Also, the agency that I work through for the bank, when they sent me directions to their office, gave distances ONLY in metres. No yards mentioned at all.
David King
Stephen Humphreys wrote:
Is this for real?
Most people of all ages refer to distances in miles or yards.
eg, "you want to go to the Red Lion pub? It's just 200 yds on the left"
I'd agree that yards and metres are both synonymous in short distances, but to imagine that most people say "The pub you want is just 200 metres on the left" is pure fantasy.
I'm not saying that no-one says 'metres' but to claim that most people do? Sorry - not in the UK that I know.
TV, newspapers and road signs use yards - so its quite rare to hear metres being used - its seldom "advertised" so to speak.
Kilometres are never used.
'metres' are forced by the state to be used in carpet stores though (although yards can be used supplementary for the populous to use).
Feet and inches are all over the place.
"Youth" radio "Radio one" yesterday covered the shark attack on some British bloke in South Africa(?) and the show quoted it as a 13 foot long shark.
They also recently described how much water should be consumed in pints during a workout.
There are many many examples of imperial being used all around the place in the UK.
I'm sorry - but you'd have to go looking for metric - although you can see petrol being sold in litres, car engine sizes quoted in litre or cc ('cc' for the official stuff), litres of drink in bottles etc.
Please don't advertise that the UK is really really metric - from a pro-metric US person's perspective it's misleadingly encouraging - for a pro-imperial or pro-choice person it just looks silly.
SteveH
From: David King <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> Subject: [USMA:32578] UK is more metric than some think Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2005 21:59:14 +0100
I recently started working for an American company, a major investment bank, in the City of London. Unfortunately they use inches a lot for documents, which I am working at creating or editing. On the first day of training, the trainer, who was English, apologised for this, saying something like "I know you are probably used to using metric, but as it is an American company they use inches".
Today I had my health and safety induction, a one hour presentation carried out by a man who was English and in his 50s. He spoke of distances only in metres, no mention of yards or other old-fashioned units at all. The only time he used imperial was to quote the pressure of a fire extinguiser, which in pounds per square inch meant absolutely nothing to me whatsoever. He did say though that the fire extinguishers contain 2 kg of CO2. Again, metric only. So it seems that in many places amongst English people, metric is pretty much becoming the norm for at least 90% of things.
It is also becoming much more the norm to hear people in general speak of distances in metres (and only in metres) to refer to short distances. They still tend to use miles though for longer distances, as our road signs use miles. If they used km then people would mostly use kilometres, I believe. I so very rarely hear yards or feet any more for distances. And I hear a lot more of millimetres and centimetres instead of inches.
David King
