Making metric measures a merry muddle
How tall are you? What do you weigh? How far is it to Exeter? While you are in England, don’t try to answer in ‘metric’ - metres, kilogrammes and kilometres: the answers to these questions would usually be given in feet and inches, stones and pounds, and miles. These old ‘imperial’ measures should have been replaced long ago, but we still use them. Why, and how do we cope with a muddle of measurements?
The answer is complicated. It’s not just the practical use of familiar measures, because other countries successfully changed to ‘metric’ years ago. It’s not just tradition, because Imperial units were only fixed in 1854 - so they are younger than metric measures.
Britain has considered going metric ever since 1818. Nothing actually happened until 1965, when a Metrication Board was set up to change all our measurements by 1975. It was not a success and, although industries went metric voluntarily, shops and customers had to be forced to change: no-one wanted to advertise or buy larger metric packs which made goods look more expensive. In the end packets had to be fixed by law in metric sizes.
Amazingly it was only in 1995 that all pre-packed goods had to be sold in metric measures, and unpackaged products went metric - only 25 years late! - in 2000.
Or not: milk and beer can still legally be sold in imperial pints (beer ‘on tap’ in pubs can’t be sold in litres at all). In fact, anything can be (and often is) sold in Imperial units as long as it’s priced in metric as well. Even stranger, since the EU banned fixed pack sizes in 2007, some products have returned to their old imperial sizes.
Then there’s the problem of road signs: there used to be definite plans to get rid of miles, yards and feet from our roads. The plans were dropped in 2005 - too expensive, you see (about £750 million at the last estimate).
Britain used to have complicated measurements: now we have simple metric measures, but muddle them up with the old system anyway.
We can’t decide whether a kg is a kilogramme or kilogram, or if a km is a ‘killer-metre’ or ‘kill-om-itter’. We buy petrol in litres, but measure the fuel consumption of cars in ‘miles per gallon’. Instant coffee is in 200g jars, filter coffee in half-pound packs. Maps are metric, but our roads are measured in miles. 100 yard markers on motorways are actually 100 metres apart. We use the letter ‘m’ to mean both metres and miles. We use Celcius for temperature - unless it’s hot and people start talking about ‘80 degrees‘ (Fahrenheit).
Schoolchildren have been taught in metric since the 1970s: aged 16 they sit exams where cars travel at 27 metres per second; but aged 17 they drive cars at 60 miles per hour. Above all, English people will give their height, weight and so on in old measures. And while women buy clothes in ‘old’ UK sizes which are now based on metric measurements, male vital statistics seem always to be given in inches (perhaps because most men have two feet but none have a full metre).
Will all this change? Perhaps. However, English-speaking America still uses England’s old units, and that helps reinforce them here. And in 2009 the EU formally scrapped plans to ban our old units, so now we can use them alongside metric for as long as we want. It looks like there’s still some mileage in our muddled measurements.
Frankly my dear, I don't give a gramme. I’m off for a 568ml.
