Still a muddle, as they say.
"They" <> friends, family, work colleagues and people I meet ;-)
I believe there is more sympathy for the point of view that Britain is in a
measurement muddle than you might think. A few months ago the subject was
talked about on local radio. People phoning in and contributing frequently
ackowledged this whether or not they liked metric. In terms of people of my
acquaintance I have generally found agreement once the issue is raised even
though they dont spend much time thinking about it normally.
I think it's fair to say that people in Britain are inclined to recognise
that inches one minute and cm the next sometimes in the same context is
silly and sometimes downright inconvenient. I can remember years ago work
colleagues bitterly complaining about the mix of whitworth and metric
threaded nuts and bolts in the spares box. This was at a time when the firm
I worked for then were slowly adopting metric and the fittings were being
introduced. If the "pro-choicers" had their way this situation would persist
for ever.
Phil Hall
