politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » As Dave’s big speech begins – Rumour has it the third defec
Comments
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state_go_away said:
They run races in furlongs as well!! and measure height in hands!!Peter_the_Punter said:Racehorses are still bought and sold in guineas.
No, I don't know why either.
They on-course bookies don't offer the fractions that they used too,100-8 etc.Bring back fractions.
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Nail on the head, great postFenster said:@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.
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Yes, you can divide* 12 by 2, 3, 4 and 6, whereas you can only divide 10 by 2 and 5.Speedy said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
However it is hopelessly complicated compared with the decimal system because we have 10 fingers not 12, ohh history of maths.
The Babylonians used base-60 (which we still use in time and angles) because you can then divide by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.
I think base-24 is probably a good system to aim at. This enables simple division by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12. Basing a currency off that would be a good plan for bringing back a non-decimal currency system, and it would help mean that we could talk about pounds in lower quantities, because one pound would divide into twenty-four shillings and each shilling could divide into 24 pence - so you have a more useful range of human readable numebrs then with the daft one hundred pence to a pound.
* Here I mean "divide with no remainder".0 -
I really doubt it.Jonathan said:Have the Tories really said that they will reinstate Imperial units in schools?
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Nick Robinson @bbcnickrobinson ·
Tory tax giveaway promises cost £7.2bn per year by 2020. How afforded? Who pays?0 -
Good. Utterly crazy. Mandating the metric system was one of the good things Margaret Thatcher did.CarlottaVance said:
No. It was an off the cuff comment by Cameron in a Newsnight interview - I doubt it will see the manifesto.....they have other battles to fight....Jonathan said:Have the Tories really said that they will reinstate Imperial units in schools?
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Beagle 2 cost hardly any money (£60M) and its failure had sod all to do with imperial measurements, although the official report listed so many potential failures, it is surprising it ever got off the ground.Speedy said:
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.Casino_Royale said:
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.rcs1000 said:
The Hubble Space telescope was fucked up because one team was working in metric, and another in imperial: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/686674.stmCasino_Royale said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
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.
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.
However it could be worse, Cameron could have announced the return to the Babylonian system (based on 60).0 -
Ha ha - Classic PB, number theory on Dave's thread.
Team Casio shall have our revenge.0 -
Imagine the number of coins.OblitusSumMe said:
Yes, you can divide* 12 by 2, 3, 4 and 6, whereas you can only divide 10 by 2 and 5.Speedy said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
However it is hopelessly complicated compared with the decimal system because we have 10 fingers not 12, ohh history of maths.
The Babylonians used base-60 (which we still use in time and angles) because you can then divide by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.
I think base-24 is probably a good system to aim at. This enables simple division by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12. Basing a currency off that would be a good plan for bringing back a non-decimal currency system, and it would help mean that we could talk about pounds in lower quantities, because one pound would divide into twenty-four shillings and each shilling could divide into 24 pence - so you have a more useful range of human readable numebrs then with the daft one hundred pence to a pound.
* Here I mean "divide with no remainder".0 -
Seconded.currystar said:
Nail on the head, great postFenster said:@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.0 -
I think the classification of people into working class, middle class ,toffs etc is very imperial. Nobody really knows what they mean anymore.
Need a metric system for this .I don't think that ABC1C2 rubbish works either .
Just have a simple scale of 1 (uber chav)-100 (very posh) would work best and turn slackers into strivers more as you could more easily define your progress0 -
I remember the landing rockets or the parachutes were programmed to fire at an altitude based on feet instead of meters, as a result they fired to late and it crashed.JosiasJessop said:
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.Speedy said:
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.Casino_Royale said:
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.rcs1000 said:
The Hubble Space telescope was fucked up because one team was working in metric, and another in imperial: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/686674.stmCasino_Royale said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
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.
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.
However it could be worse, Cameron could have announced the return to the Babylonian system (based on 60).0 -
There was a case a few years back of a very well known oil major (I will spare their blushes) where the guys in the head office set a drilling target in feet. For some inexplicable reason, the people on the rig thought this number was in meters. They were merrily drilling on towards the centre of the Earth when someone in head office said "Errrr......WTF?"0
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Mr. Speedy, makes sense, with d for denarius.0
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Of course it's easier to deliver a speech when you have something to say.MarqueeMark said:Were you watching, Ed Miliband? That is how to deliver a speech.
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Someone once said that if humans had six fingers on each hand we would have colonized the Galaxy by now...OblitusSumMe said:
Yes, you can divide* 12 by 2, 3, 4 and 6, whereas you can only divide 10 by 2 and 5.Speedy said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
However it is hopelessly complicated compared with the decimal system because we have 10 fingers not 12, ohh history of maths.
The Babylonians used base-60 (which we still use in time and angles) because you can then divide by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.
