Wait a second, is Cameron's big policy announcement was a tax cut totalling £810 for those earning over £50k/yr (the top ~15% of earners)? Wow.
As well as being classic conservative it invites lefties to be outraged at supporting 'the rich' and then crying into their milk when the squeezed middle desert them for a party that is proposing supportive policies, not calling them 'rich'
Is it true that Cameron has said we'll be returning to imperial units of measurement? If so, he's lost my vote.
I heard that second-hand. It seems to be a stupid idea, but I don't know what was actually said.
oh c'mon it was in answer to an obtuse question put by Evan Davis on Newsnight about whether Cameron thinks in terms of imperial measures or metric ones. As if he is going to change it
@janemerrick23: How is Nick Clegg going to top that? Scrapping all taxes? A GP to pop round if you have a sniffle? An owl for every hardworking parent?
Also, this is a huge chunk of red meat to throw to his party and the UKIP defectors. They were ravenous, so I expect it'll be wolfed down now.
Despite my reservations about Cameron, I'll now definitely be voting Conservative in the election. There's a huge gap in blue water between Miliband and Cameron that's developed over the past fortnight.
I'm still not happy ( at all) about defence, immigration, Europe, civil liberties, fox hunting ban, or the 'moderniser' attitude, though. It's been a close call. I could have UKIP'ed, and still might in future.
"Conservative Chief Whip Michael Gove tells Andrew Neil that he is not going to say "what is in each progressive Budget", but that the promises made by David Cameron in his speech will be fulfilled by 2020". http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-29439641
In the fullness of time, at the appropriate juncture.
OK, so they will wait until people forget about the pledges and then they will forget them too. Classic government promises.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
No wonder Dominic Grieve went. He does not support withdrawing from ECHR and replacing with a British bill of rights. As I believe this means leaving the EU or them accepting such a change, it is now more likely than not that the Tories would back leaving the EU.
So people who vote Tory in 2015 should be aware of the direction that Cameron is taking them in.
Is it true that Cameron has said we'll be returning to imperial units of measurement? If so, he's lost my vote.
If it's UKIP policy he'll do it, however i'm not sure it is UKIP policy.
It would be equivalent to saying: we want to make life especially hard for Brits who want to become scientists or engineers.
But I guess it wouldn't affect those who want to get degrees in Media Studies.
I'm an engineer, and all my A-levels are in science, and am very comfortable using imperial measurements. Most of us are extremely comfortable doing calculations and conversions.
If we weren't, we couldn't qualify or do our jobs. It happens all the time.
@janemerrick23: How is Nick Clegg going to top that? Scrapping all taxes? A GP to pop round if you have a sniffle? An owl for every hardworking parent?
Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others
What would the 40% threshold be by now if it had been indexed since labour stopped indexing it?
And what would it be in 2020 assuming starting from that number and adding 2-3% a year?
My guess is around £50K if not higher
Interesting question. In the 2009-10 tax year the 40p rate increased to £43,875 from £40,835, which looks like a larger increase than indexation to me.
Since then the threshold has been reduced in order to reduce the cost of increasing the personal allowance. The September rates of CPI inflation since then have been 3%, 5.2%, 2.2% and 2.7%, and so indexation would have increased the 40p threshold to, um, £49,899 for the 2014-2015 tax year.
If we add in August's rate of 1.5% for this year and assume 2% for all subsequent years, then it would imply that the 2019-2020 40p threshold would have been £54,822 with indexation.
But then we know Brown and Darling couldn't afford the generous tax thresholds that they bequeathed to the Coalition, because they were running a huge budget deficit.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
I think it nice to be familiar with both. Obviously, being interested in WW2 battleships and bombers from an early age helps.
Therefore, without the need of a calculator, I know that 16 inches is 406 millimetres, and a 500 lb bomb weighs 227 kilograms
Is it true that Cameron has said we'll be returning to imperial units of measurement? If so, he's lost my vote.
If it's UKIP policy he'll do it, however i'm not sure it is UKIP policy.
It would be equivalent to saying: we want to make life especially hard for Brits who want to become scientists or engineers.
But I guess it wouldn't affect those who want to get degrees in Media Studies.
