Weight for it

The good news is there will be a break of several days in Brexit and COVID news, and just the usual blog stuff, though that might be delayed. We shall see.

So, this is taken from a series of tweets from @PippaMusgrave1:

The Prime Minister announced that selling goods in pounds and ounces would be made legal thanks to "Brexit".

"Hello Boris. Weights and Measures Inspector here. Sorry to dispel your latest bit of kite flying.

1. The UK transferring to metric measures had bugger all to do with our EU membership.

2. The UK agreed, when it signed the OIML treaty in 1856 to move to a single system of measurement (S.I. units). Metric measures have been lawful in the UK since 1875.

3. Are you proposing the UK leaves the OIML treaty?

4. Only Myanmar and the USA currently use imperial measures (US measures are actually slightly different). How does this play with your claim of 'Global Britain'?

5. We have a national shortage of Weights and Measures Inspectors. Are you going to pay for new inspectors to be trained (which currently takes 6 years)? 6. Certificates of approval for imperial metrological equipment have long since lapsed. Will you subsidise the industry cost of certification?

7. Most imperial local standards and testing equipment have long been retired. Will you subsidise Local Authorities for the cost of this equipment and the creation of new metrological laboratories?

8. A local standard mass comparator costs £30,000. Are you willing to spend many millions of pounds reintroducing such equipment?

9. Imperial measurements have not been taught in schools since the mid 1970s. Indeed, to have been taught imperial measures, consumers are likely now retired? Are you willing to invest many more millions in educating the UK population of imperial measures?

10. Or is this, like your Bridge to Ireland, a nonsense policy only to distract form the appalling way you are running this country?

11. Finally, the USA is a member of NAFTA, where both Canada and Mexico use the metric system. This has meant increased visibility of metric markings on US goods. The US is a signatory of the OIML treaty. Interest in metric is growing in the USA."

This comes alongside a proposed legal requirement that public service broadcasters only make programs with "British" values. This has been tried before, and programs with UK cultural references either have to be edited or remade. It sounds good, but this is what an inward-looking country dies, not one claiming to be "Global Britain".