I think base-24 is probably a good system to aim at. This enables simple division by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12. Basing a currency off that would be a good plan for bringing back a non-decimal currency system, and it would help mean that we could talk about pounds in lower quantities, because one pound would divide into twenty-four shillings and each shilling could divide into 24 pence - so you have a more useful range of human readable numebrs then with the daft one hundred pence to a pound.
* Here I mean "divide with no remainder".0 -
Where would a think-as-shit premier league footballer go?state_go_away said:I think the classification of people into working class, middle class ,toffs etc is very imperial. Nobody really knows what they mean anymore.
Need a metric system for this .I don't think that ABC1C2 rubbish works either .
Just have a simple scale of 1 (uber chav)-100 (very posh) would work best and turn slackers into strivers more as you could more easily define your progress0 -
They should indeed bring back "the fractions" but the fractional odds are really ratios.volcanopete said:state_go_away said:
They run races in furlongs as well!! and measure height in hands!!Peter_the_Punter said:Racehorses are still bought and sold in guineas.
No, I don't know why either.
They on-course bookies don't offer the fractions that they used too,100-8 etc.Bring back fractions.0 -
Don't the marketing people love that ABC crap though?state_go_away said:I think the classification of people into working class, middle class ,toffs etc is very imperial. Nobody really knows what they mean anymore.
Need a metric system for this .I don't think that ABC1C2 rubbish works either .
Just have a simple scale of 1 (uber chav)-100 (very posh) would work best and turn slackers into strivers more as you could more easily define your progress
And the Bbc, ever helpful, did invent a well publicised new system.
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oh there was a time not so long ago where you could go into a bookmaker and beg to be given the 100/8 instead of 12/1. Worked with older cashiers who admired your nostalgic knowledge of bookmaking odds!!volcanopete said:state_go_away said:
They run races in furlongs as well!! and measure height in hands!!Peter_the_Punter said:Racehorses are still bought and sold in guineas.
No, I don't know why either.
They on-course bookies don't offer the fractions that they used too,100-8 etc.Bring back fractions.0 -
I guess that's compared to the situation where you never raise the thresholds despite inflation. In practice if you're still printing money to inflate away the debt you'd probably have raised them at least some of the way even without a conference speech pander.Artist said:Nick Robinson @bbcnickrobinson ·
Tory tax giveaway promises cost £7.2bn per year by 2020. How afforded? Who pays?0 -
You could have an annual re-rating of your status points. Then publish the results on-line. Oh, the horror of that e-mail arriving....state_go_away said:I think the classification of people into working class, middle class ,toffs etc is very imperial. Nobody really knows what they mean anymore.
Need a metric system for this .I don't think that ABC1C2 rubbish works either .
Just have a simple scale of 1 (uber chav)-100 (very posh) would work best and turn slackers into strivers more as you could more easily define your progress
0 -
Sorry, there are arguments to be made against the imperial system. But arguing that scientists and engineers can't handle it, or means pupils can't learn either in school is bollocks.Speedy said:
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.Casino_Royale said:
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.rcs1000 said:
The Hubble Space telescope was fucked up because one team was working in metric, and another in imperial: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/686674.stmCasino_Royale said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
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.
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.
However it could be worse, Cameron could have announced the return to the Babylonian system (based on 60).
Neither is abolishing it because a few space exploration projects crap at project management a convincing excuse.0 -
I like coins. They last longer than notes and I have a cool money bag to carry them around in.Speedy said:
Imagine the number of coins.OblitusSumMe said:
Yes, you can divide* 12 by 2, 3, 4 and 6, whereas you can only divide 10 by 2 and 5.Speedy said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
However it is hopelessly complicated compared with the decimal system because we have 10 fingers not 12, ohh history of maths.
The Babylonians used base-60 (which we still use in time and angles) because you can then divide by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.
I think base-24 is probably a good system to aim at. This enables simple division by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12. Basing a currency off that would be a good plan for bringing back a non-decimal currency system, and it would help mean that we could talk about pounds in lower quantities, because one pound would divide into twenty-four shillings and each shilling could divide into 24 pence - so you have a more useful range of human readable numebrs then with the daft one hundred pence to a pound.
* Here I mean "divide with no remainder".0 -
about 14 ? lose a mark for getting sent off for dissent or diving ,gain a couple if you shake hands with refAnorak said:
Where would a think-as-shit premier league footballer go?state_go_away said:I think the classification of people into working class, middle class ,toffs etc is very imperial. Nobody really knows what they mean anymore.
Need a metric system for this .I don't think that ABC1C2 rubbish works either .
Just have a simple scale of 1 (uber chav)-100 (very posh) would work best and turn slackers into strivers more as you could more easily define your progress0 -
Indeed. But it's much harder to govern when you've made billions of unfunded promises. Especially when you believe that you are "paying down the debt".Richard_Nabavi said:
Of course it's easier to deliver a speech when you have something to say.MarqueeMark said:Were you watching, Ed Miliband? That is how to deliver a speech.
