Jump to content

Wevver


mrsmelly

Featured Posts

5 minutes ago, dixi188 said:

In 1969 I started my apprenticeship and a very nice Mr Ratcliffe at Poole Technical College told me that after 1971 I would never use imperial tools or measurement again.

I retired in September 2019 after 50 years in aircraft engineering and was still using AF spanners and occationally even Whitworth ones on some pipe fittings.

Some rivets had gone metric but even then they were really imperial as in 3.2 mm (1/8in), 4mm (5/32in) 4.8mm (3/16).

This has been a complaint of mine all my life, instead of metricating properly we have merely metricated old measurements e.g. a jar of chutney at 360g when 350g would be a much more sensible measure in keeping with a metric measure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, Jerra said:

This has been a complaint of mine all my life, instead of metricating properly we have merely metricated old measurements e.g. a jar of chutney at 360g when 350g would be a much more sensible measure in keeping with a metric measure.

At the time it would have cost a fortune to re machine everything, jars, bottles etc. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just now, ditchcrawler said:

At the time it would have cost a fortune to re machine everything, jars, bottles etc. 

It isn't a question of remachining we are almost 50 years since "metrication" in actual fact almost 55 since the government declared we are going to metricate.  How many places are still suing machines etc which are 50+ years old.  As time has gone by things should have been slowly changing until nobody thought or used imperial any more.  It was after all a ridiculous system.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I understand that the metric system has been legal to use for commerce  in parallel with imperial (except for beer and some other things) since Victorian times, something to do with Prince Albert's influence. There was also a Victorian proposal to change to decimal currency, dividing the pound into 1,000 mils, approximately the number (960) of farthings in a pound.This is why the 2/- piece, or florin (originally marked "one tenth of a pound")  was introduced, with minting of half crowns being suspended.  After decimal currency plans were abandoned, the minting of 2/6d coins resumed, but 2/- coins continued to be minted as well.

 

The Fahrenheit scale was originally a "centigrade" scale, with zero as the coldest temperature achievable with an ice-salt freezing bath, and 100 as blood temperature.  

 

Around 20 years ago, we used to go on holiday with our children to Ibiza in August.  I was starting to learn Spanish at the time and used to buy the local daily newspaper.  One year we had a real cloudburst. While the newsaper reported the rainfall in metric (over 50mm in 2 hours), reports of local floodwater depth were only given in terms of "manos" (hands: 4"), "palmas" (palms: 3") , and "pulgadas" (thumbs: inches), not  mm or cm. 

 

Going back to the original topic, I well remember that it snowed over much of England in early June 1975 (June 2nd I think). It was several inches deep in Yorkshire,  and in Essex, blizzard conditions brought the cricket match  at Essex's Chelmsford ground to a halt.   That I think was the Monday. By the Friday it was sweltering and the start of that year's long hot summer. A friend was working in the London office of a Norwegian shipping company at the time, said that one of their Norwegian managers who was temporararily based there, remarked that he now understood why the British always talked about the weather!

Edited by Ronaldo47
typos
Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Cheshire cat said:

Last time I tried to pay in groats they were declined

Last time I tried to pay with any coins they were declined. I still have the same to paper notes an a few coins that I had at the start of the first lockdown! The pound coin has had a few outings with supermarket trolleys.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

17 hours ago, Jerra said:

It isn't a question of remachining we are almost 50 years since "metrication" in actual fact almost 55 since the government declared we are going to metricate.  How many places are still suing machines etc which are 50+ years old.  As time has gone by things should have been slowly changing until nobody thought or used imperial any more.  It was after all a ridiculous system.

I did say "at the time"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

My local shops are fine with cash. The local chippy still only takes cash. The self-service machines at the local supermarkets accept notes and coins as well as cards. The last time we visited B&Q, communications problems meant that they only had one till that would accept cards, so we were able to go from the back of a long queue to a queue-less till that accepted cash.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, ditchcrawler said:

I pay the window cleaner and grass cutting man in cash. even the charity shops want card

We pay our window cleaner by bank transfer, likewise the milk lady etc.   Nobody has offered to pay me for cutting the grass.  :(

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

I pay the window cleaner and grass cutting man in cash. even the charity shops want card

Both of ours are paid by bank transfer. The grass man forgets to invoice me, I ended up paying last years in Feb this year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 hours ago, Ronaldo47 said:

My local shops are fine with cash. The local chippy still only takes cash. The self-service machines at the local supermarkets accept notes and coins as well as cards. The last time we visited B&Q, communications problems meant that they only had one till that would accept cards, so we were able to go from the back of a long queue to a queue-less till that accepted cash.

I use cash daily. The cafe we have just had brekky in ONLY accepts cash, no cards and was again packed as its good. We accept cash at the pig place or plastic. The pubs we use all accept cash as does my lads pub. In fact everywhere takes cash. If you are unsure re that statement then go to somewhere that says at payment that they only accept card payment and hand you the 200 pound bill for food you have already eaten and pull the cash out of your pocket a completely legal payment method and state thats all you have, your choice and see wether they accept cash or not.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've just realised that our central heating is still on in the house. I'm sure I've usually turned it off by this time of the year.

 

I haven't looked at any comparative statistics, but I suspect that this spring has been quite a bit cooler than average. Nonetheless, the first roses in the garden managed to come out last weekend.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 minutes ago, Athy said:

I've just realised that our central heating is still on in the house. I'm sure I've usually turned it off by this time of the year.

 

Never manually turn mine off, if it's warm enough it doesn't come on, controlled by a thermostat. ?

 

 

  • Greenie 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 23/05/2021 at 23:15, Jerra said:

This has been a complaint of mine all my life, instead of metricating properly we have merely metricated old measurements e.g. a jar of chutney at 360g when 350g would be a much more sensible measure in keeping with a metric measure.

You want 10g less chutney in the jar? ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, mrsmelly said:

I use cash daily. The cafe we have just had brekky in ONLY accepts cash, no cards and was again packed as its good. We accept cash at the pig place or plastic. The pubs we use all accept cash as does my lads pub. In fact everywhere takes cash. If you are unsure re that statement then go to somewhere that says at payment that they only accept card payment and hand you the 200 pound bill for food you have already eaten and pull the cash out of your pocket a completely legal payment method and state thats all you have, your choice and see wether they accept cash or not.

Because of Covid I have not been a tourist in a foreign country for well over a year now.

But before that, making purchases when out of my home country were restricted to using Visa, which my NZ bank charged a not inconsiderable fee per transaction plus a crap exchange rate, and the vendor added yet  another credit card fee, or  using my normal bank card, to withdraw a decent amount of cash, suffering the same fixed transaction fee and crap exchange rate, but that fixed transaction fee was then spread over a large number of minor transactions.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.