Metricviews

Yesterday, the National Audit Office (NAO) criticised the UK Department for Transport (DfT) for its unfounded claims about the benefits of the proposed high speed rail project HS2. In this article, Ronnie Cohen identifies another unfounded claim by the DfT … Continue reading → 1

After many recent setbacks, it is pleasing to report a small but significant bit of progress in the long campaign to make the metric system (SI) the default system of measurement in the UK.  This minor (but perhaps somewhat pyrrhic) … Continue reading → 28

UKIP’s recent electoral successes have resulted, quite rightly, in increased scrutiny of its policies. Here, we take a look at a recent statement by the Party’s Trade spokesman on the subject of measurement units. Ronnie Cohen recently contacted the major … Continue reading → 3

This is the title of a recent article by Robert Peston, the BBC’s Business Editor. Clearly, successive UK governments over the years have failed to steer the country away from the latter and towards the former. We suggest a simple … Continue reading → 11

Miles, yards, feet and inches, pints, pounds and stones. Yes, fifty years after the UK embarked on the metric transition, we still need to be familiar with some of those old units.  In this article, Ronnie Cohen looks at some … Continue reading → 2

The race has been run. Pictures and commentary have been broadcast around the world, and millions will have formed an impression of Britain in 2013. Ronnie Cohen asks if more could have been made of this opportunity to publicise UK … Continue reading → 13

The measurement mess in Britain is in itself reason enough for the discontinued use of stones and pounds for personal body mass (commonly weight), but is there a case for using kilograms that goes beyond this? This article proposes that … Continue reading → 24

This article looks back to the findings and recommendations of the 1895 Parliamentary Select Committee on weights and measures. In 1895, a Parliamentary Select Committee, appointed to look into the system of weights and measures, concluded that the time had … Continue reading → 26

On EU product labels, metric units are mandatory whereas non-metric units are optional. On US product labels, both metric and US customary (USC) units are mandatory for most products. So a company that wants to sell a product in the EU … Continue reading → 4

A key point of President Obama’s State of the Union address on 13 February was the proposed EU-US trade agreement, which has been under preliminary discussion for the past year. (See http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/13/state-of-the-union-free-trade-europe).  As this agreement is supposed to remove regulatory … Continue reading → 22

The question of adopting metric measures in the UK is not a new proposition; in 1862 Parliament’s Select Committee on Weights and Measures considered the matter and came down firmly in favour of metrication. A century and a half later, … Continue reading → 7

The claim is often made by last-ditch defenders of miles, feet, pints and acres that “Imperial units are natural whereas metric units are artificial”.   In the first of an occasional series of articles on “myths, misinformation and fallacies” used by … Continue reading → 14

On 11 February, Bloomberg reported that China had overtaken the US in global trade. One of our readers has now drawn our attention to additional information on this subject. This was the news story that appeared on 11 February: “China … Continue reading → 4

One of our regular readers, John Frewen-Lord, a retired quantity surveyor, has attempted to answer this question. In this article JF-L refers to the junior Education Minister’s suggestion that there would be more teaching of imperial units in the future … Continue reading → 35

In June last year, we published a time line up to 1980 showing progress towards the adoption of a single, simple, logical and coherent measurement system in the British Isles. We now bring this story up to date. 1980 onwards … Continue reading → 7