Metric Views

No government response one year after imperial units consultation closed

Today is one year since the “Choice on units of measurement: markings and sales” consultation closed. It is about Government proposals to remove the requirement to show metric units alongside imperial units in trade or allow metric units to be shown with less prominence than imperial units. The Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) and Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS) published this consultation on 3 June 2022. It ran from 9am on 3 June 2022 to 11pm on 26 August 2022. The Government’s own Consultation Principles state that Government responses to consultations should be published within 12 weeks of the consultation or provide an explanation why this is not possible. The response to the consultation was due on 18 November 2022, 12 weeks after the consultation closed. Today is 26 August 2023 and we are still waiting for it. Why is it taking the Government so long to respond to the consultation?

NASA Voyager 2 reports make poor use of the metric system

In the first half of August 2023, there were reports about NASA accidentally losing contact with the Voyager 2 spacecraft after sending the wrong command and later reports about regaining contact a few days later. Distances of spacecraft from Earth were expressed in billions of kilometres (as well as billions of miles). One thing that NASA and the media ignored is that the common prefixes of the metric system for the extremely large and the extremely small make the use of astronomical numbers unnecessary unlike the imperial system. This is one big advantage that the metric system has over the imperial system.

Government accepts CE mark indefinitely in nod to common standards

From the end of 2024, the British Government was planning to impose a requirement for goods to carry a new UK-only UK Conformity Assessed (UKCA) mark. Manufacturers who used to need only a conformité européenne (CE) mark for all European countries would have had to meet separate safety standards for the UKCA mark just for the UK and a CE mark for the rest of Europe. After opposition from industry, the Government has backed down and decided to allow the European Union’s CE mark for the UK market indefinitely in a nod to the need for common standards. Will the Government accept the same logic for the use of the common global measurement system known as SI, the modern metric system?

The other victory UKMA won in the end

The previous article describes how weights and measures legislation was saved from the axe by changes to the REUL Bill. There was another important victory that has also been won by UKMA with the help of powerful stakeholders though it took years to win. UKMA spent years fighting the Department for Transport before the battle to make metres mandatory on restriction signs was eventually won.

Victory for UKMA as W&M legislation is saved from bonfire of EU laws

When former Business Secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg introduced the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill last year, around 4000 EU-derived laws were in danger of being scrapped by default at the end of this year. Among the threatened laws were several items of weights and measures legislation, which this blog covered in the Rees-Mogg’s legislation time bomb article. Several amendments to the Bill were accepted and most of the laws have been saved from the axe. The Bill received royal assert at the end of June 2023 and is now the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Act.

CMA investigates unit pricing practices in the groceries sector

Today, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published its review of unit pricing in the groceries sector. The CMA has identified several problems with current unit pricing practices, which may affect shoppers’ abilities to make comparisons. This is a big cause for concern when prices are rising. The review mainly covers the unit pricing practices of eleven nationwide supermarkets. It also covers the unit pricing practices of seven nationwide variety store retailers that sell general merchandise alongside a relatively small selection of groceries.

Kitchen utensil names in recipes

In American recipes and in some old recipes, you might come across units such as teaspoons, dessert spoons, tablespoons and cups. In recipes, they do not refer to any old teaspoon, dessert spoon, tablespoon or cup but to specific physical quantities. How many are aware that these names refer to volume measures rather than physical kitchen utensils? These units are non-standard, and each unit has several definitions – a range of different teaspoons, dessert spoons, tablespoons and cups have been used.

Space dilemmas for writing metric symbols and thousands separators

The BIPM’s SI brochure states “The numerical value always precedes the unit and a space is always used to separate the unit from the number.” and says that the space, not a comma or a dot, shall be used for the thousands separator. There are several space characters in computing, but the brochure does not state what kind of space you should use when typing. Ideally, you would use a non-breaking space to ensure that no line break separates the numerical value from the unit. Users face the same issue when using a space for the thousands separator.

One proposed solution to improve writing of metric symbols

In the third of the series of articles on writing metric symbols, I propose a practical solution to improve the writing of metric symbols. My solution addresses one major source of metric symbol errors that I identified in my previous article.

Too many take the easy way out when writing metric symbols

Following the previous article about the limited impact of UKMA’s Metric Style Guide and the widespread mistakes in writing metric symbols, we look at one major source of these mistakes. Too many avoid the use of awkward characters that cannot be found on a standard keyboard and end up writing metric symbols incorrectly.

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