Johnson rewriting the Ministerial Code.

[Workingman]

Take a long hard look. Because what Boris just did is the merest twilight twinkling star in the face of the full desert sunlight of an attack on our democracy carried out by the very people we are supposed to trust to uphold and protect it

What? Are you on, some sort of mind bending drugs? He has just trashed our democracy for his own ends, it's Boris or bust.

This man, and his supporters, you, are a threat to our democracy. We remoaners might have lost, but you winners ain't doing so good - trade deal with Indiana - good one - any more?. Kiribati, Tuvalu.... big players eh?

[Workingman]

Now we learn that he wants to bring back pounds and ounces. The idiot is an intellectual amoeba. What next, counting in Roman numerals, payments in groats and farthings, tithes, hair shirts for us peasants?

Give him an inch and he'll take eight furlongs or one third of a league.

Give me four gills of whatever he's drinking at his parties.

[cromwell]

I have said a few times on here that we are heading for an authoritarian future and the latest moves just add to that feeling.

[miasmum]

I've never moved on to metric so I am quite happy to have pounds and ounces, feet and inches back, thank you very much

[medsec222]

I don't mind either way now. However, if I remember rightly shopkeepers were banned from using Imperial measurements once we had joined the EU, so if Boris wants to bring back choice then I can't see why people are complaining.

[Workingman]

The UK started going metric long before the EEC or EU. Industry and the Sciences started using metric and SI units in 1962 and the Weights and Measures Act (1963) ended reliance on national physical standards for imperial measures. UK law.

I was at secondary school in the mid 60s and was taught both systems side by side in the expectation the UK would go fully metric as planned by 1973. Again, before EEC and EU. We never did, though.

We ended up with a hybrid system of some things metric and some Imperial hence miles for distance, miles per hour for speed, sq yards of carpets, pints in pubs and pints of milk. Shopkeepers, builders, or anybody for that matter, were never banned from using Imperial units. All that EU rules stated was that goods could not be sold only in national units - there had to be a metric equivalence displayed.

[Workingman]

I've never moved on to metric so I am quite happy to have pounds and ounces, feet and inches back, thank you very much

Shell, of course you moved on.... you just might not have realised it. Nearly everything you buy is in metric. A litre of milk. A 750g box of cereals. A 70cl bottle of wine. 2 litres of pop. 1 litre of fuel, 1kg or rice. 1 metre of cloth, a metre³ of gas or water.

All that you have been doing is using English descriptive nouns for those things; a bag of rice, a box of cereal, a bottle of pop, a loaf of bread, a unit of gas, but they were all metric.

[medsec222]

I was watching Nana Akua on GB news just before and they were talking about this very thing. Lembit Opik said he had saved the pint. He said that he went to Brussels at the time metric was coming into law to make a plea for the pint of milk. He assured the panel that Brussels agreed to this and it is one of the few items that could legally be referred to in terms of a pint. He took full credit for it so I presume he is entirely correct in what he said.

[Workingman]

If he "saved" it when did you last see a pint of milk (568ml) on sale?

[medsec222]

Not for a long time Frank - but perhaps he meant if a shopkeeper actually called it a pint of milk he wouldn't be prosecuted as no law would be broken.

And Frank - who goes into the pub and asks for half a litre of beer?

Mind you - it is a while since I went to the pub so perhaps they do!