Beer Comes in Pints, Bozza...

-


Nice piece in the i 'My View' comment section by Ian Dunt today, ripping one out of the news that we can now officially sell wine in pint bottles again, hooray! Trumpeted by the Minister for Enterprise as '... Our exit from the EU was all about moments just like this...'. It turns out that Boris Johnson's notion that - [measuring using Imperial units is an] '... ancient liberty...' - ignores the fact that the Imperial system was only instituted in 1826 and that his subsequent review of weights and measures initiated in 2016 revealed on consultation that less than one half of one percent of those asked even wanted to return to an entirely Imperial system, and that over eighty percent of the sample were enthusiastically content to continue as we currently are with the metric system.

We could of course, as I've alluded to in blog posts past, return to the [actually ancient, Bozza!] "English System", which of course uses lines, barleycorns, poles, chains, roods, pecks, bushels, cubits, spans and ever-so-many other wonderful, if ever-so-slightly abstruse and frankly vague, if charmingly human units of measure, dating far back into antiquity. So, the desire to 'take back control' of our weights and measures is based on a return to standards dating merely back to the late Georgian era. Under Victoria's subsequent reign, the first signs of attempts to enter a new, decimal era were evident in the introduction of a new coin of the realm: the florin, or the two-bob-bit: one tenth of a pound Sterling.

Doesn't say much for Boris Johnson's excruciatingly expensive classical education, does it? It also underestimates that the rest of us in the UK have moved on and that the bulk of the world, America excepted, did so long ago, particularly in Europe. Some of us are lucky enough to be able to think in multiple measuring systems, having been educated in the crossover period of the 1960s; however to anyone under fifty, metric is the only standard they understand or need. And as for Johnson, faux tradition is his stock in trade, as with most all conservatives: their collective schtick being some 'rosy' vision of forelock-tugging peasantry and benevolent toffs. Jesus, how thick can they think we all really are? As for the 'extra' amount in a pint versus a half-litre bottle: can anyone tell me when they last bought a 500ml bottle of wine? Thought so: and frankly, I'm also sticking with the full-size seventy-five centilitre jobby, so there. Unless they bring back flagons of course...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Of Feedback & Wobbles

-
Image
Many years ago I came up with an analogy for poorly damped feedback loops. The feedback loop that prompted this frankly tart analogy was indeed a horror. Anyone who remembers shame-faced their first attempts at clutch control resulting in the good old kangaroo launch across the lights only to stall in the middle of the crossroads will have some idea of the kind of data transfer lag involved in said system. The analogy I made was that of a large blancmange. Untouched, a model of stasis and eminently stable and predictable; but prod the bugger and the resultant chaotic behaviour needs a very complex physical model and some very decent computing horsepower to predict its outputs, if at all. The system in question was a large and complex audio-visual display at what eventually became 'The Electric Mountain' in Llanberis. We were ultimately contracted to maintain the thing having been witness to and peripherally involved in its installation. Certainly not involved in its des...
Read more

A Time of Connection

-
Image
I was just reflecting on the vacuum of continuity that's left behind when someone dies: that sudden sense of disjoint, of fracture, in one's personal history that takes one completely by surprise at the oddest moments. These pinch-points in memory can often yield some surprising revelations of fact about periods in one's past. One such occurred to me tonight, tending my rather lazy meal of pizza in its journey from shrink-wrap to mouth via the oven. Al's recent demise still catches me out from time to time: the space he left bounded by forty plus years of friendship. But the thing that struck me tonight was just how much change was happening on a personal and social level in the very early years of our acquaintance. Between moving here from Birmingham in September 1980 and our buying our first proper house eighteen months later, all manner of things occurred that would chart the course of our lives to the present day. At around the time of our meeting Alan & Irene [...
Read more

Sister Ray

-
Image
Ray Keats - aka Ann Key - local artist & family friend, died this morning. She'd been ill for some years, but never let it get in the way of her work or of tending to the massive network of friends, colleagues and fans she had accumulated over the decades. Her house on the High Street of Rachub, just below where we live - a former cockle factory(!) - bought many years ago when she and her late husband Ronald moved here from Manchester to set up home in Yr Achub, is currently still home to her paintings and drawings, and the front window displays her work, including the last drawing she made in hospital, just days before she died. Her good friend Colin has been a diamond in her latter years, looking out for her and just being there when she needed him. She will be much missed by this tiny community of ageing bohemians up here in the hills, but suffice it to say, George, her cat, will be well looked after now she's gone.
Read more