I wonder how all those US scientists and engineers manage in a country that still uses Imperial measurements? Could it possibly be that being forced to do calculations in something other than multiples of 10 actually helps people do mental arithmetic and be more flexible in their thinking?
I do wonder how the most successful engineering and science based industry on earth survives since it is almost entirely run in Imperial units.
Is it true that Cameron has said we'll be returning to imperial units of measurement? If so, he's lost my vote.
If it's UKIP policy he'll do it, however i'm not sure it is UKIP policy.
It would be equivalent to saying: we want to make life especially hard for Brits who want to become scientists or engineers.
But I guess it wouldn't affect those who want to get degrees in Media Studies.
I'm an engineer, and all my A-levels are in science, and am very comfortable using imperial measurements. Most of us are extremely comfortable doing calculations and conversions.
If we weren't, we couldn't qualify or do our jobs. It happens all the time.
It would ensure Brit engineers and scientists could show off a bit more than metric continentals!! If you can handle the maths needed to be a good engineer you can handle conversions!!
"I admire UKIP's protest-group stance and Farage's everyman popularity but when it comes to a GE, he has no chance whatsoever, and every vote which goes to UKIP increases the chances of a Labour government."
This really winds me up. I live in Wantage constituency. Labour cannot win Wantage. Therefore if I choose to vote UKIP it will not impact Labour's chances of winning one little bit.
Ditto if I was to live in a safe Lab seat like Bootle or a Lib-Lab marginal like Oxford East or an SNP-Lab fight like Dundee West. In fact out of 600 odd seats, there are only about 100 odd where this might be the case.
Don't forget as well that in some seats like Rotherham a switch from Con to UKIP might actually help Cameron.
That's so dumb I don't know where to start. We've been educating children in the metric system for 30 years at least. Probably more.
It's so dumb I'm not going to believe it's true until we get a few more sources and confirmation from CCHQ.
UKIP would explode with delight - 'Finally a British public freed from the shackles of their EU weights and measures oppressors, are able to buy straight bananas by the chain,furlong and ounce'
What would the 40% threshold be by now if it had been indexed since labour stopped indexing it?
And what would it be in 2020 assuming starting from that number and adding 2-3% a year?
My guess is around £50K if not higher
Interesting question. In the 2009-10 tax year the 40p rate increased to £43,875 from £40,835, which looks like a larger increase than indexation to me. .
It's almost as if that was just before the election...
"Cameron’s speech - Snap Verdict: In the battle of the party conference speeches, for the first time in at least three years, David Cameron has won by a mile. While Ed Miliband’s speech was something even loyalists struggled to get enthusiastic about, this will achieve exactly what Cameron wants. At the Guardian we’ll be worrying about the distributive impact of his proposed tax cuts, and where the money will come from, but for the audience that Cameron is worried about - Tory activists, readers of tabloid papers and people who watch the TV news - it hit all the right buttons."
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
It's perfectly possible to know both, and use the correct approach when it most fits. I'm of the age where I mostly use miles and yards for long distances, and metres and centimetres for short ones. I'm also fairly adept at roughly translating between miles and kilometres, and between feet and metres/centimetres.
Aside from the obvious Mars Climate Orbiter, what other major engineering fuck ups have been caused by such things?
(Edit: and I've also had reason to use chains and links in the past, although I wouldn't necessarily recommend using them on new projects).
No wonder Dominic Grieve went. He does not support withdrawing from ECHR and replacing with a British bill of rights. As I believe this means leaving the EU or them accepting such a change, it is now more likely than not that the Tories would back leaving the EU.
So people who vote Tory in 2015 should be aware of the direction that Cameron is taking them in.
Maybe Cameron sticking up for people like this and I hope camerons going in that direction.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
I think the imperial units were based on the number 12 because it is easier to divide, or something like that, I remember Indians are good in mathematics since ancient times because they used a metric system based on 12. However it is hopelessly complicated compared with the decimal system because we have 10 fingers not 12, ohh history of maths.
No wonder Dominic Grieve went. He does not support withdrawing from ECHR and replacing with a British bill of rights. As I believe this means leaving the EU or them accepting such a change, it is now more likely than not that the Tories would back leaving the EU.
So people who vote Tory in 2015 should be aware of the direction that Cameron is taking them in.
