OK, I was reading through old threads and this one caught my eye.

Recently, European law made it illegal to sell or advertise anything* in imperial measures. This makes it illegal to display imperial measures on packaging, even if it's only to help people out who don't understand the metric system.

The offical reason for this change is that the citizens of other European nations do not understand the imperial system. My response: I don't understand French. They should make English the mandatory European language.

I was taught metric measures exclusively in school, and picked up imperial measures in common life. I'm aware of the conversion rates between the different units, but it takes a few minutes for me to work out that 450g of sausages is a pound. People only 10 years older than me can quite comfortably have gone through their entire life without ever needing to understand SI units, and they are understandably confused and upset by this change.

Basically, I have always thought that metric measures seemed more "abstract", by which I mean that I was never given an opportunity to see how much a kilogram actually weighed, whereas I have a much more concrete idea of the weight of a pound.

The British Government is doing its best to ensure that these standards are uphelp, to the point of having prosecuted a greengrocer in Sunderland for selling bananas by the pound. However, most traders who don't deal in pre-packaged goods ignore this and continue to mark their prices in imperial units despite the threat of a fine (or even a prison sentence) because they don't want to confuse their customers.

The point of this post is to say that despite being young enough to understand the metric system, I am still unable to conduct my daily life in metric measures without spending 10 minutes converting back to imperial units everytime I walk into a shop. And this is being forced onto us for the convenience of foreigners!

winter"The metric system might be better recieved in Britain if it wasn't French"mute

*Beer and milk my be sold by the pint. Road vehical distances and speeds are measured in miles and yards. Petrol (gasoline) may still be sold by the gallon. Horse races are still measured in miles and furlongs. They are the only exceptions I can think of.