metric versus imperial

Yesterday was a sad day; I became one of *those people* who write to the BBC...

What was it that incensed me so? Well this story about a new species of rat being discovered in PNG was included in the news bulletin on Radio 4's Today programme. When they were reading the stats on the rat they were all in imperial units. So I was informed that the rat was 28 inches long and it's mass in pounds. However I have only a vague idea of what this actually is; I'm from the generation who were only taught in metric units in school, so the working knowledge I have of imperial units is from day to day interaction with people who use that system and even then I'm converting those units into metric ones in my head to understand them. Interestingly the units in the internet version of the news item are all in metric units with not an imperial one in sight.

So I emailed the Today programme to ask them why they had only read out the imperial stats relating to the creature and not even a token metric unit and to ask if the BBC has a policy on the issue (and I would be shocked if it turned out that they didn't). I'm waiting for my reply...

I do wish that the UK would finish the metric-ification process that was started 40 years ago. Imperial units were very useful in a bygone age, but that age is over and the metric system is far more appropriate and easy to use for the world we live in today.