|
Dear Pat
I have it on reasonably good authority from someone
who lives and works in Brussels that the so called "pint" being served in bars
and restaurants in that area is in fact half litre. They use the word pint for
the British customers. It would also like to mention that if in fact the Belgian
government were to legalise the 568 millilitre pint they would be in breach of
the European Directive on units of measurement. The derogation only allows
selected imperial units for specific purposes in member states that were using
them on 21st April 1971 (if memory serves) which basically means the UK and
Ireland.
Phil Hall
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, September 15, 2005 5:01
PM
Subject: [USMA:34478] Re: Long live the
good old British pint!
on
2005-09-06 22.16, Daniel at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:
Dear Daniel,
I have interspersed some remarks in blue.
Long live the good old British
pint!
This
will be quite a difficult for the pint to do since the
good
old British pint died as a measuring unit as soon as it was
defined as 568 millilitres. (To be clear on this point, I will call the
currently legal 568 millilitre pint, the 'metric pint', and I will refer to
all of the 'old pre-metric pints' as old pre-metric pints.) The
good old British pint died as soon as it became the
modern metric pint.
September 6 2005 at 10:38
AM
Tony Bennett
Long live the good
old British pint! - 05 September 2005
PRESSURE is mounting on
Britain to join Europe in using metric measures, and abolish the mile,
pint and acre in favour of kilometres, litres and
hectares.
All of
the old miles (nautical UK, USA, Irish, and Swedish) have already been
abolished. All of these and the many other old miles have been redefined in
terms of metric units. For example UK road engineers, who design and build
roads use millimetres for surface thicknesses, metres for road widths, and kilometres for road lengths, then
apply a factor of 1609.344 to place the mileposts at intervals of a metric
mile (Note: The metric mile is based on the same
1959 definitions as metric inches, metric feet, metric yards, and metric
chains). Of course applying these markers at metric
mile intervals simply gives the illusion that some sort of old pre-metric
miles are being used, but this is simply an illusion -- the engineers know
better.
The UK Government
has been reminded by the European Commission of its legal requirements
to set a date to convert into metric measures with the rest of
Europe.
To an outsider like me, here in Australia, the European
Commission is simply asking the government of the UK to be honest with the
citizens of Europe when they communicate in measuring terms. As a side issue,
they are possibly also politely suggesting that it might be a good idea for
the UK to be honest with their own citizens as well.
But Tom Wise, MEP
for the UK Independence Party in the Eastern Region, is fighting to
keep the imperial system of
measurements.
Metrication is a done deal. It's over. It's finished.
But it is still hidden in some activities in the UK.
The UK is now, and
has been for quite a while a fully metric country. It is only the hiding of
this fact from the public that the present debate continues. If Tom Wise wants
to reinstate imperial measures he will have to be honest enough to publicly
state that he wants to throw out the entire measuring infrastructure currently
relied on by the UK. For example the currently used metric inch will have to
go and this will need to be replaced by (yet another) definition of an inch
together with another government infrastructure department to support this new
'old pre-metric inch (and the new 'old pre-metric foot', new 'old pre-metric
yard', and the new 'old pre-metric chain).
He says it is
ridiculous that soon we may not be able to order a pint of
beer.
This is, of course, absolute
nonsense. You can order a pint of beer anytime you like. Of course, whether
you get a pint of beer is entirely another matter.
Lobbyists from the
beverage industry long ago (perhaps 1824 when the imperial pint was invented)
lobbied governments to make sure that when anyone ordered a pint, they got
somewhat less than a pint. This was achieved by writing into law the idea that
a pint could be served in a pint container, that is, a container that could
hold, to the brim, a pint of liquid. But beer is not liquid; it is liquid plus
froth and beer drinkers have long been cheated of a portion (about 10 % of
each beer). In the good old days, they were cheated out of about 2 ounces in
each pint, and, with the metric pint of 568 millilitres, they are routinely
served about 500 millilitres of beer in each pint they order.
If Tom
Wise wants to use the word 'pint' when he next orders a beer he might be well
advised to consider the Lewis Carroll quotation: 'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'
However if Tom Wise uses the word, pint, it will almost always be
less.
"The British
Government has now passed a law saying even the mention of imperial
measurements - pounds and ounces - will be illegal by 2009", he
said.
We
should note here the differences between the words that were used as old
pre-metric measures and the same words that are now defined in law. The old
pre-metric imperial pint is no longer legal for trade in the UK and to imply
that it is, is quite a strange thing for a politician to
do.
"It is
nonsense. Pubs will have to replace all the glasses which will cost a
fortune.
Well, he got the first bit right --
It is nonsense -- to suggest that glasses will
have to be replaced. The simple solution that would be made by an honest
politician and an honest government, who were intending to be open and honest
with their electorates, would simply require that glasses be marked at the 500
millilitre level. The only change necessary is to require an honesty mark on
the side of the glass and this could be phased in over as glass breakages
occurred.
