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Boris Johnson is making imperial measures official again – and the idea took a pounding

Oonagh Keating. Updated September 17th, 2021

According to reports, Boris Johnson will be throwing a dead cat bone to the anti-metric lobby, with a return to Britain’s former official system of weights and measures – imperial units.

Instead of the metric standard of weight currently in use, in which a thousand grams is a kilogram and a thousandth of a gram is a milligram, vendors will be allowed to use the pound, of which 14 is a stone and one sixteenth is an ounce – not to be mistaken for a fluid ounce, which is a twentieth of a pint.

When it comes to length, the metre which multiplies by a thousand to give kilometres and divides by 100 to give the centimetre, can be replaced by the foot, which multiples by three to give a yard, or by 5280 for a mile, and which divides by 12 make an inch.

via GIPHY

Of course, the UK has never really let go of the imperial system, using it for the heights and weights of people, speed limits, describing hot temperatures and the length of its Subway sandwiches – to name but a few things.

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