Imperial Insanity

12 September 2007



EU Surrenders to Britain over Measuring System

The European Union has run up the white flag in its attempt to force Britons to buy their milk by the half-liter, their Sunday roast by the kilogram and their fabric by the square-meter. In 2000, it became illegal to use only pounds and ounces, but the UK was given a date to phase out the imperial system. While the system is largely unworkable and confusing, being told by Brussels to get rid of it didn’t sit well with a large swathe of the British public.

The metric system’s perfection is the number 10. Everything is 10 of something else. Conversion is, thus, relatively easy. The imperial system, on the other hand, makes conversion difficult. Quick, how many cups in a barrel of liquid? Who knows? Who cares? And what does a “chaldron” actually measure?

The Brits have had the metric system in their schools for over 40 years, and they have been giving up parts of the imperial system for quite some time now. Decimal money in the 1970s got rid of schillings, farthings and the six-pence. The BBC says, “the British thermal unit (Btu), the cran, the furlong, the horsepower, the hundredweight, the ton, and the degree Fahrenheit were dropped in 1980. And the Weights and Measures Act of 1963 abolished a set of measures that only historians would now recognise, including the drachm, scruple, minim, chaldron, quarter, rod, pole and perch.” To a fisherman, a rod is a pole and one uses it to catch a perch; to someone familiar with these odd units, that are all the same.

However, the produce vendors in Berwick Street have always sold carrots by the pound. Putting up a kilogram price wasn’t a big deal, but taking the imperial sign down was a bit too much for them. The Beeb also says, “Sunderland grocer Steve Thoburn inspired the ‘metric martyr’ movement with his defiance of the order to abandon the imperial measurements. In 2001, his scales were confiscated and he earned a criminal conviction for selling a pound of bananas from his market stall.” Mr. Thoburn has since passed away, but he’s certainly smiling down on this decision.

The metric system is used by the rest of the EU, and if the metric system is used side-by-side with the imperial one, there is no harm to anyone. And eventually, people will gravitate to the system they prefer, which is usually the easier. Someday, Britain will be metric, but Brussels’ chances of forcing them into it aren’t worth a groat.

Editor’s Note: The BBC gives the following definitions: “Dram or drachm: one sixteenth of an ounce; Scruple: one twenty-fourth of an ounce; Minim: one four hundred and eightieth of an ounce; Chaldron: 36 bushels; Perch or rod or pole: 5.5 yards; Cran: 37.5 gallons; Furlong: one eighth of a mile.”

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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