European Union throws in the towel over making Britain metric

The European Union looks like its given up on its decades old campaign to get Britain to completely adopt the metric system. The EU seems to have been on a mission to change Britain’s way of calculating things but it looks as though visitors will find a combined weights and measures system for many years to come.

Britain teaches the metric system in schools, the currency went metric in the early 1970s and slowly over the last three decades since the UK’s been in the EU, imperial measurements have been phased out of every day activities such as buying vegetables and meat or filling the car up at the petrol station.

Unfortunately for the EU’s bureaucrats Britons have been as resistant to going metric as they have been to learning foreign languages. No one talks of distances or speeds in kilometres or kph, most people would still prefer to buy petrol by the gallon just like when they go into a pub they want a pint. Currently only produce sold loosely can use use pounds and ounces as measures of weight but these must be displayed alongside metric equivalents and scales calculating both must be available.

Ask someone their height or weight and the answer will be in feet, inches, pounds and stones (14lbs=1 stone). The Rugby World Cup is currently underway in France and the channel showing the games in Britain, ITV, have been using ex-New Zealand captain Murray Mexted as a commentator. He’s great at the job but when he talks about a players size he uses metres for height and kilos for weight which will leave the average British viewer completely baffled.

The man making the decision for the European Union is Industry Commissioner Guenter Verheugen, who recognizing how irritated people in Britain get when the EU pushes issues like this said ‘I want to bring to an end a bitter, bitter battle that has lasted for decades and which in my view is completely pointless. We’re bringing this battle to an end.’

Common sense but also quite crafty. The EU and the Gordon Brown government are trying to trojan horse the failed European Constitution into law under the guise of the Reform Treaty without giving UK voters a referendum on it as they promised (they know they’ll lose heavily). Its good publicity for the EU, giving up a fight that makes them very unpopular.