Mundane facts about your day...

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Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Amazingly you can buy the (blue) uk police barrier tape from amazon (£6/12 metres). A practical joker can create a lot of fun / mayhem with a roll (so I’m told!)
I found a load of it in my front garden once, in a bundle - I went out to put what I thought was a discarded plastic bag in the blue bin (when you still could).

Subsequent enquiries suggested that it had come from an abortive attempt to cordon off the site of Lake Sandon during a high tide event.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
The half crown was a remarkable coin, to outsiders, if you see it from their point of view.

It didn't actually indicate on it what it was worth, apart from being half of something that didn't even exist in normally circulation. Even if you, as a visitor, had come to grips with the whole pounds, shillings and pence thing, you still had to 'know' that a crown was five shillings, even though you would never seen a crown coin, and thus work out what this 'half crown' actually was.

I lived in a tourist spot in the 60s and remember often seeing American tourists (particularly) holding out handfuls of coins in shops, hoping that the assistant would remove the correct amount. We thought this was really odd, but they just didn't have the time to learn the system - and then there was also the fact that people used different word for things - pound/quid, shilling/bob, even sixpence/tanner, and you would still hear joey for threepence.

"Gee, pal, how much money is this 'half crown'?"

"It's two and a tanner, mate."
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
That’s the reason why imperial, whether monetary or measurements, should never be re-introduced. Imperial makes no sense at all.
Imperial measurements are still here, not needing to be reintroduced. It is a total mess, as we have come to expect things to be..

I look forward to Rees-Mogg replacing Johnson and bringing it all back - the chaos would be marvellous.


"We drink pints and drive miles, we should never have joined!"

"How many feet in a mile?"

"Oh, I dunno - about a thousand..?"


Imperial, £sd, etc., all worked OK, whilst there was little contact with the outside world and ordinary people didn't have to also run a metric system at the same time.

It should have been abandoned, fully, in the 1960s, when people had a bit more faith in going forwards, rather than harking back to a fictitious past.
 

proactive

Enjoying a drop of red.
Imperial measurements are still here, not needing to be reintroduced. It is a total mess, as we have come to expect things to be..

I look forward to Rees-Mogg replacing Johnson and bringing it all back - the chaos would be marvellous.


"We drink pints and drive miles, we should never have joined!"

"How many feet in a mile?"

"Oh, I dunno - about a thousand..?"


Imperial, £sd, etc., all worked OK, whilst there was little contact with the outside world and ordinary people didn't have to also run a metric system at the same time.

It should have been abandoned, fully, in the 1960s, when people had a bit more faith in going forwards, rather than harking back to a fictitious past.
Good grief man, be reasonable! You'll be wanting us to drive on the left next.
 

industryarch

Well-Known Forumite
joules prices.jpg
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
Good grief man, be reasonable! You'll be wanting us to drive on the left next.
That could also have gone in the 60s, without the hassle it would cause now - as the Swedes did.

Back then, virtually every RHD car would have fallen apart within five years and it would all have been over then (for those still left alive).

I actually enjoy the ludicrous mess and the 'secret' metric units - highway distances may be imperial, but the weight limits are metric, although "looking like imperial weights" - and the inch was redefined in the late 50s to be exactly 25.4mm, have been very slightly different before, so it is actually a sub-unit from the SI system, masquerading as a true imperial one.

Dealing with students around a decade ago, I found some who had no real concept of metrication and others who were completely bemused by imperial stuff, I imagine that it was just a matter of what school they went to and the community they came from.

Of course now, imperial units, etc., are a fetish of the Brexism cult.
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
They even screwed up when they introduced metric currency. Out of some dark mind came the 'half P.' So you could end up with a price something like £15.25½ ... :eek: (which would technically be £15.255)

The banks immediately zapped it saying as far as they were concerned there was no such coin. Computer programmers ignored it and eventually it was kicked into touch.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
They even screwed up when they introduced metric currency. Out of some dark mind came the 'half P.' So you could end up with a price something like £15.25½ ... :eek: (which would technically be £15.255)

The banks immediately zapped it saying as far as they were concerned there was no such coin. Computer programmers ignored it and eventually it was kicked into touch.
I went to Cyprus in August '68, where the pound was already metricated. Still being in the Sterling Area then, the pound was the same, but it was divided into a thousands mils. The smallest value coin you normally saw was the 5 mil piece, normally called a piastre, for historical reasons, and equivalent to the UK half new penny. There was, however a 1 mil coin, which you generally only ever got in change for an electricity bill paid in cash. If you got ever one, it was impossible to spend it - you might wait until you got four more and found somebody prepared to take them as a 'piastre' equivalent.

Having a thousand tiny coins to a pound always seemed to appear bizarre to people arriving out there, until you pointed out to them that, only a decade before, they had had 960 farthings in a pound.


'They' were slightly lumbered with the half new penny, as they decided to leave the old sixpence in circulation, as a two and a half pence coin. Without the half penny, these would only have been usable in pairs...
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Given the f*** up they made considering the above for decimalization, if they ever decide to swap the driving side on the roads, they could do it in stages, starting with everybody should drive down the centre of the road for a while. This would considerably reduce traffic except for ambulances. Of course BMW and Audi drivers wouldn't notice the difference, as they already do it anyway.
 
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