http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesures_usuelles

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement

Germany may have made the change legally after 1842:

http://home.fonline.de/fo0126/geschichte/groessen/mas1.htm

However, the recycled non-metric units are not legal in trade and are not supported:

http://www.ptb.de/en/publikationen/download/einheiten-e.pdf

The pfund (500 g) has not been a legal unit since 1884 (see page 5).

There may be others. Of course doing this prolongs the use of the old unit names among those who are comfortable with the names, but it does allow the rest of the economy to move on by eliminating old measuring equipment and the need to dual label and dual price.

It would seem though that metrication has eliminated most of the old units and only one or two, such as the pound linger on. The “inch” (UK/US version) has been introduced in many countries as a trade name for describing TV/Monitor viewing areas and in such areas as plumbing. Except that in plumbing, products are sold and measured in metric and the inch is just used as a non-measured trade name for the size of pipe and fittings. Yet, the names don’t apply to any actual size.

I’ll stick my neck out and say that in no country that has recycled old names in this fashion will there be found dual scales or dual pricing. This saves enormous cost.

As I said, whatever the old unit names become recycled to, they should never be legal and all non-SI units should be completely removed from legal status under the WMA.

It would be nice if everyone just moved forward, but there are those that just can’t or won’t and they will demand a compromise. Since the squeaky wheel always gets the oil, they will be given what they want. All the rest of us can hope for is that it doesn’t interfere with our rights to be exposed to a complete metric experience in the job and in the market.

Because they have no logical reason otherwise and this excuse seems to hit a nerve with those who are insecure and find comfort in customs and practices of their ancestors.

I know of no country or people that have become less of their perceived identity because they adopted metric measures. But I have seen milliards of people world-wide depart from many of their historical traditions and adopt either American, European or other ways that are considered modern, twentieth century or even twenty-first century.

How often, other then festivals or for the tourists, do you ever see people dressing in traditional garb or eating only their historical cuisine. Some do, but many don’t. Indian women tend to still dress in Saris, but the men dress western.

The British themselves have adopted many Americanisms, yet they are still British. If the BWMA and others are so hung-up on traditions, why don’t they campaign against other more outwardly attacks on traditions?

The muddle in the UK exists when people using metric measuring equipment try to measure out something with imperial unit names. However if those names just become recycled for the sake of speech only, to mean a nice rounded metric value, then the confusion and muddle is much less.

In the present situation where a pound is 454 g, a store clerk has to memorize fractions of 454 g in order to fill a patrons order and the shop usually feels compelled to dual price. Dual pricing can end if a pound is informally defined as 500 g and the need to memorize strange numbers comes to an end.

As for the acre, there is no reason an informal speech only definition of 4000 square metres cannot become acceptable for those who are hung up on old unit names.

Despite this, there would be no measuring done or recorded in old units. In industry, there would be only metric units, no imperial afterthoughts.

I hope I made myself clearer this time.

There is no need for an alternative unit of measurement to replicate a medieval strip field, especially since it is only just less than half the proper SI-accepted measure, the hectare. Dan is just repeating the mistake made by the designers of the original, half-hearted British metrication programme: dual measures, long transitional periods, voluntary gradualism, metrication by stealth. It is this approach which has got us into the current mess.

UKMA advocates a “clean break” - in so far as this is still possible, and an end to dual measures, supplementary indications and all the other attempts to protect people from the need for change.

Incidentally, I suspect that the stories of a “metric pound” still in use on the European continent are largely an urban myth. I have travelled in most of western and central Europe for nearly 50 years and never come across it. It isn’t used because it isn’t necessary.

Any legislation that, for example, made one yard equal to one metre (with feet and inches scaled accordingly) or one pound equal to 500 g would have to very carefully worded so that people knew which unit they were talking about – the change over would cause more problems that it would solve unless the word “pound” was only redefined to mean 500 g for specific purposes (for example business transactions where VAT need not be shown). In the case of buying vegetables, this would not be a problem, but imagine the chaos in the clothing industry if suddenly the inch was increased by 9.36%.

Unlike the Napoleon’s France where there merchants were ripping-off the poor by using their own measures rather than metric units or the older “kings measures”, we do not have the luxury of using the halfway house as proposed by Dan.

“He put fact before effect, thought before impact, intelligence before emotion; because he put us, his audience, before himself, the intermediary”.

We do not expect the originators of the story to follow these principles, but I do expect better of The Times. Thankfully, it did publish on 25 July a letter from the Commission setting out the facts.