe”. Ultimately the guys stake in Irish hedge-funds are served well by destabilising the pound. I can’t think of one member of the tories who isn’t in politics to make themselves even richer. Everything is grandstanding at the moment.
What the actual F. That is just insane. Brexit has been such a rolling disaster. It's constantly reminds me why compulsory voting in Australia is the best thing since sliced bread. It's just insane what the British have decided to do to themselves.
Everybody's shitting on Imperial, U.S. customary, or whatever you want to call them units...<p>Allow me to give a slightly different perspective: as a scientist, if I'm doing chemistry then metric is the way to go. Conversions are easier, centigrade and Kelvin just make a lot more sense...<p>But for many day-to-day things I think the Imperial units are better. Temperature? Fahrenheit is a 0-100 scale, where 0 is pretty much as cold as it gets in temperate climates, and 100 is pretty much as hot as it gets. A mile is 5280 feet? Wtf? Well, it's 1000 paces (each pace bringing you back to the same state, so two steps = 5.28 feet).<p>I don't know if any good work has been done on it, but my guess is people who were raised with inches are better and quicker at estimating length than people who were raised with metric. Millimeters are too small, cm are also too small (and nobody uses them really). Inches are a good, intuitive unit for measuring human-scale stuff given our cognitive constraints, I'd guess.<p>Does anyone know of work looking at this?
OT: Can I ask a question about something that has long puzzled me about Brexit?<p>Note: I'm not asking about whether or not Brexit was a good idea. No matter where you stand on that, let's assume for the sake of argument that there were terrific arguments for both staying in the EU and leaving.<p>My puzzlement concerns the specific question asked on the 2016 referendum, which was<p>> Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?<p>with the options being remain or leave.<p>If you wanted the UK to stay in the EU, then clearly "remain" was the right choice for you.<p>Remaining didn't require the UK to do anything, so if you voted "remain" you were voting for something with a highly predictable outcome.<p>Leaving, on the other hand, requires a lot of action over the next several years. There were many quite different ways a post-EU UK could turn out, and much disagreement among the people who wanted to leave as to which of those ways they wanted. There could be changes of government over the years it takes to implement so even if you were confident that the people now in power would work toward an implementation of the kind of Brexit you wanted, they might not be the ones in power when it comes to actually finishing the thing.<p>If you wanted to leave then it seems to me that the best choice would still be to vote "remain" because this particular referendum was terrible. Instead, work to elect politicians who would offer a better referendum. Something like this:<p>> Should the United Kingdom develop a concrete proposal to leave the EU and then hold a referendum on that, and if that referendum passes negotiate a final deal to leave the EU, and then hold a final referendum on whether to implement that final deal?
Just to be precise, they have not proposed to switch back to imperial, they are proposing to allow imperial units to be used (so for instance a supermarket would be free to sell potatoes in pounds instead of kilos if they wanted to).<p>Either way, this is indeed a distraction and it has very little chance of going anywhere.
LOL, they're having a larf.<p>Of course it's a ridiculous proposal, and so an obvious smokescreen to keep the plebs discussing irrelevancies.<p>But on top of that, the particular proposal, to revert to an olde-worlde measurement system, is surely a troll at all the olde people who were conned into voting for this ridiculous mess.
UK is a confused place.<p>I still don't know whats the "official" temperature scale - F or C.<p>In the same paper, I would see the weather map with C, but the title with F (heatwave of xx F). Or the reverse, or both.<p>Or in the same shop you can buy milk in liters, or in pints.
This is a non story.<p>The consultation is on whether to allow weights and volumes of goods to be sold using imperial measures. There is no suggestion of switching engineering or construction to use imperial.
Even if this is a distraction tactic ...<p>Is there value to the distraction if it makes the entire country look like a bunch of idiots?<p>RIP Britain. A deeply embarassing end ...