LotO forgetting the deficit is bad, the PM thinking he is in surplus is arguably worse.0 -
It's a political betting site. Politicians stand in elections, they dont run in the 5.45 at Kempton.Ishmael_X said:
Depressing to read that on what purports to be a betting site.logical_song said:
As for furlongs, I suppose they are still in use too.___Bobajob___ said:Also I don't recall ordering half a litre of beer in the pub
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or hold conferences at racecourses oopsNeil said:
It's a political betting site. Politicians stand in elections, they dont run in the 5.45 at Kempton.Ishmael_X said:
Depressing to read that on what purports to be a betting site.logical_song said:
As for furlongs, I suppose they are still in use too.___Bobajob___ said:Also I don't recall ordering half a litre of beer in the pub
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It's not that they can't handle it, it's that the time and effort spent handling it could be more productively used handling something else.Casino_Royale said:Sorry, there are arguments to be made against the imperial system. But arguing that scientists and engineers can't handle it, or means pupils can't learn either in school is bollocks.
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Because we do not have the majority of our population, some of our major industries and many of our most important overseas customers using them. Unlike the Imperial systems.Socrates said:
Why don't we create a new system using bases of 7 and 19? That would improve mental arithmetic even more than imperial.Richard_Tyndall said:
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.rcs1000 said:
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_born_scientists_and_engineers_in_the_United_States) they largely manage it through importing scientists and engineers... and probaby from countries where they teach in metric.Richard_Tyndall said:
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?rcs1000 said:
It would be equivalent to saying: we want to make life especially hard for Brits who want to become scientists or engineers.Speedy said:
If it's UKIP policy he'll do it, however i'm not sure it is UKIP policy.rcs1000 said:Is it true that Cameron has said we'll be returning to imperial units of measurement? If so, he's lost my vote.
But I guess it wouldn't affect those who want to get degrees in Media Studies.
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?0 -
I read that without the comma, first. My brain fell out.MarqueeMark said:Were you watching, Ed Miliband? That is how to deliver a speech.
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yes good idea!!MarqueeMark said:
You could have an annual re-rating of your status points. Then publish the results on-line. Oh, the horror of that e-mail arriving....state_go_away said:I think the classification of people into working class, middle class ,toffs etc is very imperial. Nobody really knows what they mean anymore.
Need a metric system for this .I don't think that ABC1C2 rubbish works either .
Just have a simple scale of 1 (uber chav)-100 (very posh) would work best and turn slackers into strivers more as you could more easily define your progress
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It's been an hour since Cameron's speech and we are talking non stop about arithmetic systems instead of taxes.
Lets hope for Cameron that PB is an exception and the rest of he country isn't currently debating imperial vs metric.0 -
The time and effort is negligible. I do this for a living.edmundintokyo said:
It's not that they can't handle it, it's that the time and effort spent handling it could be more productively used handling something else.Casino_Royale said:Sorry, there are arguments to be made against the imperial system. But arguing that scientists and engineers can't handle it, or means pupils can't learn either in school is bollocks.
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He's a bright guy, Cameron, why would he say such a daft thing even off the cuff. Could it be that he's trying to emulate Nigel?Jonathan said:
Good. Utterly crazy. Mandating the metric system was one of the good things Margaret Thatcher did.CarlottaVance said:
No. It was an off the cuff comment by Cameron in a Newsnight interview - I doubt it will see the manifesto.....they have other battles to fight....Jonathan said:Have the Tories really said that they will reinstate Imperial units in schools?
Cue Dvorak's New World symphony (aka Hovis ad).0 -
As ever, linky please. ;-)Speedy said:
I remember the landing rockets or the parachutes were programmed to fire at an altitude based on feet instead of meters, as a result they fired to late and it crashed.JosiasJessop said:
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.Speedy said:
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.Casino_Royale said:
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.rcs1000 said:
The Hubble Space telescope was fucked up because one team was working in metric, and another in imperial: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/686674.stmCasino_Royale said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
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.
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.
However it could be worse, Cameron could have announced the return to the Babylonian system (based on 60).0 -
New Thread0
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He wasn't serious . Evan Davis asked him the question to start off on something a bit different to what Paxman might ask him and Cameron responded by saying something like he quite liked imperial units personally.That was itlogical_song said:
He's a bright guy, Cameron, why would he say such a daft thing even off the cuff. Could it be that he's trying to emulate Nigel?Jonathan said:
Good. Utterly crazy. Mandating the metric system was one of the good things Margaret Thatcher did.CarlottaVance said:
No. It was an off the cuff comment by Cameron in a Newsnight interview - I doubt it will see the manifesto.....they have other battles to fight....Jonathan said:Have the Tories really said that they will reinstate Imperial units in schools?