The link between the ECHR and EU, long separate, is still complex enough that withdrawal from the former is unlikely to impact the latter for a parliament at least. I suspect beyond that it'll be an EU land grab.
A more term issue will be EU fundamental rights law, as that would obviously remain in place.
One important point is that it would extend (probably) the Employee National insurance level higher, which would probably counteract the effect to a certain level.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
I think the imperial units were based on the number 12 because it is easier to divide, or something like that, I remember Indians are good in mathematics since ancient times because they used a metric system based on 12.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
Also I don't recall ordering half a litre of beer in the pub
Maybe not, there are a few measures that are still in 'imperial' and I suspect that was for political reasons but all engineering is done in metric. Now was it 14 oz in a lb or 16? Then how many lbs in a stone? As for furlongs, I suppose they are still in use too.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
I think the imperial units were based on the number 12 because it is easier to divide, or something like that, I remember Indians are good in mathematics since ancient times because they used a metric system based on 12. However it is hopelessly complicated compared with the decimal system because we have 10 fingers not 12, ohh history of maths.
The obvious compromise is to convert to a duodecimal number system.
Wait a second, is Cameron's big policy announcement was a tax cut totalling £810 for those earning over £50k/yr (the top ~15% of earners)? Wow.
As well as being classic conservative it invites lefties to be outraged at supporting 'the rich' and then crying into their milk when the squeezed middle desert them for a party that is proposing supportive policies, not calling them 'rich'
I agree that it's a classic Conservative policy: it helps the rich at the expense of the poor.
It 'supports' the top 15% of earners. One of the biggest problems in society is that the wealthy don't seem to believe they're wealthy and have a persecution complex. There are middle-earners that are struggling - but it's not those earning £50k/yr.
The Conservatives are pretty fundamentally out of touch.
I think we need a combined education policy, bringing together Cameron's and Gove's ideas. So, Imperial Measurements, taught (children and parents must have choice!) in Latin, Greek or Ancient Hebrew.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
I think the imperial units were based on the number 12 because it is easier to divide, or something like that, I remember Indians are good in mathematics since ancient times because they used a metric system based on 12.
I think it was actually 10!
It a good thing Indians invented zero, or else we would be in a problem, a maths problem. I remember mathematicians wasted centuries to prove that 1=1.
Also I don't recall ordering half a litre of beer in the pub
Maybe not, there are a few measures that are still in 'imperial' and I suspect that was for political reasons but all engineering is done in metric. Now was it 14 oz in a lb or 16? Then how many lbs in a stone? As for furlongs, I suppose they are still in use too.
Bring back Groats, vote Tory.
Pubs are halfway houses. Beer and cider are served in imperial pints, halves or thirds (a nip), wine and spirits are served by metric measure. Bring back the 1/6 gill, 25ml is so sterile
When I studied chemical engineering many moons ago ,it was lesson 1 in year 1 that we did conversions. Still remember being proud of the fact that not only did we use lbs and not kgs as the French did but we used British Lbs and not American Lbs just to complicate life a bit more
Britain's last ever dreadnought-style battleship, HMS Vanguard, had 15 inch main guns (which were actually recycled from HMS Glorious and Courageous upon their conversion to aircraft carriers).
Without the need of a calculator (or Google!) I know that this is an internal diameter of 381 millimetres!
Also I don't recall ordering half a litre of beer in the pub
Maybe not, there are a few measures that are still in 'imperial' and I suspect that was for political reasons but all engineering is done in metric. Now was it 14 oz in a lb or 16? Then how many lbs in a stone? As for furlongs, I suppose they are still in use too.
Bring back Groats, vote Tory.
Even if different measures are used for different things, so what? We are all told how good for the mind it is to be bilingual, the same principle applies with metric/imperial doesn't it?
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
"Conservative chief whip Michael Gove tells BBC Daily Politics that David Cameron's pledge to raise the 40p income rate tax threshold will cost "just under £2bn". He confirms that the announced tax cuts would not take place until the books are balanced, by 2020. "
No mentions made of continued freezes on council tax, TV tax etc post 2015. Let the councils and BBC explain their decisions to raise bills and licence fees.
