Measuring up to the logic of metric
RETURNING to imperial measurements (Mail) would be a retrograde step. I have great respect for the late Steve Thoburn, the greengrocer and market trader from Sunderland nicknamed the Metric Martyr, for sticking up for his belief in pounds and ounces. But whether it is Napoleonic or not, the metric system is far simpler. How daft to have to work with 16oz to 1lb, 14lb to one stone and 20 hundredweight to one ton. And some British units differ from American ones. There are 20 fl oz to a UK pint, but only 16 fl oz for an American one, making their pint and gallon smaller. I thought at the time that the government of the day ought to have made Britain metric on January 1, 1960, a date that is a nice round number. Children like me had been schooled in the imperial and metric systems so would have had no problem working with it. The metric system is so easy to grasp. As a simple test, measure the length of a table knife. Mine is 9in and 11/16ths in imperial measure. In metric, it is 246 mm, which I can read off immediately rather than checking with the end of the ruler to see if I am reading eighths, tenths, 12ths or 16ths. How many people know or care how much land a man and his ox could plough in one day in the Middle Ages? It’s an acre — a furlong times a chain — while a hectare is 100 metres square. We abandon metric at our peril, though, hypocritically, I still prefer my beer in a pint glass!
MARTIN HOOK, Ashford, Kent.
ADOPTING kilometres as the standard (Letters) would entail changing every road sign in the country at colossal cost. It couldn’t be done overnight so we would have an extended period when metric and imperial measures would both be in use, which would be confusing. The mistake was adding ad hoc metric measurements in the first place. The easiest and cheapest thing to do would be to remove metric measurements and make everything imperial.