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.
Continue reading “Why do so few Britons use kg for body weight?”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.
Continue reading “BEIS cannot tell us effects of scrapping all EU laws”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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How to fix the main problems with the REUL Bill
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill has many serious problems. In its current form, it represents a huge power grab by the Executive. It sunsets all EU-derived laws at the end of this year unless a Minister acts to save them. Only Ministers will decide which laws are retained, which ones are amended and which ones are scrapped without parliamentary oversight and scrutiny. Affected stakeholders are excluded from the process. There is less than one year to review approximately 4000 laws and decide what to do with them. The rush to scrap or amend laws is bound to lead to mistakes, omissions and contradictions. There are ways to fix the problems with the REUL Bill.
Continue reading “How to fix the main problems with the REUL Bill”DfT holds back TfL from all-metric usage
Transport for London (TfL) uses metres and kilometres to express distances in its press releases with few exceptions and often uses metres elsewhere in public places. However, speeds are expressed in miles per hour, no doubt due to Department for Transport (DfT) regulations and usage. Tariffs for taxi fares are expressed in metres for short journeys and in miles for longer journeys and reflect current regulations. I praise TfL for using metric units wherever they can. It is a pity that DfT regulations and usage are holding back TfL from going fully metric.
Continue reading “DfT holds back TfL from all-metric usage”Retirement of the US survey foot
It is well known that the USA uses miles, feet and inches and they are identical to the English versions of these units used in the UK. What is a lot less well known is the fact that the USA had two official feet, the international foot and the survey foot. By extension, there were also two versions of derived units based on these two feet. So there were survey and international versions of common units such as the mile, yard and inch. The US survey foot was deprecated at the end of last year. This deprecation act shows the importance of ensuring uniformity and common standards in measurement matters.
Continue reading “Retirement of the US survey foot”DfE fails to see link between poor numeracy and measurement muddle
The late Alan Young, a metric campaigner and a highly experienced maths teacher, mentioned the problems of the measurement muddle that British pupils face on a daily basis. On 1 September 2022, I wrote to my local MP to raise these issues with Department for Education (DfE). In their reply, they failed to see the connection between poor numeracy and the measurement muddle and suggested that the key stage 2 national curriculum addresses this problem.
Continue reading “DfE fails to see link between poor numeracy and measurement muddle”REUL Impact Assessment described as “not fit for purpose”
On 15 November 2022, I condemned the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) for failing to produce an impact assessment on the Retained EU Law Bill. One week later, BEIS published its impact assessment (IA). Its IA document looks like a blank form with notes for someone else to fill in the blanks. No actual figures are provided for changes or deletions of any affected laws. So it is no surprise that the Regulatory Policy Committee (RPC), an advisory Non-Departmental Public Body of BEIS, has described the IA as “not fit for purpose”.
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Metric Views 