More cash in pockets = more private sector employment More cash in pockets = more indirect tax ending up at the Treasury,
Alongside that, they will sit on current spending and. at current levels of employment, they could almost certainly further trim the pen pushing element of the public sector.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
Most of the oil industry still uses inches, barrels and psi. Not seeing any problems with their engineering or science.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
When I studied chemical engineering many moons ago ,it was lesson 1 in year 1 that we did conversions. Still remember being proud of the fact that not only did we use lbs and not kgs as the French did but we used British Lbs and not American Lbs just to complicate life a bit more
I still have to teach that.
Thermodynamics lesson 1 - scientific notation, estimation and be aware that people measure things in different units - especially pressure and temperature. Which, errr, we use a fair bit as chemists and chemical engineers.
But that Guardian article is actually disgraceful journalism. Awful stuff. Buzzfeed level.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
OK so it's good to have tricky units because it improves mental arithmetic. Engineers may be competent in both sets of units, but it's an unnecessary complication. I'm with rcs1000 on this. I really thought that it was a wind up when I heard it, in fact are we ABSOLUTELY sure that it isn't?
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
I think the imperial units were based on the number 12 because it is easier to divide, or something like that, I remember Indians are good in mathematics since ancient times because they used a metric system based on 12. However it is hopelessly complicated compared with the decimal system because we have 10 fingers not 12, ohh history of maths.
The obvious compromise is to convert to a duodecimal number system.
Good thing that computers use the binary system (duodecimal is 12 by the way).
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Metric units are handy for science, easier for computers to use and create a more self-consistent set, but Imperial units are not stupid.
Imperial units tend to be more useful for everyday usage. For example, as an enthusiastic baker, I know that an egg weighs roughly 2oz so if I want to make a simple cake - which uses equal quantities of butter, sugar, eggs and flour - I simply need to use 2oz of each of the other ingredients for each egg. 2oz is about 57g.
In interface design you would probably think of Imperial Units as being "human readable", whereas Metric Units are "machine readable".
So on Monday Osborne's message was about the deficit , today Cameron was promising money to everyone left right and centre as if the deficit was of no importance . What is the Conservative priority ?
When I studied chemical engineering many moons ago ,it was lesson 1 in year 1 that we did conversions. Still remember being proud of the fact that not only did we use lbs and not kgs as the French did but we used British Lbs and not American Lbs just to complicate life a bit more
And British Gallons not those American ones,I am also an engineer and was trained in the crossover period from fps to SI,and have no problem in using them both.
Is it true that Cameron has said we'll be returning to imperial units of measurement? If so, he's lost my vote.
If it's UKIP policy he'll do it, however i'm not sure it is UKIP policy.
It would be equivalent to saying: we want to make life especially hard for Brits who want to become scientists or engineers.
But I guess it wouldn't affect those who want to get degrees in Media Studies.
I wonder how all those US scientists and engineers manage in a country that still uses Imperial measurements? Could it possibly be that being forced to do calculations in something other than multiples of 10 actually helps people do mental arithmetic and be more flexible in their thinking?
I do wonder how the most successful engineering and science based industry on earth survives since it is almost entirely run in Imperial units.
So on Monday Osborne's message was about the deficit , today Cameron was promising money to everyone left right and centre as if the deficit was of no importance . What is the Conservative priority ?
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
OK so it's good to have tricky units because it improves mental arithmetic. Engineers may be competent in both sets of units, but it's an unnecessary complication. I'm with rcs1000 on this. I really thought that it was a wind up when I heard it, in fact are we ABSOLUTELY sure that it isn't?
Let's change to having 97pence in a pound. It'll improve everyone's mental arithmetic.
"Conservative chief whip Michael Gove tells BBC Daily Politics that David Cameron's pledge to raise the 40p income rate tax threshold will cost "just under £2bn". He confirms that the announced tax cuts would not take place until the books are balanced, by 2020. "
Effectively a concession that the Conservative Party has no plans to cut the national debt.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
Believe me, f*ck ups due to calculation errors happen all the time. Within the metric system. People miss decimal points, fail to communicate the size of the structure required with the adjacent team, fail to use the latest design standards, or don't understand what's 'buildable' out on site.
If the Hubble space telescope screwed up because of something as simple as base dimensions, the project had much bigger and fundamental management issues than that.
