I've noticed that too. American signs are far more likely to say "Men working 300 feet ahead" whereas in Britain it would be "Road works, 100 yards."
Neither is very effective as the odometers in cars calibrated in miles has the last digit in tenths of miles, which are not easily translatable into either feet or yards. On kilometric odometers, the last digit is 0.1 km, which easily translates into 100 m.
The long ton is the British/Commonwealth standard by the way. The standard U.S. measurement is the short ton of 2000 lb., although straight pounds does seem to be more common in many fields. My Nebraska driver's license specified "vehicles up to 24,000 lb."
I thought the long ton was depricated and replaced by the tonne (1000 kg). Since the two are very close in value, it isn't necessary to have both.
Americans like to use units that give big numbers. Sounds more impressive. Every time there is a forest fire, the area is always given in acres, never square miles or square kilometres. The use of acres makes the area sound bigger.
You seem to be well-read on what's going on in Britain, so I assume you're referring to the case a while back where an immigrant set up an Italian or Austrian-themed bar (I forget which) and sold beer in liters and half-liters.
He soon fell foul of the Trading Standards bullies, which led to the ridiculous situation of other traders being prosecuted for refusing to use metric while this guy was being threatened with court because he was using metric!
No, I was referring to an incident that happened in the mid 90s. The incidents you are referring to happened more recently. And they had to do with theme bars and not your ordinary British pubs.
If people are worried that the pint will be replaced by a 500 mL size, a loss of 68 mL, there is no cause for concern. Britain can follow the Australian example, go to a 600 mL size. This way one gets 32 mL more. And if it makes everyone happy, it can still be called a pint. Just like 500 g can be called a pound.
The whole shambles would be laughable if it were not costing decent people their livelihoods.
That is why it makes the most sense to complete the metrication process quickly and end the half-way in the middle situation.
Call them Fred Flintstone Units if you wish. They got us to the moon and back.
A common false assumption. It is assumed that since the US was the first to go to the moon and the US uses FFU, that the moon journey was strictly an FFU adventure.
Actually, the journey to the moon was the work of a German, by the name of Werner von Braun. Von Braun and the other Germans who ran NASA in its heyday, loathed and never used non-metric units. Von Braun said so in an interview before he died. Of course, all his metric designs had to be "translated" into FFU for the Americans to build the rockets and such, but the actual behind the scenes design and calculations were done in metric units. It was hidden metric that got us to the moon.
