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nautical miles something I have forgotton
doesn't get any more "imperial" 1 minute of 1 degree of the circumference.
1/60 * 1/360 * 24,859.734 miles
but let's face it metric is basically a french thing so we have to be anti on principle.
I was taught my trade using metric but I almost always use inches for measuring and cutting.
I find 15 and 5/8 inches both easier and quicker to read than 397mm. I also find 15 and 5/8 easier to remember in my head than 397, useful if you have to remember a measurement for several minutes.
And as the measurement gets larger the benefit also increases, eg 61 inches is a lot easier to read and remember than 1549mm. Millimetres seem to get mixed up in a way than inches don't, eg as you walk around trying to remember 1549mm and it can be misremembered as 1594mm in a way that 61 inches can't easily be misremembered as 16 inches.
I'm not the only one who finds imperial often easier to use than metric.
In the garage just now I noticed a packet of mint imperials is 200g. I'm going to write to my MP, it's a disgrace
TJ please tell me which tab on memory map converts it to pirates of the Caribbean mode. My kids will love it
And Twitter is full of stuff about yet more parties in number ten organised by Carrie Antionette
She's special. She doesn't have to care what the little people think.
As I said earlier I bet she's organising some seriously overpriced and seriously gauche Downing Street street party for Liz Windsor's whatever it is.
All the while her delightful hubby's presence is a living insult to Lizzy who was left sitting alone at her hubby's funeral, the day after Downing Street hosted another illegal lockdown pissup.
But the gammons and louts won't care so long as Bozza surrounds himself with more union jacks than Mussolini would deem tasteful and utter some kind of 'accidental' clanger about something 'woke'.
The Tories will win the next election and nothing will change.
C'est tout.
Thats my point about the human scale of imperial Ernie.
How many of you are 1m78 tall and how many 5'9 3/4" ?
I'd find it quicker to get the mid point of 397mm in my head than 15 & 5/8ths inches. Think I'd convert to metric divide by 2 then convert back to imperial ;).
The Tories will win the next election and nothing will change.
tory MPs are now saying they will lose in despair and the polls show Johnson wuill lose his seat. The longer this drags on th worse it is for the tories and they are going to get a real kicking at the next election
TJ please tell me which tab on memory map converts it to pirates of the Caribbean mode. My kids will love it
I don't know this at all?
(fwiw I think imperial unit sizes are generally nicer than metric- a cm is a bit small, an inch is a nice size for measuring stuff. But all the eighths and 16ths and such are bollocks. Decimalised imperial is teh way forwards!)
what about OO gauge, 4 mm to a foot won't someone think of the children!!!!
I love my eighths and if you don't want to deal with thirty-tooths this is where a gnat's bollock comes in ...... fifteen and five eighths and a gnat's bollock. What could be clearer?
Edit : There's also a measurement called "half a gnat's bollock".
Gnats bawhair up here
See also smidge, tadge and smidgeon
tory MPs are now saying they will lose in despair and the polls show Johnson wuill lose his seat. The longer this drags on th worse it is for the tories and they are going to get a real kicking at the next election
Won't happen. The UK changed fundamentally in 2016. Lots of suppressed prejudice was weaponised and legitimised in the process. That genie will not go back in the bottle.
Id bet a lot you are wrong on that. I have been saying it for a while but the corruptipon ad arrogance has really cut thru to the pub;lic and once an image sticks its hard for it to be changed
What changed in 2016? Absolutly nothing fundamental. tories are toast at the next election. No party has every recovered from something like this in a year or two - it takes a generation - see the collapse of the major government of the collapse of the callaghan one
I measured my daughter for her police uniform in metric. Then… realised they still wanted it in inches. No problem, I turned the tape over and used the Imperial measurements on the other side. She got a call from stores as she was the most unusual shape they’d ever seen. Metric started at one end and Imperial at the other. This was only just over ten years ago, it shouldn’t be too hard to go back to total confusion.
Imperial? What does it mean to you? Is it colonialism?
Lots of suppressed prejudice was weaponised and legitimised in the process. That genie will not go back in the bottle.
The tory party have been a racist party for a long long time. You need to look up a bit of political history
1964. Overt racism
edit - i'll use a slightly less offensive poster

Ond of the tory rags is leading with johnson teaaring up EU laws.
Really?
His shambolic administration have previously confirmed that OJEU regulations will be adopted fully into UK law - and nothing has been said to change that.