There would be no need to change the size of the size of the
glass from its present legal size of 568 millilitres; there would be no need
to change glass making machinery; there would be no need to change glass
washing machinery. The only need for change would be to change from a long
well established dishonest mindset to a mindset that was open, honest, and
fair to British beer drinkers, and to put a small honesty mark on the side of
each glass.
"In the closest
pub to Brussels parliament you can ask for a pint and still get
one.
Of course you can ask for a
pint, but what you get will be legally determined by the publican, by the
local trade authorities, and by the Belgian government, and all of these
operate in metric units. However, these combined forces probably ensure that
if you ask for a pint in Brussels there is a good chance that you might
actually get 568 millilitres of beer. Note that this is not the case in
Britain where, I believe, that in about 95 % of pubs if you order a pint of
beer you will get somewhat less than the metric pint of 568
millilitres.
"I don't go in
pubs much, but I may make a point of going into a pub just to order a
pint.
It might be a good idea to also
measure how much you are served when you ask for a pint. And then check
whether there is more or less honesty in beer selling in Belgium as there is
in the UK.
"There is no
cause to go metric. It is another excuse to rip us off. They will have
to put the prices up to cover costs, and we will foot the bill for
that.
How much does honesty cost?
Might I respectfully suggest that honesty costs a lot less than the dishonesty
that you are promoting with its attendant obfuscation and confusion. Estimates
of the cost of the UK using part metric and part old pre-metric measures vary,
but a conservative estimate of what the confusion caused by multiple measuring
methods is costing the UK is about 15 % of GDP. This would make the cost to
the UK of not being fully metric about 150 billion British pounds per year
(£976 331 361 x
0.15 using 2004 estimates). Let me stress that this is an annual loss of
150 billion British pounds.
"If you order a litre of beer you will get drunk quicker but
you might not even be able to carry the glass!"
As you said earlier,
I don't go in pubs much, but if you did you would know
that a litre is a very rare size of beer to order anywhere in the world.
Probably the most common size is the half litre or 500 millilitres. Even in
the UK when people order a 'pint of beer, please' they actually receive close
to 500 mL of beer.
It is another
excuse to rip us off. This is fantasy
land.
As I
think I have made clear, when anyone orders a pint of beer in an English pub
they are almost always ripped off. This has been going on since the beverage
industry lobbied the 'pint to the brim' rule through government legislation
and regulation. I presume that when you contemplate the patience of British
drinkers tolerating this situation for generations you are referring to the UK
as a fantasy land.
Mr Wise has now
written to the European Commission to find out who is following up the
demand for change. Soon we won't be able to ask for a pint of milk or
five pounds of potatoes.
"This is pure fantasy
land."
There
will be no change. In the future, as now, when you ask for a pint of milk you
will receive 568 mL as this is the legal UK definition of a pint of milk.
Similarly, your pound of potatoes will be supplied to you as about 454 grams
and this will be weighed on legal scales that are now required to measure
using metric units.
There will be no change to this in future, the only
change being that the supplier will have to be more open, honest, and
transparent with their customers and sadly this does not come naturally to
many traders, and to some politicians.
It may trouble you that you are
getting a metric pint instead of an old pre-metric pint (or a metric pound
instead of an old pre-metric pound) but as I said previously, metrication is a
done deal; it is over; it is finished. All you can do is get with it, get over
it, and then get on with it.
The scrapping of
pounds and ounces in shops caused widespread
resentment.
Pounds and ounces were not
scrapped in shops. If any customer who ordered a pound of sausages in a
butcher's shop since 1965 was refused service by the butcher, I have yet to
hear of it. The fact is that honest metric measuring instruments were required
to replace all of the old imperial ones as they wore out. I am sure that
if, you as an old man, ordered a pound of cheese in a delicatessen in 20 years
time, you will be supplied with 454 grams, just as you would be supplied
now.
Be aware that what you are fighting against is the change in
language that occurs when some words are no longer relevant, just as you no
longer measure using the biblical words bath or cubit because these were
replaced long ago.
The danger is that in publicly regretting the loss
of some words, or the lesser use of these words, you are also openly attacking
the ideas ands concepts behind a fair, honest, and open system of measurement.
I can only hope that you do so in ignorance of the long history and well
developed procedures of modern metrology.
Neil
Herron, of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund, said: "Any government that
tries to introduce legislation to remove the British working man's
pint will be committing political suicide.
"People won't put up
with it and there would be mass demands to leave the European
Union".
As I said earlier, it is a long time since there has
been such a thing as British working man's
pint. Sure, many have
ordered a pint, but few have received one. If Neil Herron is unaware of this
common everyday deception, he should get out to the pub more often and observe
what actually happens when anyone orders a 'British working man's pint' please.
Britain promised
to introduce metric measurements in 1979, but was given a 'derogation'
allowing it to delay implementation of some if the
changes.
The country's
failure to propose a deadline is viewed in Brussels as a breach of the
spirit of its commitments.
The folk in Brussels are probably right in thinking
that Britain is playing strange delaying games. After all 26 years does seem a
trifle tardy.
[First
appeared in the Cambridge Evening
News]
|
