> > So I agree with you, wintermute. I believe that, since metric units are more logical (IMHO), they will over time take over in UK as they have elsewhere: There should be no need for legislation.
>
> From what I understand, many of the countries where the Metric system has taken over has only been through legislation.
>

Of course. I understand many important economic reforms have only been implemented, reluctantly and with much fuss, through the heavy hand of legislation. Switzerland, to take an unrelated example, is happily running five or six different medicare schemes which are completely divergent from one another (they range from completely privatized to completely public-funded). I imagine they'll stick with whatever system works in the end which causes the least amount of pain.

And that's the thing about the metric system. It works because it's so much easier to use, and it's way more logical than Imperial measures. But people are reluctant to give up what they're most familiar with (I mentioned all this before in that thread On Ideas). For example, without the *global* legislation that implemented the decimal system in all modern currencies, we might still be using stuff like the duodecimally-based farthing and ha'penny and guinea worth 21 shillings. Ick.

The way metrification is *supposed* to work is force the manufacturers and producers to label in metric (as well as in Imperial if they want). The crucial part is that at the same time, teach all schoolchildren according to the metric standard -- which they will prefer over the other method. When everyone who is old enough to remember guineas and farthings and Imperial measures eventually dies off, then bingo, you've standardized the country to Metric fairly painlessly.

Maybe the problem with having short-term human lifespans is that it never lets us look forward to experiencing many long-term socioeconomic benefits and scientific advances*.

Wolfspirit

*Such as launching a NASA space mission without mucking up the horrendously complicated trajectory calculations involved. They've done a conversion error at least twice now, which after flying more than 500 million kilometers to Mars, ended up by scrubbing the missions. Why NASA even lets engineers do critical time-velocity-force calculations in Imperial, which strikes me as stupid and dangerously imprecise, I have no idea.