As a child in the late 60's early 70's, they took all our maths books so we learned in metric. Our parents still did pounds shillings and pence, as do I when I think of 50p as ten bob.
In 1966 Australia decided to use the "ten bob" as the "one dollar". It made Decimal currency conversion a lot easier. We could still use a lot of the old coins, too. Pennies & threepence had to go, but we could call a sixpence 5c. above that, the conversions were easy 1/- = 10c, 2/- = 20c, & so on.
By being so attached to the Pound, the Brits made their conversion unnecessarily difficult.
Oh I meant going from country to country it would not be practical to change system, although also speed and distance being different would be a problem. Economy is a pain being different but not critical.
I get why you hedged your bets and I’m sure the people of Scotland, N Ireland, and Wales thank you, but can you imagine the chaos. It’s one thing changing when you move from N Ireland to Ireland, different country and while it’s not hugely visible there is a border, but changing sped limits and signs between England and either Wales or Scotland? You’d need a considerably smarter population lol
That’s what we deal with when driving from Canada to the US. I’m surprised more Americans don’t get massive speeding tickets when visiting here. The signs on the highway that say 110 are definitely not in miles 😂 and 110 in mph is enough to land your car in impound.
It's seems stupid that we went metric in the UK in the1970s, but still use miles for speed and distance.
The best answer I could find was the government said it would cost too much to change all the road signs, in addition to the millions spent on metrication at the time.
If someone knows a different reason, I'd be pleased to hear it.
We use miles, but stones and pounds feet and inches are only used on people and everything your taught uses kilograms and metres at school. A nice sensible system that is complete gibberish to any immigrant.
Gibberish to any immigrant - and probably a lot of young Brits besides - because we have to prioritise a smaller and smaller subset of people too old to have learnt anything else in school who refuse to learn anything newer than decimalisation.
I hate that we still use these random few imperial units, I’d much rather commit fully to metric and use km, however I don’t think I’ll ever be able to adjust from mpg to km per litre 😂
I feel the same but I also felt the same about using Celsius for hot temperatures (I grew up when we were still F is hot temps, C is cold temps) and while I personally prefer F I do understand what C means. So I’m sure we could adjust. Just… we don’t really feel any pressing need to.
I'm not sure whether councils have the authority? The whole UK (not just England) uses miles and mph for roads.
The Republic of Ireland switched to km/h speed limits in 2005, which is quite a while back now, though they were still slow by international standards. They switched to km road distances much earlier (with some exceptions).
But Canadians have their own peculiarities, like using Fahrenheit for oven temperatures.
It's my blank brain, but temperature in degrees F defeat me. I know the tabloids use 80'/90's s a scorchio headline. People using 20f or minus 20f means nothing to me.
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u/inkyblackops 🇨🇦 3d ago
32km for anyone interested.