Mr. Woolie, recently discovered (well, a few years ago now) that in the medieval era there were also marks, a mark being 2/3 of a pound (160d, or 13s 4d, I think). Because farthings, ha'pennies, pence, shillings, florins, crowns, pounds and guineas is a system too simple
So on Monday Osborne's message was about the deficit , today Cameron was promising money to everyone left right and centre as if the deficit was of no importance . What is the Conservative priority ?
Wait a second, is Cameron's big policy announcement was a tax cut totalling £810 for those earning over £50k/yr (the top ~15% of earners)? Wow.
As well as being classic conservative it invites lefties to be outraged at supporting 'the rich' and then crying into their milk when the squeezed middle desert them for a party that is proposing supportive policies, not calling them 'rich'
I agree that it's a classic Conservative policy: it helps the rich at the expense of the poor.
It 'supports' the top 15% of earners. One of the biggest problems in society is that the wealthy don't seem to believe they're wealthy and have a persecution complex. There are middle-earners that are struggling - but it's not those earning £50k/yr.
The Conservatives are pretty fundamentally out of touch.
What does "struggling" actually mean though? If there's a couple living in London, with the wife earning £50k a year while her husband looks after three young kids, they're certainly not poor, but they might be struggling to keep their finances in order.
So on Monday Osborne's message was about the deficit , today Cameron was promising money to everyone left right and centre as if the deficit was of no importance . What is the Conservative priority ?
The government has been cutting direct taxation almost all parliament, and the deficit has been falling.
They will get it all back in indirect and consumption tax.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
Is it true that Cameron has said we'll be returning to imperial units of measurement? If so, he's lost my vote.
If it's UKIP policy he'll do it, however i'm not sure it is UKIP policy.
It would be equivalent to saying: we want to make life especially hard for Brits who want to become scientists or engineers.
But I guess it wouldn't affect those who want to get degrees in Media Studies.
I wonder how all those US scientists and engineers manage in a country that still uses Imperial measurements? Could it possibly be that being forced to do calculations in something other than multiples of 10 actually helps people do mental arithmetic and be more flexible in their thinking?
I do wonder how the most successful engineering and science based industry on earth survives since it is almost entirely run in Imperial units.
Come on Richard: are you seriously telling me you support reintroducing Imperial into the classroom?
Yes absolutely. Anything that both improves mental arithmetic and fits people better for life in the real world (bearing in mind that nature is annoyingly non-metric) would be a good thing. The ability to do conversions with ease is a huge life skill no matter what you are converting to and from.
Is it true that Cameron has said we'll be returning to imperial units of measurement? If so, he's lost my vote.
If it's UKIP policy he'll do it, however i'm not sure it is UKIP policy.
It would be equivalent to saying: we want to make life especially hard for Brits who want to become scientists or engineers.
But I guess it wouldn't affect those who want to get degrees in Media Studies.
I wonder how all those US scientists and engineers manage in a country that still uses Imperial measurements? Could it possibly be that being forced to do calculations in something other than multiples of 10 actually helps people do mental arithmetic and be more flexible in their thinking?
I do wonder how the most successful engineering and science based industry on earth survives since it is almost entirely run in Imperial units.
Come on Richard: are you seriously telling me you support reintroducing Imperial into the classroom?
Yes absolutely. Anything that both improves mental arithmetic and fits people better for life in the real world (bearing in mind that nature is annoyingly non-metric) would be a good thing. The ability to do conversions with ease is a huge life skill no matter what you are converting to and from.
Why don't we create a new system using bases of 7 and 19? That would improve mental arithmetic even more than imperial.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
Believe me, f*ck ups due to calculation errors happen all the time. Within the metric system. People miss decimal points, fail to communicate the size of the structure required with the adjacent team, fail to use the latest design standards, or don't understand what's 'buildable' out on site.
If the Hubble space telescope screwed up because of something as simple as base dimensions, the project had much bigger and fundamental management issues than that.
A few Mars spacecraft have been lost that way too, the latest one was the British Beagle 2, in 2003, it cost a ton of money and it was lost due to imperial measurements.
However it could be worse, Cameron could have announced the return to the Babylonian system (based on 60).
