https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-58597693
"The government says its review of EU rules on imperial measures for traders is only a "small part" of plans to reshape laws after Brexit.
The overhaul could permit retailers to once again sell goods only using Britain's traditional weighing system.
...
Boris Johnson pledged to change the rules ahead of the 2019 election, telling the Daily Mail: "We will bring back that ancient liberty. I see no reason why people should be prosecuted."
"There will be an era of generosity and tolerance towards traditional measurements," the prime minister pledged."
- BBC News, 17th Sep 2021
I think that something went hideously awry with reality when Boris Johnson decided to step back into the House of Commons and mount a leadership challenge for Number 10. In the proper non-silly version of reality, Boris Johnson after being the wacky Mayor of London, in the same way that other pantomime Mayors such as Dick Whittington or Red Ken Livingstone were, should have gone on to be a perennial panelist on BBC Radio 4 Panel Shows. In this way, he would have and should have followed Clement Freud and Gyles Brandreth.
Instead, Boris Johnson's Conservative Government, which only happened after David Cameron's idiotic cave in to the racists at UKIP and Teresa May's bound to fail premiership, has taken governance by BBC Radio 4 Panel Shows to the very heart of government itself.
I like Boris Johnson. It's just that he should have remained as comedy relief and the fact that he took himself way too seriously, has short changed us of what could have and should have been many years of quality comedy on the Beeb.
This policy of allowing retailers to trade in imperial units is nothing more than the enactment of law in Johnson's gelotopocracy¹; in lieu of actual sensible policy.
Horse has previously stated that:
http://rollo75.blogspot.com/2019/07/horse-2575-doonside-station-needs-lift.html
"The Metric system is not in use in Hell. They still use the Imperial system, for the sole purpose of making the underworld as difficult as possible."
- Footnote 1, Horse 2575, 23rd Jul 2019
Admittedly this publication makes such remarks and asides for comic effect but bringing this into public policy is crazy making...
...but not as bad as you might think.
The understated truth which is relevant here is that people only tend to care about what immediately impacts them. This is the reason why in high school, loads of students suffer through maths classes and then almost never have to deal with serious maths again for rest of their lives. Even personally as someone who works in an accounting office, the most difficult pieces of maths that I need are not much more than arithmetic.
Given that, allowing traders to start trading with imperial units again, isn't suddenly going to cause a mass breakout of confusion everywhere for the simple reason that most people don't find maths useful in the first place and traders aren't likely to be engaging in anything more complex than basic arithmetic either.
If goods are already sold in kilograms, then traders aren't likely to change over. Maybe there will be artisan bread and cheese makers who sell things by the pound but that's it. The weight of a size 5 football is a pound as well. Of course people will still refer to their weight in pounds or perhaps stone, but that's mostly an edge case and not useful for anything else.
The only occasion that you're going to care about ounces, is in reference to the weight of a cricket ball; which weighs 5½ Oz.
The only place that you're likely to find a pint after the law change, is in the pub or perhaps in a local dairy.
Inches, feet, yards and miles kind of held on a bit. Tyre rim sizes are still defined by inches but have millimetre width sizes. Feet and inches are only useful in determining how tall people sized objects are.
A football pitch has a 6 yard box, an 18 yard box, and other measurements in yards. A cricket pitch is 22 yards long and that was never metricized because that's hallowed turf.
Miles still exist on British Motorways because it was deemed too hard to change over all of the signs in the country.
The only place that anyone cares about furlongs is when that pony that you've just dropped a score on, is slow.
Britain is absolutely not going back to Pounds, Shillings and Pence², because although people and computers can perform numismatic gymnastics, they're not going to.
Cars are still likely to have their power stated in brake horsepower and mileage in miles per gallon but in reality, already nobody understands ft/lbs or Nm except for boffins and nerds (who are likely to bore or entertain you).
The actual real world effects of this legislation is likely to be three-quarters of an imperial diddly squat, as opposed to the metric equivalent of a kilobupkis. This is legislation in lieu of actual governance. This is smoke and mirrors amidst the gutting of the NHS in the middle of a pandemic.
Around and around and around the windd blows, blowing this way, then that, but never finding any stable direction. All the rivers flow into the sea, but the sea never fills up. When the seagulls follow the trawler it is because they think that sardines will be thrown into the sea.
¹rule by a clown
²for a short time only, the guv'ner is offering light ale from the pump at only 1/2 per pint.
No comments:
Post a Comment