Imperial or Metric

Doesn't really matter which you use as long as you are comfortable with it and use the same units for the job in hand.

That's good, anno. I thought so, but some posters have seemed bothered by the fact that we are still in a transition period.

groats anyone?

'course not, Bags, just speculating!

I used to love doing the conversions from £ s d to all pence or yd ft ins to inches. We keep a log of how many MPG we get most of the time - especially on long journeys and we convert to MPG - work out how many miles to the Litre and then multiply by 4.546 but I do use a calculator to do it.
Very sad I know but I often convert prices back to old money - gives you a shock though - and I still cook in imperial although I have started making curtains using metric.

annobel, does it matter?

Nah.

When those measures were invented, the people using them probably only used one or two of them and didn't need to know about all the rest. Where money was concerned, most people only had to deal with pennies, halfpennies and farthing (fourthings). All perfectly sensible until we started getting richer in monetary terms and needed measurements for far more things because human lives got more complicated.

When the generation that grew up with £sd and stones, lbs and oz die, those will die too except as historical curiosities. Why fuss in the meantime? We've managed for forty years or so with both. What's another thirty? Or whatever it takes.

Maps are metric. Road signs will become so in time.

Woteva!

absent, they still measure horse races in furlongs. How many people know that a furlong is 220 yards or almost exactly 200 metres?

JessM Americans use imperial for lots of things – feet and inches, pounds and ounces, for example – and also use the Fahrenheit scale for temperature. However, an American pint is 16 fl oz whereas an imperial pint (the one used in our pubs) is 20 fl oz. There are still 2 pints in a quart and 4 quarts in a gallon but because the pints are smaller, so are US quarts and gallons.

Perhaps we should all return to the days of pecks and bushels and rods, poles and perches. I find it find it difficult to believe that we actually learned all these measurements at primary school by sitting chanting 22 yards, 1 chain; 10 chains, 1 furlong; 8 furlongs, 1 mile etc.

I dont have a clue about dress sizes either unless they are in 12, 14, format.

I used to teach science in the 1970s and schools were teaching metric then. No more confusing 12 inches to the foot, 3 feet the yard and all those difficult things we had to learn by rote when we were in school. Do you really think that was a good idea? Not to mention adding up and taking away in £Sd !
Arithmetic was very, much more problematic then than it is now.
Given that, the generation that were in school then still talk about height in imperial and ask for their newborn's weights to be translated into pounds. It will take a while for everyone to adjust it seems!
In essence we are metric and have been for decades, with the bizarre exception of miles.
The fact that the americans doggedly buck the trend and use imperial has occasionally caused VERY expensive mistakes in joint space projects etc I believe. ludicrous. Mathematics is the language of science and its units are metric. And we live in a scientific age.

Elctronic scales can be calibrated in either metric or imperial measures. One for new and one for old recipes. Of course, you need a cup measure for American recipes!
You are so right dahlia - mpg is meaningless when we buy our petrol in litres!

You could work it out - but it would frighten you! OH does it occasionally - "Do you know how much petrol is per gallon these days???"

I have old-fashioned scales with two sets of weights, one for old recipes, one set for the new metric recipes. Learned "office practice" in imperial and all those lovely names for paper e.g. quatro, octavo; returned to teach office practice after metrication, everything in mm and A4, A5 paper sizes. Husband is a builder, uses metric for many things, but still refers to "2 x 4's" and sometimes combines metric and imperial in one item!
One thing I don't understand, and suspect it is a bit of a ruse: Details of new cars always refer to m.p.g., whereas we only know the cost of petrol per litre - is this to deceive us?!

Typical of this country -- halfway through making a change we chicken out, as happened thirty years ago with the move to systematic measures.

I for one prefer metric, as it's so much easier. Years ago I qualified as a weighbridge user, in tons, hundredweights, quarters and pounds - a farcical collection of units! I wouldn't want to try it today.

I buy and cook food in metric units, petrol in litres (not that I cook petrol)
use paper and envelopes in metric sizes and read temperatures in Celsius.
But then I never was any good at mathematics...

Congratulations pammygran

Many congrats Pammygran. I know what it is like, our first is 5 weeks old and I have to resist the urge to show or e-mail EVERY photo!!

Never, I'm afraid....

Many thanks for lovely wishes re new 1st grandaughter...when does the overwhelming urge to bore friends to death with photos of her go??

This article, published in today's online Telegraph puts all the temps in Celsius. As one would expect.

Lots of weather forecasts give Fahrenheit temperatures when it's particularly hot as the higher number sounds hotter. 28°C = 82°F. However, I don't think that can be the reason at the moment yogagran.

I tend to "mix and match" depending on what I'm doing. But what I don't understand is The Daily Telegraph who used to give their temperatures in centigrade and have now taken a backward step and have reverted to using farenheit. Why?

I would like to be able to give my chest (it's not worthy of the name "bust") measurement in centimetres, and my hips in inches, but I suspect that would be cheating and possibly even contravene the trades descriptions act if it was on a dating website! (Which it definitely isn't).

Thanks, absent. i wondered (thus the ????) but couldn't be bothered to check mid post.

Just made a rice pud in Geneva-1 tbsp rice 2 tbsp sugar small carton of milk-use a bottle at home -500mls is more than a pint there runny pud not creamy. They ate it with enthusiasm-I do enjoy showing the French how good unfussy English food is