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
Well said - there is room for both Metric and Imperial in school education today. We currently use both measurements in the UK, so teaching it seems like just plain common sense to me.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
And like many such cases, the problem was not caught due to lack of suitable testing post-manufacture.
As an aside, I've seen a fair few errors caused by people mistaking Mb (Megabit) and MB (MegaByte). Sometimes because people misread documentation; most frequently because people document incorrectly.
Mr. Woolie, recently discovered (well, a few years ago now) that in the medieval era there were also marks, a mark being 2/3 of a pound (160d, or 13s 4d, I think). Because farthings, ha'pennies, pence, shillings, florins, crowns, pounds and guineas is a system too simple
It all came from the Romans, and due to the fact that with 12 it is easy to do fractions. Though the imperial system used a complex mix.
@OliverPB "The Tories are fundamentally out of touch"
Would you prefer that they spend fortunes on people on benefits who are able to work or change the system (as they are doing) so that it becomes financially attractive to those on benefits to get a job.
I get the 'moral' case for what IDS and the Tories are doing. Perhaps it's because I have two young children and I've worked my whole life. The way the system was working in 2009 we were heading a) towards bankruptcy abd b) a hellish future for our children.
Someone had to grab the nettle and the Tories have done so. It hasn't been popular, it has hurt and it will carry on hurting for a few years. But, if we stay on the current path and accept the short-term pain, the future for my 5-year-old and 1-year-old will be far brighter than it looked back in 2009 for anyone with young children.
That to me is a moral cause.
I've said before that throughout the noughties my living standards shot up hugely, mainly because I was lucky enough to own a home which nearly trebled in value. It was all built on sand, yet I lived like a king for a few years (all this was under a Labour government) whilst Gordon Brown preached to me about prudence and no more boom and bust. Then of course, it all caved in, and I've since had five years of flatlining living standards. I accept that. I also accept that I have no God given right to living standards continually rising. And I also believe it is morally wrong to expect my living standards to rise by borrowing money from the future; money which should go to my kids.
Of course, we still are borrowing a lot, and the economy is proving phenomenally difficult to turn around, mainly because there are lots and lots of people like you who don't believe in making radical changes to the way the system works and therefore dig in against it. The Tories should stick to their guns, and when tax cuts to working people, letting people spend their own money rather than giving it to the government to spend it for them, proves to work, as it will, and the economy gets growing again, then hopefully people like you will be persuaded.
By the way, I'm as working class as you get. But not wracked by prejudice.
Is it true that Cameron has said we'll be returning to imperial units of measurement? If so, he's lost my vote.
If it's UKIP policy he'll do it, however i'm not sure it is UKIP policy.
It would be equivalent to saying: we want to make life especially hard for Brits who want to become scientists or engineers.
But I guess it wouldn't affect those who want to get degrees in Media Studies.
I wonder how all those US scientists and engineers manage in a country that still uses Imperial measurements? Could it possibly be that being forced to do calculations in something other than multiples of 10 actually helps people do mental arithmetic and be more flexible in their thinking?
I do wonder how the most successful engineering and science based industry on earth survives since it is almost entirely run in Imperial units.
Imperial units are stupid. They make leaning science harder, and they lead to engineering fuck ups.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
Rubbish. There are dozens of engineers in my office fully competent in using both. We still use feet, knots in aviation, miles and yards on our highways, and pints and gallons to measure liquids. We weigh each other in stones and pounds, our height in feet and inches.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
Believe me, f*ck ups due to calculation errors happen all the time. Within the metric system. People miss decimal points, fail to communicate the size of the structure required with the adjacent team, fail to use the latest design standards, or don't understand what's 'buildable' out on site.
If the Hubble space telescope screwed up because of something as simple as base dimensions, the project had much bigger and fundamental management issues than that.
A few Mars spacecraft have been lost that way too, the latest one was the British Beagle 2, in 2003, it cost a ton of money and it was lost due to imperial measurements.
However it could be worse, Cameron could have announced the return to the Babylonian system (based on 60).
I think you're wrong about Beagle 2. AFAICR they never got to the bottom of the cause of its loss, and I don't think imperial units came into any of the possible causes. Could be wrong, though.
