Talk:Metrication in the United Kingdom

Miscellaneous other units

Some of these could be included - including London double decker buses, Wales (the country), an assortment of bottle and barrel sizes, hands (measuring horses), knots (shipping). Anna Livia (talk) 00:42, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

'London Buses' [assume this is the classic Routemaster] and Wales/Isle of Wight [along with 'Albert Halls', 'Wembley Stadiums' (are we talking of the old or new one now?) 'Nelson’s Column' and so on] are 'illustrative measures', mainly used by journalists when they think their readers wouldn't understand/couldn't be arsed to calculate a particular size. Which in their defence, is perhaps worth doing if dealing with measures outside of he 'range of normal human behaviour' - which in measures I'd guess is larger than a domestic house or heavier than a flat-pack bit of furniture [But I won't forgive any journo who talks of stuff in 'bags of sugar' because that is a kilo]. This was in fact one of the arguments Orwell made against the metric system - that Imperial has more of these built-in. For example, there's sod all between a litre and a kilolitre. So it might have been an idea for a few more 'tonne' [1000kg] solutions; such as a 'metric gallon' [5l] or 'furlong' [200m] - not technically part of the SI system, but following the spirit of it. But this can then be countered that these days a lot of stuff is standardised to the point we can use that as a measure, like 'bottle of wine' [750ml], 'big bottle of Coke' [2l], 'loaf of bread' [800g] or 'small paperback' ['A'/Penguin; 10x18cm].

But obviously I was limited to what I could put in otherwise the page would get too long. However, I am toying with adding a 'Current situation' para at the bottom, noting the successes/failures and the trajectory. Because I don't think the media coverage [ie the tweed-arsed folks at the Torygraph etc] actually get just how far along we are [ironically, one of the crank sites does, noting that basically Imperial is going to go under entirely soon without direct govt support] and for illustrative purposes for American readers. KarmaPolice (talk) 13:26, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Possibly a note that 'units of convenience' exist, with a couple of examples, would suffice.

Then there are the composite units - rubber bands measured in inches long and mm wide. Anna Livia (talk) 18:15, 13 November 2024 (UTC)

Yes, though I'm more inclined to put that in the master metric system page - that 'soft metrification' allows older customary sizes to continue [which I've pointed out re: jam and coffee - and sausages, oddly enough]. There's other examples around the world where older customary units were metrified and continued in informal use, for example in Germany their 'pound' denotes 500g. KarmaPolice (talk) 19:12, 13 November 2024 (UTC)