My Pint Is Safe
It appears that finally common sense has prevailed:
An indefinite opt-out has been agreed by European MPs in Strasbourg to allow the continued use of the mile for roads, the pint for draught beer, cider and bottled milk, and the ounce for precious metals.
Other items, such as fruit and vegetables, can also be sold using imperial measures, as long as traders use “dual labelling” by supplying metric units alongside traditional pounds and ounces. (The Telegraph)
Europe is not and cannot be homogeneous. The history of areas cannot just be discarded. And it would seem that the EU is finally learning of these very simple facts.
The pint is the perfect size for beer/lager, and what difference does it make if vegetables are sold in pounds and ounces or grammes and kilogrammes? The same size is the same price either way. And he use of miles is so ingrained that the tansfer to kilometres would be both stupid and massively costly, with the replacement of every single speed sign and the reprogramming of every single speed camera in the UK, not to mention the inevitable confusion over car speedometers…
The EU should completely stop trying to make us all the same and instead understand that differences between people exist, and always will.
The pint IS the right size for beer to be served in, yes. seems to be calculated to perfection.
[...] Thunderdragon is glad his pint is safe (for now, at [...]
But at the end of the day the “pint” is really just a glass size, the same as the “shot” (which is done in ml). And yes milk deliveries may be imperial, but the bottle in my fridge from the supermarket is metric.
So it basically comes down to road signs.
Incidentally the “metric martyrs” won’t be pleased. Contrary to their spin, the key point that has led to prosecutions has been their failure to use scales approved by the weights & measures because they don’t read in the standard measurement set. It is not a case of prosecuting traders for offering imperial measurements as well.
Comments