Comments
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/30/david-cameron-schools-should-teach-mainly-in-imperial-measurements
A loose comment compared to what would require a huge amount of EU reform not to mention industry support to achieve.
Despite my reservations about Cameron, I'll now definitely be voting Conservative in the election. There's a huge gap in blue water between Miliband and Cameron that's developed over the past fortnight.
I'm still not happy ( at all) about defence, immigration, Europe, civil liberties, fox hunting ban, or the 'moderniser' attitude, though. It's been a close call. I could have UKIP'ed, and still might in future.
OK, so they will wait until people forget about the pledges and then they will forget them too. Classic government promises.
To want to return to them because you see metric as some kind of European plot is so spectacularly absurd as to defy belief. If both UKIP and the Conservative Parties were to have this as their official policy it would be extraordinary.
Can somebody please start the Pro-Metric Conservative Party?
It's so dumb I'm not going to believe it's true until we get a few more sources and confirmation from CCHQ.
EDIT: What RCS said just before me: spot on.
We already use imperial. Last time I looked all road signs were in imperial and people give their heights in feet and inches.
So people who vote Tory in 2015 should be aware of the direction that Cameron is taking them in.
If we weren't, we couldn't qualify or do our jobs. It happens all the time.
Since then the threshold has been reduced in order to reduce the cost of increasing the personal allowance. The September rates of CPI inflation since then have been 3%, 5.2%, 2.2% and 2.7%, and so indexation would have increased the 40p threshold to, um, £49,899 for the 2014-2015 tax year.
If we add in August's rate of 1.5% for this year and assume 2% for all subsequent years, then it would imply that the 2019-2020 40p threshold would have been £54,822 with indexation.
But then we know Brown and Darling couldn't afford the generous tax thresholds that they bequeathed to the Coalition, because they were running a huge budget deficit.
Therefore, without the need of a calculator, I know that 16 inches is 406 millimetres, and a 500 lb bomb weighs 227 kilograms
And there's a very good reason for that.
I do wonder how the most successful engineering and science based industry on earth survives since it is almost entirely run in Imperial units.
This really winds me up. I live in Wantage constituency. Labour cannot win Wantage. Therefore if I choose to vote UKIP it will not impact Labour's chances of winning one little bit.
Ditto if I was to live in a safe Lab seat like Bootle or a Lib-Lab marginal like Oxford East or an SNP-Lab fight like Dundee West. In fact out of 600 odd seats, there are only about 100 odd where this might be the case.
Don't forget as well that in some seats like Rotherham a switch from Con to UKIP might actually help Cameron.
Setting up another Con-Dem coalition after 2015?
"Cameron’s speech - Snap Verdict: In the battle of the party conference speeches, for the first time in at least three years, David Cameron has won by a mile. While Ed Miliband’s speech was something even loyalists struggled to get enthusiastic about, this will achieve exactly what Cameron wants. At the Guardian we’ll be worrying about the distributive impact of his proposed tax cuts, and where the money will come from, but for the audience that Cameron is worried about - Tory activists, readers of tabloid papers and people who watch the TV news - it hit all the right buttons."
Aside from the obvious Mars Climate Orbiter, what other major engineering fuck ups have been caused by such things?
(Edit: and I've also had reason to use chains and links in the past, although I wouldn't necessarily recommend using them on new projects).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_(unit)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_(unit)
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1348237/Asylum-seeker-killed-Amy-Houston-12-hit-run-deported.html
However it is hopelessly complicated compared with the decimal system because we have 10 fingers not 12, ohh history of maths.
A more term issue will be EU fundamental rights law, as that would obviously remain in place.
Who 'f*cks up' on any of that?
It makes no difference whatsoever. In fact, it improves mental arthimetic and numerical reasoning by building conversions into everyday life.
Now was it 14 oz in a lb or 16? Then how many lbs in a stone? As for furlongs, I suppose they are still in use too.
Bring back Groats, vote Tory.
It 'supports' the top 15% of earners. One of the biggest problems in society is that the wealthy don't seem to believe they're wealthy and have a persecution complex. There are middle-earners that are struggling - but it's not those earning £50k/yr.
The Conservatives are pretty fundamentally out of touch.
I remember mathematicians wasted centuries to prove that 1=1.