Cue Dvorak's New World symphony (aka Hovis ad).
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It's small. But multiply that small cost by a lot of people doing it and it adds up to a lot of wasted effort that could be doing something more useful.Casino_Royale said:
The time and effort is negligible. I do this for a living.edmundintokyo said:
It's not that they can't handle it, it's that the time and effort spent handling it could be more productively used handling something else.Casino_Royale said:Sorry, there are arguments to be made against the imperial system. But arguing that scientists and engineers can't handle it, or means pupils can't learn either in school is bollocks.
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When you get right down to the real nitty gritty Cameron looks and feels like a Prime Minister. Ed just looks like a burk.0
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Like what? Its not as if those engineers could start theHeathrow expansion earlier !!edmundintokyo said:
It's small. But multiply that small cost by a lot of people doing it and it adds up to a lot of wasted effort that could be doing something more useful.Casino_Royale said:
The time and effort is negligible. I do this for a living.edmundintokyo said:
It's not that they can't handle it, it's that the time and effort spent handling it could be more productively used handling something else.Casino_Royale said:Sorry, there are arguments to be made against the imperial system. But arguing that scientists and engineers can't handle it, or means pupils can't learn either in school is bollocks.
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Mike Wood @mikejwood 10m10 minutes ago
UKIP leader on Dudley Council, and PPC for Walsall South, has resigned from the Party. .@CCHQPress
Who is the Tory MP? Kelly...
May be a hoax keep watching.0 -
Must have been why in the old Apothecaries weights and measures 60 grains equalled an ounce and 480 grains an Apothecaries ounce. When I qualified we had to be able to convert Apoth to metric ..... no calculators then either ....... and formulae for medicines could be in either system.RodCrosby said:
Someone once said that if humans had six fingers on each hand we would have colonized the Galaxy by now...OblitusSumMe said:
Yes, you can divide* 12 by 2, 3, 4 and 6, whereas you can only divide 10 by 2 and 5.Speedy said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
However it is hopelessly complicated compared with the decimal system because we have 10 fingers not 12, ohh history of maths.
The Babylonians used base-60 (which we still use in time and angles) because you can then divide by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30.
I think base-24 is probably a good system to aim at. This enables simple division by 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12. Basing a currency off that would be a good plan for bringing back a non-decimal currency system, and it would help mean that we could talk about pounds in lower quantities, because one pound would divide into twenty-four shillings and each shilling could divide into 24 pence - so you have a more useful range of human readable numebrs then with the daft one hundred pence to a pound.
* Here I mean "divide with no remainder".
However, a 480 grain ounce was much more useful for calculations and, IMHO much less likely to error. I’ve seen decimal points put in the wrong place with potentially disastrous consequences.
Converting to the Avoirdupois system could be a bit of a whatsit as there were 437.5 Apothecaries grains in one of those!0 -
You don't have a clue what you're taking about. Sorry.edmundintokyo said:
It's small. But multiply that small cost by a lot of people doing it and it adds up to a lot of wasted effort that could be doing something more useful.Casino_Royale said:
The time and effort is negligible. I do this for a living.edmundintokyo said:
It's not that they can't handle it, it's that the time and effort spent handling it could be more productively used handling something else.Casino_Royale said:Sorry, there are arguments to be made against the imperial system. But arguing that scientists and engineers can't handle it, or means pupils can't learn either in school is bollocks.
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You have three sections to each finger, and four fingers: 12 sections.Speedy said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
However it is hopelessly complicated compared with the decimal system because we have 10 fingers not 12, ohh history of maths.
(8m33s into the video below.)
http://youtu.be/U6xJfP7-HCc
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*splutters*
I can't believe I missed Cameron's speech live. It sounds great - anyone know where it is on replay?CarlottaVance said:alexmassie: "Better than Miliband" is about as good an example of the soft bigotry of low expectations as you could ever hope to find.
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I only use metric for very small things that require precision where 3/16th of an inch is just mindbending - otherwise I'm always Imperial.logical_song said:
I thought you were joking, but no:rcs1000 said:Is it true that Cameron has said we'll be returning to imperial units of measurement? If so, he's lost my vote.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/30/david-cameron-schools-should-teach-mainly-in-imperial-measurements
Hang on I've got a ten bob note somewhere.0 -
Didn't the Hubble space telescope mirror have some engineering eff-up in the conversion of one to another?JosiasJessop said:
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.rcs1000 said: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?
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)0 -
holy crapoxfordsimon said:
I did shed a few - it was something very rare in politics. Genuine passion.jayfdee said:
Yes Sam looked close to tears.oxfordsimon said:It is not often that tears come during a political speech - but Cameron was genuinely moving then. His comments on the NHS and his personal experience were very powerful
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