leicsmac Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 7 minutes ago, bovril said: I honestly don't know how much a pound and an ounce is. Pint is fine. But I doubt many people of my age work out stuff in pounds and ounces. I do, because being able to do conversions on the hop is a good idea...but it would be really nice to not have to do them in the first place. 7 minutes ago, Buce said: Yeah, none of this base ten nonsense - let's get back to measuring things in relation to dead monarch's limbs etc. Exactly. Join the US, Liberia, Myanmar and....um...guys? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davieG Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 12 minutes ago, leicsmac said: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/01/now-sovereign-nation-must-bring-back-imperial-units/ Why don't we just use parsecs for everything to simplify stuff? That way the local pub is only a few femtoparsecs away, right? Or moles for measuring mass and weight? Much simpler! One of the reasons I was positive about the Common Market was the vision of harmonisation of measures especially in engineering / manufacturing as it was becoming a real pain to design products for UK, European and Far East markets, I don't think our USA exports were that great as they had massive manufacturing capability. Mind you all that's changed now and our own engineering relies mainly on niche markets to survive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davieG Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 6 minutes ago, leicsmac said: I do, because being able to do conversions on the hop is a good idea...but it would be really nice to not have to do them in the first place. Exactly. Join the US, Liberia, Myanmar and....um...guys? Not all the USA measures match ours, I don't know about other countries Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 4 minutes ago, davieG said: One of the reasons I was positive about the Common Market was the vision of harmonisation of measures especially in engineering / manufacturing as it was becoming a real pain to design products for UK, European and Far East markets, I don't think our USA exports were that great as they had massive manufacturing capability. Mind you all that's changed now and our own engineering relies mainly on niche markets to survive. Yes. Lack of standardisation leads to problems. Like the loss of $125 million Mars orbiters, for instance: http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/ Remember hearing about that one in my Masters course and the class sort of...collective facepalmed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webbo Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 I'm pro metric too. We learnt it at school back in the 70s. It's about time the road signs and everything else were converted to it. Having said that , I couldn't tell you my height or weight in metric measures. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 4 minutes ago, Webbo said: I'm pro metric too. We learnt it at school back in the 70s. It's about time the road signs and everything else were converted to it. Good. So where is this clamour for needless, potentially damaging lack of standardisation coming from? (Rhetorical question above, don't need to answer.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Webbo Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 1 minute ago, leicsmac said: Good. So where is this clamour for needless, potentially damaging lack of standardisation coming from? (Rhetorical question above, don't need to answer.) Some people are like that. I don't care what colour the cover of my passport is either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strokes Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 4 minutes ago, Webbo said: I'm pro metric too. We learnt it at school back in the 70s. It's about time the road signs and everything else were converted to it. Having said that , I couldn't tell you my height or weight in metric measures. Yeah we are a strange bunch really, I only learnt metric at school but couldn't tell you my height or weight in metric. We get plans of work commencing at in my job, sometimes in metres and millimetres, sometimes feet and inches. Bizarre! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 10 minutes ago, Strokes said: Yeah we are a strange bunch really, I only learnt metric at school but couldn't tell you my height or weight in metric. We get plans of work commencing at in my job, sometimes in metres and millimetres, sometimes feet and inches. Bizarre! Yeah, and sometimes that lack of standardisation has consequences - as above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strokes Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 4 minutes ago, leicsmac said: Yeah, and sometimes that lack of standardisation has consequences - as above. Funny though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 40 minutes ago, Strokes said: Funny though. I'm not entirely sure that the project managers and/or bean counters would agree with that. That being said, when it was mentioned to the class I was in there was some laughter - but mainly the type you get when you can't quite believe someone has been so fvcking stupid and needless. Very similar to what happened while they were making NOAA-19. Whoops. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Strokes Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 Just now, leicsmac said: I'm not entirely sure that the project managers and/or bean counters would agree with that. That being said, when it was mentioned to the class I was in there was some laughter - but mainly the type you get when you can't quite believe someone has been so fvcking stupid and needless. Very similar to what happened while they were making NOAA-19. Whoops. All measurements should be in thumb widths from now on Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davieG Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 They should have got a smart meter Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leicsmac Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 6 minutes ago, Strokes said: All measurements should be in thumb widths from now on Nah, all about the parsec. The one true, unchanging method of measuring length. