Pippa Musgrave’s messages to Boris Johnson are still relevant to the imperialists in power

Pippa Musgrave is a fully qualified Inspector of Weights and Measures, Food Standards Officer and Trading Standards Officer with over 20 years of experience. When Boris Johnson was prime minister, Pippa wrote some critical messages addressed to him on Twitter about his policy to reintroduce imperial units in the marketplace. Despite the fact that these messages were written in September 2021, they are still relevant to the imperialist politicians who want us to go back to imperial units.

During the 2019 election campaign, former PM Boris Johnson pledged to bring back pounds and ounces in Britain’s shops. He described the use of imperial measures as an “ancient liberty” and promised a “new era of generosity and tolerance” towards traditional measurements.

Since then, the Government held the “Choice on units of measurement: markings and sales” consultation, which closed on 26 August 2022 and has still not reported. And the Government also introduced the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, which originally threatened to wipe out 4000 EU laws by the end of this year, including several laws on weights and measures. This has been scaled back to a list of 600 laws. The sunset date of 31 December 2023 has been scrapped. It has completed its passage through both Houses and is now at the amendments stage.

Pippa Musgrave pounded Boris Johnson with the following messages via Twitter:

  • Hello Boris. Weights and Measures Inspector here. Sorry to dispel your latest bit of kite flying. The UK transferring to metric measures had nothing to do with our EU membership.
  • The UK agreed, when it signed the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML) treaty in 1856 to move to a single system of measurement (S.I. units). Metric measures have been lawful in the UK since 1875.
  • Are you proposing the UK leaves the OIML treaty?
  • Only Myanmar and the USA currently use imperial measures (US measures are actually slightly different). How does this play with your claim of ‘Global Britain’?
  • We have a national shortage of Weights and Measures Inspectors. Are you going to pay for new inspectors to be trained (which currently takes 6 years)?
  • Certificates of approval for imperial metrological equipment have long since lapsed. Will you subsidise the industry cost of certification?
  • Most imperial local standards and testing equipment have long been retired. Will you subsidise Local Authorities for the cost of this equipment and the creation of new metrological laboratories?
  • A local standard mass comparator costs £30,000. Are you willing to spend many millions of pounds reintroducing such equipment?
  • Imperial measurements have not been taught in schools since the mid 1970s. Indeed, to have been taught imperial measures, consumers are likely now retired? Are you willing to invest many more millions in educating the UK population of imperial measures?
  • Or is this, like your Bridge to Ireland, a nonsense policy only to distract from the appalling way you are running this country?
  • Finally, the USA is a member of NAFTA, where both Canada and Mexico use the metric system. This has meant increased visibility of metric markings on US goods. The US is a signatory of the OIML treaty. Interest in metric is growing in the USA.

Let’s hope that the imperialists who are trying to lead the UK back to imperial measures bear in mind the consequences of this policy described by Pippa Musgrave and do not go down that path.

Sources:

5 thoughts on “Pippa Musgrave’s messages to Boris Johnson are still relevant to the imperialists in power”

  2. I do not think BoJo and his followers were ever interested in inconvenient facts. Not so sure about the current lot.
    It seems we are in a bit of a grace period right now, the best we can hope for is that this continues until we hopefully get a replacement for the late Geoffrey Howe, and see the end of BoJo, JRM and a couple of others that still seem to raise this imperial issue.
    However, I am still shocked at how few people use metric beyond the supermarket kilogram and litre. There needs to be a massive public awareness and adult education program in order to “get metric done” to quote the other BoJo sound bite.

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  3. @BranAC
    What do you hear people using in daily life beyond the supermarket kilogram and litre?
    “Miles” comes from highway signs, of course. But don’t people use “Celsius” for temperature? And I thought many people. use “metres” for short distances (not human height, of course).

    Anyhow, I would like to find out what everyday usage of metric is like in the UK these days.

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  4. Well done Pippa – one small typo – the UK signed the OIML treaty in 1956, not 1856.

    Pippa’s set of tweets looked at a reversion to the imperial system purely from the point of view of an Inspector of Weights and Measures, Food Standards Officer and Trading Standards Officer, not from the point of view of the traders themselves.

    How would a reversion affect traders? First of all, any trader who wishes to change to using imperial units would have to buy new sets of scales. Who will pay for them? When Britain adopted the metric system, costs were borne where they fell (or to put it another way, HMG were not subsidising anything). If there is a reversion to using imperial units, businesses will find themselves having to buy new sets of scales to “keep up with their competitors”. I doubt that HMG will pay for then, so in the short term the traders will have to bear the cost of the change and in the longer term the cost will be borne by the customer.

    When Britain adopted the metric system, lack of Government control enabled many unscrupulous traders to hoodwink the public by not keeping price changes in synch with weight changes. If there were to be a reversion to imperial units, again unscrupulous traders would have an opportunity to fleece unsuspecting (or confused) customers.

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  5. Martin,

    Those traders that are salivating at the prospect of a return to imperial never got rid of their old imperial scales. They either still use them or put them into storage wishing for the day they can be used again.

    Metrication of scales was planned over time and metric scales were made available so that everyone who needed them would have them on the day required. You can bet your last pound that there will be no organised reversion. Proper scales and calibration equipment won’t exist for when needed or even past that point. It will be a real mess and those opposed to reversion will assure that the entire operation fails and costs the economy big time.

    Apparently the entire return is cancelled:

    https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fnews%2F2023%2F05%2F13%2Fpost-brexit-plan-to-bring-back-pounds-and-ounces-stalls%2F

    “Despite a pledge from Boris Johnson at the last election to restore the “ancient liberty” of using pounds and ounces, an official consultation has found that businesses and voters largely prefer the metric system.”

    It seems the majority of the people don’t want to revert to Luddite units.

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