Comments on: Will the new Parliament be more pro-metric?

By: Sean Weisthall

Sean Weisthall — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 13:46:24 +0000

I hate to say it – but with a list of ‘things to do’ for the next government (hung or Tory) right in the middle of a recession – do you HONESTLY THINK “getting rid of measures based on imperial” will rank that highly? Really?

And to Jeremiah – I’m afraid that Tabitha has more choice than you think regarding seeing imperial measures on the sides of things and spoken about – which is a disgrace!

So can we =please= not put our heads in the sand regarding 1) The likelihood of a new government spending ANY time on metrication and 2) The fantasy that we’re “all but there” (like – what are we complaining about exactly?).

The fight is far from over, I’m afraid.

By: Mark preston

Mark preston — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 18:15:24 +0000

With a hung parliament appearing to be the likely outcome of the forthcoming general election perhaps now is an ideal opportunity for metrication to come to the fore.

Assuming that neither Labour nor the Conservatives win enough seats for a clear majority they will either need to rule as a minority or more likely form a coalition with a junior partner.

Let us assume that the most likely candidate for junior partner is the Liberal Democrats (fairly supportive of metrication). They will want a number of concessions from the other party if they are to offer their support.

I imagine that they will be in a strong position to request certain provisions – changes to voting system, senior cabinet post(s), university funding etc. What if they also demand that the government makes a statement that they will finally complete the process of metrication here in the UK ?

I don’t imagine that either Labour or the Conservatives would allow a possible coalition to collapse on such a demand. They would rather bite the bullet and form a coalition – it is not such a point of strong opinion in either party.

Therefore, could a hung parliament and a Lab-Lib or Con-Lib coalition result in progress in this area, I don’t think we could rule it out although pressure would perhaps need to be exerted on parties ?

By: John Steele

John Steele — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 11:23:07 +0000

Ezra,
The products regulated by FTC and the FDA are the products which fall under FPLA. They must regulate in the sense of providing detailed rules that conform to the general “umbrella” sense of what Congress passed.

They and NIST do not by themselves have the power to authorize permissive-metric-only, because the current law requires dual. Permissive-metric-only has never been brought to Congress by Dept. of Commerce (which NIST is within). The proposal has existed since 2002, with minor tweaks in 2004, but has been sitting for 6 years because “the time wasn’t right.” (I think mostly (irrational) opposition from FMI.)

If 48 of 50 States have approved the same words for things regulated by the States, you’d expect it to pass Congress with a wide margin, but no one would ever accuse them of being sensible, so who knows.

I am not optimistic it will ever be brought to Congress, and given other metric backtracking, like the removal of metric from the MUTCD, there would be a risk in bringing it Congress. We could be back to USC only and metric forbidden on consumer goods.

The best hope for this to pass was the EU Directive, and they gave away their bargaining chip. They should have insisted on “tit for tat” and not yielded on supplemental UNTIL Congress passed permissive-metric only. They have folded before at ten year intervals and we have NEVER delivered on what they thought we would. (Fool me twice, shame on me.) I will go out on a limb and predict Congress has still not passed it when the EU reviews the Directive in 2019.

By: Martin Vlietstra

Martin Vlietstra — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 09:29:04 +0000

Tabitha wrote “Let’s hope the new conservative government puts a stop to metrication as far as is practically possible”

How far would it be practical to roll back metrication? How would we teach maths in the schools? With calculators or without? In fact, teaching children how to add up pounds and ounces using calculators, then asking them to add up kilograms will make firm metric converts of all of them (unless of course Tabitha knows something about teaching that I don’t know).

Or the other hand, she might be happy wallowing in her ignorance, in which case I suggest that she reads George Orwell’s 1984 and ask herself whether or not we are turning out a nation of sheep?

By: Tony

Tony — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 08:35:52 +0000

It seems to me that the UK has 3 options. 1. We continue with this insane and expensive muddle in which two incompatible systems are used. We will have another generation which does not fully understand the relationships between different weights and measures, and the UK will continue at a disadvantage against our better educated economic rivals. 2. We bite the bullet and finish the job we started 50 years ago and dump the old imperial units which ever larger numbers of people don’t understand, and move on. 3. We kill our entire manufacturing industry by turning the clock back and resurrecting the imperial system, ensuring that our goods will be impossible to export and our population will be utterly confused by the use of bizarre old units.
I would hope that any new government would see that continuing to drag out the job is not in our interests, and we should just finish the job of metrication that my great-grandparents’ generation started.

By: Seares

Seares — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 01:00:24 +0000

Wouldn’t surprise me if David Cameron suddenly announced the conservatives would go back to L S D money if they thought it might garner a few votes from the unthinking masses. Why can every (almost every) country see the sense of metrication while we stick in the mud of muddled measures?

By: Jeremiah

Jeremiah — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:53:40 +0000

Putting a stop to metrication does not mean reversing what has changed. Tabitha will still have to endure metric weather forcasts, products in the markets that are rounded metric and labeled in metric only, deli scales and pricing that are metric only.

In order for Tabitha to be happy she will have to spend her entire day staring at road signs and nights going to the pub and asking for pints of beer. Anything else she will have to accept that it is metric and will remain that way.

By: A

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:14:15 +0000

I don’t understand why people are assuming that after the election, it will be a Conservative government in power. Its not like they are the clear favourites and points ahead from everyone else. It can still go either way.

I do not believe that if the Conservatives were to get in power that they would reverse Metrication. How many years have they been in power since Metrication?

Metrication started in 1965 under a Labour government and the Conservatives have been in power for a combined 22 years and Metrication has only continued in one slow, arduous direction. If anything, the Conservatives if they got in power, would want to continue this trend or they would be accused of deliberately sabotaging the British economy and would come up against resistance from many groups and businesses. It would not make sense for them to regress and surely they would see that it would have a negative impact on the country and on their image.

It has to be noted that the Conservatives claimed to be the party of the NHS – a Metric exclusive institution. Imagine the backlash from Britains biggest employer?

By: Tabitha Jones

Tabitha Jones — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:31:11 +0000

Let’s hope the new conservative government puts a stop to metrication as far as is practically possible.

[We don't normally publish purely negative comments, but Tabitha actually raises an interesting question: Supposing the Conservatives did win and tried to put the clock back, what could they actually do? This will be the subject of a future MetricViews article. - Editor]

By: Ezra Steinberg

Ezra Steinberg — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 18:48:05 +0000

Well, most other items not regulated by the FPLA fall under the UPLR.

As I re-read the announcement I linked to amending the UPLR, I was reminded that some items are regulated by the Federal Trade Commission and others by the Food and Drug Administration.

I’m not sure where voluntary metric-only labeling efforts stand for those products. I’ll try and find out.

Welcome to the regulatory muddle that is these United States of America!