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buce Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 Although I'm perfectly capable of working in metric measurements, like many of my generation, I'm still quite old school (I still refer to 50p as 10 bob, for example). Anyway, a few years back I went into a hardware store and asked for a length of two by one. The guy looked down his nose at me and said, "we only work in metric measurements, sir - you'll be wanting 50mm x 25mm". "Ok", I said, "I'll take a length of that". "Certainly, sir", he replied, "will that be 6 foot or 8?" We're an odd people, we Brits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Buce Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 FFS. Less than a week since Article 50 was triggered, and already we are sabre-rattling at our neighbours: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/02/britain-and-eu-worse-off-without-brexit-deal-says-michael-fallon “Thirty-five years ago this week, another woman prime minister sent a taskforce halfway across the world to defend the freedom of another small group of British people against another Spanish-speaking country, and I’m absolutely certain that our current prime minister will show the same resolve in standing by the people of Gibraltar,” (Michael) Howard told Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davieG Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 13 minutes ago, Buce said: Although I'm perfectly capable of working in metric measurements, like many of my generation, I'm still quite old school (I still refer to 50p as 10 bob, for example). Anyway, a few years back I went into a hardware store and asked for a length of two by one. The guy looked down his nose at me and said, "we only work in metric measurements, sir - you'll be wanting 50mm x 25mm". "Ok", I said, "I'll take a length of that". "Certainly, sir", he replied, "will that be 6 foot or 8?" We're an odd people, we Brits. Whenever I'm measuring something up for diy I often mix up the measurements using both. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Doctor Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 5 hours ago, leicsmac said: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/04/01/now-sovereign-nation-must-bring-back-imperial-units/ Why don't we just use parsecs for everything to simplify stuff? That way the local pub is only a few femtoparsecs away, right? Or moles for measuring mass and weight? Much simpler! I'd like to hope that's an April fools joke (URL has it as April 1st even if the header claims this morning) but then again: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-poll-leave-voters-death-penalty-yougov-results-light-bulbs-a7656791.html 48% of leave voters want to return to imperial, and 9% want to return to pre-decimal currency. Having said that, the last time we had the death penalty, dark blue passports, the imperial system, corporal punishment, incandescent light-bulbs, no smoking ban and a pre-decimal currency was 1965, so maybe they're just gunning for a return to then for a world cup win next year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thracian Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 2 hours ago, The Doctor said: I'd like to hope that's an April fools joke (URL has it as April 1st even if the header claims this morning) but then again: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-poll-leave-voters-death-penalty-yougov-results-light-bulbs-a7656791.html 48% of leave voters want to return to imperial, and 9% want to return to pre-decimal currency. Having said that, the last time we had the death penalty, dark blue passports, the imperial system, corporal punishment, incandescent light-bulbs, no smoking ban and a pre-decimal currency was 1965, so maybe they're just gunning for a return to then for a world cup win next year. Poll turns out wrong shock! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Doctor Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 27 minutes ago, Thracian said: Poll turns out wrong shock! How has this poll turned out wrong? Fortunately the 1 in 21 leave voters who think we should pay a shilling for a public execution aren't in charge. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Innovindil Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 Fvck going back to imperial I've just spent 4 years learning engineering in metric Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Doctor Posted 2 April 2017 Share Posted 2 April 2017 1 minute ago, Innovindil said: Fvck going back to imperial I've just spent 4 years learning engineering in metric pfft, I'm sure you can work in degrees rankine (Farenheit above absolute zero, possibly the stupidest temperature system ever devised) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Thracian Posted 3 April 2017 Share Posted 3 April 2017 On 01/04/2017 at 18:56, Alf Bentley said: To be honest, at the time I don't think I had a firm opinion. I was busy doing stuff like setting up self-employed, buying a house, getting married, having a kid - and getting pissed too much. I wasn't paying too much attention to football, never mind politics. Now, I'm glad we didn't join. EMU/Eurozone seems to operate like too much of a straitjacket, artificially benefiting the more developed nations like Germany and not helping the less developed to grow and compete. I'm no expert on economics, but it seems like there hadn't been enough convergence between different parts of Europe for that to work well without putting fiscal policy (tax and spend) much more on an EU level - and doing more redistribution from the richer nations to the poorer. There wouldn't have been political support for that, so they fell between 2 stools - and Southern Europe, in particular, lost out.. It then got even worse when there was less money around after the 2008 crash. The EU had done a great job helping under-developed European nations to stabilise and converge (to the benefit of the whole continent), until EMU/Eurozone was fully launched....prematurely and in a way that isn't working very well. It'll be interesting to see if they manage to reform it. Of course, we have one man to thank for avoiding joining the Euro.....not only was he the man who "saved the world" after the crash, but he saved us from the Euro when Blair wanted to join....step forward, Gordon Brown! Couldn't agree more on that - and thought he was entirely right at the time - but he didn't do so well selling a great chunk of the nation's gold when specific, widespread, expert advisors knew and told him it was only going up in price. Pity he couldn't have got 2/2. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bovril Posted 3 April 2017 Share Posted 3 April 2017 18 hours ago, Buce said: FFS. Less than a week since Article 50 was triggered, and already we are sabre-rattling at our neighbours: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/apr/02/britain-and-eu-worse-off-without-brexit-deal-says-michael-fallon “Thirty-five years ago this week, another woman prime minister sent a taskforce halfway across the world to defend the freedom of another small group of British people against another Spanish-speaking country, and I’m absolutely certain that our current prime minister will show the same resolve in standing by the people of Gibraltar,” (Michael) Howard told Sophy Ridge on Sunday on Sky News. Excellent start to the negotiations. Maybe this son of an immigrant is worried he'll be kicked out of the country soon. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alf Bentley Posted 3 April 2017 Share Posted 3 April 2017 27 minutes ago, bovril said: Excellent start to the negotiations. Maybe this son of an immigrant is worried he'll be kicked out of the country soon. Deport Portillo now! Coming over here, taking our British broadcasting jobs, causing over-crowding on our public transport.... Things were better in the old days, guv, back when that Lord Palmerston was in charge. He'd have sent a gunboat to the Rock! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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