For those who aren't conversant with OJEU; official journal of the european union whose regulations cover public sector procurement so every tender and procurement process run by UK central government, local government and regulated organisation - every utility in2 every sector - are subject to OJEU with fines/penalties for
non-compliance enshrined in the legislation.
That represents a massive spend.
Take back control?
My arse
TJ - yet another spelling error from the 'well educated' tory party; burdened, not burdoned.
Half-wits then, half-wits now - but with far fewer scruples, intelligence, brains or integrity.
I don't think that poster was a genuine Conservative Party poster, the spelling mistake is a clue. Yes Conservative Party election agents do tend to be well educated.
And the reference to 'Ministry of Repatriation' is another clue, there was never any such ministry under a Conservative government, nor was it ever a Tory manifesto commitment.
The poster no doubt refers to the Tory general election campaign in Smethwick in 1964 which was undoubtedly racist, and it certainly expresses the sentiments of the Tory candidate. The problem is that despite the poster's claim the Labour Party in Smethwick was also racist in 1964, it apparently barred black people from being members of the Labour Club.
All that was perfectly legal until Harold Wilson introduced the Race Relations Act.
Edit: I suspect that the poster is the work of a far-right organisation such as the League of Empire Loyalists.
Personally, I'm loving the idea that working in metric will become an act of rebellion!
"Lots of suppressed prejudice was weaponised and legitimised in the process. That genie will not go back in the bottle."
This is the truth. That the Tories ha e always been a bit more racist is besides the point now.
The shift in politics caused by Brexit have made the past irrelevant. There is a narrative that in the US, Civil Rights legislation saw the Democrat vote swing to the Republicans in the South. What really happened was that this happened across the whole country and in effect the entire nation became Southernised'.
A similar thing has happened here, politics has been turned on its head and the salt of the earth working class Northerner turned out to be a bit more salty than the propaganda had suggested.
If tj is right, then I think he'll have to rely on the good people of the South to turn against the Tories because they find them too repugnant, the North could be lost to Labour for generations.
sorry if that poster was not the real tory one. the real tory one was actually more offensive but I edited it for a marginally less offensive one
the point I was making is that the tories are a racist party, that this playing of the race card is nothing new even if labour use it sometimes as well.
NO government that I have seen has ever recovered from a situation like this. Once your reputation is shot then it takes a long time to repair it.
there is more to come on the parties yet, there is also more to come out about the cash for pals and Acuri (sp)
The opposition now have a wonderful attack line with a picture of Johnson partying while the queen mourned alone
the tories only hope is to get rid of Johnson and try to reset by throwing him under a bus. His refusal to resign just prolongs the scandals. the longer he stays the better for the opposition
I love my eighths and if you don’t want to deal with thirty-tooths this is where a gnat’s bollock comes in …… fifteen and five eighths and a gnat’s bollock. What could be clearer?
Obviously, the unit that is 1/1000 of an inch, the mil.
As an IT type with binary numbers everywhere, I obviously have to like the subdivision of inches with 1/2", 1/4", 1/8" etc... Until the gosh darned mil turns up instead of 1/1024"...
Imperial is great for rough sizes of stuff. I find feet and inches easier to visualise.
For accuracy metric is way easier.
I was always taught metric but as mentioned before use both at work.
Ref the Tories, my other half has voted for them in the past but in recent times she refers to them as '****ing Tories' , like an angry student might.
I think the damage done is deeper than some realise.
I'm a 'floating voter' and can't imagine voting for them in the foreseeable.
But I do like imperial. there is poetry in the units and they are at a better human scale than metric.
Because it literally evolved from human scale things like farming and from human parts like palm, hand and foot (and to a certain extent cubit which isn't imperial but is the same principle).
Barleycorn, furlong (short for "furrow long" as in the distance an ox could plough without stopping), rods/chains (derived from the linkages on ploughing kit), acre (one furrow long by one chain).
There were dozens of different "gallons" across the British Empire until standardisation in 1824. There were also various different definitions of chains/rods etc depending on ploughing kit.
Miles were originally Roman, 1000 paces (because the Romans were sensible enough to count in 10's), [I]mille passus[/I] literally 1000 paces, and the Roman pace was defined as 5 feet based on average Army marching (so 5000ft to the mile). Most countries measured miles slightly differently or adapted it from various other influences the result being that there was little actual standardisation.
All of this seems to fit Boris quite well, making up weights and measures as he goes...
