Re: Hooray for Avoirdupois and pounds, shillings and pence
I won't admit I know anything about whores and inches, and I won't deny that I can at times exaggerate, but I will agree about the carpenters or should one say carpenting use of inches.
The inches do remain around Europe in some use and nobody is on the brink of suicide because of that.
And while I am sure, in advance, that car tires will have been mentioned before, I will mention them too, without any feeling that the metric system did not win.
I suppose one of the reasons for this was the amount of timber exported to Britain from the continent.
We exported a lot of "props" from Finland and it took me some time to understand why they were called props.
Here in Finland, in the norther parts, we have this world leading and unique measurement called "Poronkusema".
It has also fallen for the metrication and is now defined in the metric system as 7.5 km.
It's defined like this, using the Wikipedia and Google translate.
"Poronkusema is an old unit of length used when moving reindeer. Reindeer urine is the distance a reindeer can drive between (the reindeer's) urination breaks. Reindeer cannot urinate while running, and running for too long can cause paralysis. At its maximum, the reindeer's furrow can be up to 7.5 kilometers".
Nothing is perfect, not GT either, and where that "furrow" came from I don't know.
The opposition towards the metric system in Britain was due to the Empire nostalgia, like also Brexit, and costly for not only Britain.
And now I hope that same lunacity will be costly for Russia.