Without the need of a calculator (or Google!) I know that this is an internal diameter of 381 millimetres!
"Conservative chief whip Michael Gove tells BBC Daily Politics that David Cameron's pledge to raise the 40p income rate tax threshold will cost "just under £2bn". He confirms that the announced tax cuts would not take place until the books are balanced, by 2020. "
No mentions made of continued freezes on council tax, TV tax etc post 2015. Let the councils and BBC explain their decisions to raise bills and licence fees.
More cash in pockets = more private sector employment
More cash in pockets = more indirect tax ending up at the Treasury,
Alongside that, they will sit on current spending and. at current levels of employment, they could almost certainly further trim the pen pushing element of the public sector.
I used to collect coins. The old system was rather more to my liking.
Thermodynamics lesson 1 - scientific notation, estimation and be aware that people measure things in different units - especially pressure and temperature. Which, errr, we use a fair bit as chemists and chemical engineers.
But that Guardian article is actually disgraceful journalism. Awful stuff. Buzzfeed level.
Engineers may be competent in both sets of units, but it's an unnecessary complication. I'm with rcs1000 on this. I really thought that it was a wind up when I heard it, in fact are we ABSOLUTELY sure that it isn't?
Imperial units tend to be more useful for everyday usage. For example, as an enthusiastic baker, I know that an egg weighs roughly 2oz so if I want to make a simple cake - which uses equal quantities of butter, sugar, eggs and flour - I simply need to use 2oz of each of the other ingredients for each egg. 2oz is about 57g.
In interface design you would probably think of Imperial Units as being "human readable", whereas Metric Units are "machine readable".
What is the Conservative priority ?
Come on Richard: are you seriously telling me you support reintroducing Imperial into the classroom?
No, I don't know why either.
If the Hubble space telescope screwed up because of something as simple as base dimensions, the project had much bigger and fundamental management issues than that.
And it won't work.
They will get it all back in indirect and consumption tax.
However it could be worse, Cameron could have announced the return to the Babylonian system (based on 60).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falling_from_the_Sky:_Flight_174
Hexadecimal, you know it makes sense!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Origin_of_the_problem
And especially section 7.1 of
http://www.company7.com/c7news/19910003124_1991003124.pdf
And like many such cases, the problem was not caught due to lack of suitable testing post-manufacture.
As an aside, I've seen a fair few errors caused by people mistaking Mb (Megabit) and MB (MegaByte). Sometimes because people misread documentation; most frequently because people document incorrectly.
Though the imperial system used a complex mix.
Would you prefer that they spend fortunes on people on benefits who are able to work or change the system (as they are doing) so that it becomes financially attractive to those on benefits to get a job.
I get the 'moral' case for what IDS and the Tories are doing. Perhaps it's because I have two young children and I've worked my whole life. The way the system was working in 2009 we were heading a) towards bankruptcy abd b) a hellish future for our children.
Someone had to grab the nettle and the Tories have done so. It hasn't been popular, it has hurt and it will carry on hurting for a few years. But, if we stay on the current path and accept the short-term pain, the future for my 5-year-old and 1-year-old will be far brighter than it looked back in 2009 for anyone with young children.
That to me is a moral cause.
I've said before that throughout the noughties my living standards shot up hugely, mainly because I was lucky enough to own a home which nearly trebled in value. It was all built on sand, yet I lived like a king for a few years (all this was under a Labour government) whilst Gordon Brown preached to me about prudence and no more boom and bust. Then of course, it all caved in, and I've since had five years of flatlining living standards. I accept that. I also accept that I have no God given right to living standards continually rising. And I also believe it is morally wrong to expect my living standards to rise by borrowing money from the future; money which should go to my kids.
Of course, we still are borrowing a lot, and the economy is proving phenomenally difficult to turn around, mainly because there are lots and lots of people like you who don't believe in making radical changes to the way the system works and therefore dig in against it. The Tories should stick to their guns, and when tax cuts to working people, letting people spend their own money rather than giving it to the government to spend it for them, proves to work, as it will, and the economy gets growing again, then hopefully people like you will be persuaded.
By the way, I'm as working class as you get. But not wracked by prejudice.
[Ok, so not in China, Mongolia or some of the 'stans'. Whatever.]