Relax folks, every single pint of beer (568ml) in a pub is dispensed through a 3/8” pipe using 3/8” fittings to reduce it down to either 5/16” or 3/16” at the tap which might use a 3/4” nozzle. However, the water lines keeping your beer cold are 15mm. If that isn’t an analogy on how the EU/UK relationship works I don’t know what is 😂🙄
I've never known the UK not just to be a weird mix of Imperial and metric. pretty much like everywhere else in the world. It's a meaningless culture war headline, and it seems to have worked.
I imagine it'll go quiet again when some-one points out what advertising the cost of fuel in gallons will do to his popularity.
“Lots of suppressed prejudice was weaponised and legitimised in the process. That genie will not go back in the bottle.”
This is the truth. That the Tories ha e always been a bit more racist is besides the point now.
The shift in politics caused by Brexit have made the past irrelevant. There is a narrative that in the US, Civil Rights legislation saw the Democrat vote swing to the Republicans in the South. What really happened was that this happened across the whole country and in effect the entire nation became Southernised’.
A similar thing has happened here, politics has been turned on its head and the salt of the earth working class Northerner turned out to be a bit more salty than the propaganda had suggested.
If tj is right, then I think he’ll have to rely on the good people of the South to turn against the Tories because they find them too repugnant, the North could be lost to Labour for generations.
This.
And the good people of the South will split the non-tory vote as they’ll head for the Libdems. The only way to get rid of this rabble is a centre left ‘anyone but the Tories’ coalition.
Anything else is just fanciful musings.
Jesus, the imperial dead cat has really done it's job.
I'm hoping that to finish off the Jubilee weekend, Her Maj has Boris arrested, transported to the Tower via Traitors Gate, publicly beheaded at the O2 (cos we need to move with the times) and has his head mounted on the security gates at Downing Street as a warning to the next incumbent.
Radio4’s flagship radio news programme warbling on about it now.
Let's face it, he's got away with it because it is perceived by his MPs that enough of their constituents would want him to get away with it.
There are two national votes on record to support this assumption.
sorry if that poster was not the real tory one. the real tory one was actually more offensive but I edited it for a marginally less offensive one
No the posters which used the n-word weren't real Tory posters either. Peter Griffith the 1964 Tory candidate in Smethwick was strongly criticised for not condemning the homemade posters, not for producing them. He said that he agreed with the sentiments behind them.
Establishing the truth is important for several reasons. Otherwise it firstly ignores the shameful truth that Smethwick Labour club operated a colour bar and obviously also had deeply ingrained racism.
Secondly it also ignores the fact that despite the poster's claim the mass immigration of the 1950s and early 60s from Commonwealth countries occurred overwhelmingly not under Labour governments but Tory governments. Indeed I believe that under a Tory government London Transport had at one time a recruiting office in Kingston Jamaica. There was no "Ministry of Repatriation"
And thirdly because the charge sheet against the Tories in all matters, including racism, is sufficiently damning without the need to make factually incorrect claims.
And yes, despite strong opposition from the pre-Thatcher leadership large sections of the Tory Party strongly supported white supremacists in Rhodesia and South Africa. The National Front was in part founded by disaffected former Tories.
Should anyone be interested or revolted, 'stuff the jubilee' badges £1 from Bookmarks.
then nautical =- a fathom is six feet and nautical miles something I have forgotton that is bigger than a statue mile
The Nautical Mile is used Internationally for marine, space and air navigation. As are knots.
It was originally defined as 1 minute of latitude but now is defined as 1852 metres.
Quite a useful distraction technique this dead cat thing
Indeed.
Unfortunately, its also having the desired effect of rallying the gammons in the week that they go all misty-eyed and celebrate our archaic class structure in a festival of cap-doffing and pretending we're still relevant.
All just part of the ongoing culture war
Gentlemen.
The Queen!
Sorry. Just had to disrupt our thread with something completely irrelevant.
Ernie - I knew you would know a bit more than I about this stuff. Ta
The basic point remains tho that this current racism in the tory party is nothing new nor a paradigm shift as some posters on here try to claim
I recall Cameron being keen on the Hogshead.
(probably bindun three times on this thread by now)
tjagain
I have some imperial micrometers
Me too and still use them. When I did my vehicle fitter aprenticeship as a civi for the army all measurements were imperial. All mechanical tolerances were in thous. Quite happy to work in metric though and also have the habit of mixing both at times.
Gnats bawhair up here
See also smidge, tadge and smidgeon
In one place I worked it was usually a fanny hair's breadth. Not sure who Fanny is or was. I also had one colleague who would describe a well fitting part as "fits like an **sehole on a p*ss pot" which seemed like a very inaccurate description to me!