Abandon ounces, pints and gallons now, peer of realm says

THE UK METRIC ASSOCIATION in the shape of a man with a peerage lashed out today at the United Kingdom government for not adopting measurements originally proposed by the French revolutionaries.

The lobby group claimed that muddle and indecision has saddled Britain with two incompatible sets of measurements including kilowatts, horesepower, ounces, litres, pints and pounds.

Ex consumer affairs minister Lord "Geoffrey Aberavon" Howe, who went slow on adoption of the metric system in the 1970s, said: "Magna Carta endorsed the need for only one set of standards. And it would be madness to go backwards. The only solution is to complete the changeover to metric and as swiftly and cleanly as possible".

He said on the radio this morning that only one other country in the world, the USA, had failed to adopt the metric system. That sort of muddle, he said, had caused NASA to use the "imperial system" causing a Mars probe to prematurely land on the surface because the measurements were all out.

There are some odd anomalies. For example, Intel measures its process technology in nanometres, but its floor space in square feet.

The chairman of the UKMA, Robin Paice, said: "Most people realise that we have to go through with the changeover. It will cause some grumbling... but as with decimilisation of the currency in 1971, not long after the change people will wonder what all the fuss was about".

Britain used to use a coin called the shilling, made up of 12 pennies. After decimalisation, the shilling became the five pence piece, causing many people wondering what had happened to the extra seven pence at the time.

Crikey! Why not have 10 hours in a day and 100 days in a decimal year? And can't we get rid of aristocrats, like the French did some time ago? Do we really need a Queen? Or a very non-metric House of Lords?

Britain is not a member of the €urozone... µ

L'INQ
UK metric association [Can't they use capital letters? Ed.]