Category: General

Why do so few Britons use kg for body weight?

Britons tend to use grams and kilograms for a lot of things, including cooking recipes, gym equipment, commercial products and retail sales. However, they predominantly use stones and pounds for weighing adults and children and use pounds and ounces for weighing babies. Few use kg despite the fact that the NHS uses kg internally for body weight and BMI calculated by body weight in kg divided by height in metres squared. And despite the large number of everyday basic food products you can find in supermarkets that come in 1 kg packages.

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BEIS cannot tell us effects of scrapping all EU laws

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Liz Truss and current PM Rishi Sunak have expressed their commitment to scrap all EU laws. The Government is committed to implementing this policy by pushing the Retained EU Law Bill through Parliament. It is reasonable to challenge the Government about the effects of this policy and to ask what would happen if all EU laws disappeared from the British statute book. I asked the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) this question but they could not answer my question.

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UKMA’s response to the REUL Bill Select Committee

Yesterday, in the House of Lords, the Delegated Powers & Regulatory Reform Committee published its report on the Government’s Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.

The Bill, which is due to have its second reading in the House of Lords on Monday 6 February, is designed to hand power from Parliament to Government Ministers, who will then decide the fate of up to 4000 laws.

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No mention of measurements on Reform UK website

Reform UK is a right-wing Eurosceptic party, formerly called the Brexit Party. Its support has recently been roughly as high as the Liberal Democrats, at around 9% of the electorate. Its slogan is “Let’s Make Britain Great”, which sounds similar to former US president Donald Trump’s slogan “Make America Great Again”. How has Reform UK gained support in recent times without saying a word about imperial units?

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Rees-Mogg’s legislation time bomb

Today in Parliament, the House of Commons is scheduled to debate a Bill, introduced on 22 September by Jacob Rees-Mogg, entitled, Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. The innocuous sounding title belies the disruptive, and potentially devastating, effects that it could have on all walks of life in the UK, including metrication.

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Imperial Red Meat policy won’t save the Conservatives

The Government’s imperial measurement proposals seem to be part of their Operation Red Meat proposals to get Conservative MPs and supporters back on side. They were initially used to try to save former Prime Minister Boris Johnson and then used by the final two candidates in the Conservative leadership contest, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, to gain support from Conservative Party members to win the Conservative leadership contest and become the next Prime Minister.

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Queen’s Jubilee celebrations to include return of imperial units?

Over the weekend, various news items announced (again) that it was the Government’s intention for us to return to the use of imperial units.

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