On Europe

[Captain Seafort]

Your Mileage May Vary

[Mikey]

Hmm. Wouldn't you guys use "YKMV?"

[Captain Seafort]

Hmm. Wouldn't you guys use "YKMV?"

Not us - that's the Europeans you're thinking of.

[Deepcrush]

Since when is England not a part of Europe?

[Captain Seafort]

Since when is England not a part of Europe?

Since that time thousands of years ago when a bloody great wave created the Straights of Dover.

[McAvoy]

I thought it was because some sort of superflood?

[Captain Seafort]

That's what I said.

[McAvoy]

Ok I read it wrong.

[Deepcrush]

Cry cry, you're all still European.

[Graham Kennedy]

European or not (and I vote emphatically not), the British don't and never have used kilometers. All of our road signs are in miles and all of our speed limits are in miles per hour. Tell somebody that a thing is 50 kilometers away and most would look at you blankly.

[Mikey]

So you use metric for everything except one particular type of linear measure? That's even more goofball than us not switching at all.

[Reliant121]

It's even more annoying since schools teach mostly in metric. And yet, I have no idea how far a kilometer is. Even more annoyingly pointless since imported stuff, say for example chinese motorbikes/mopeds are predominantly in kph. It's a frustrating system.

It's mainly because while we are nominally known as part of the European Union, we are not "attached" to Europe and certainly don't consider ourselves European. It's both national pride level and a major point of contention since our economies are quite separate although linked, we have a number of different policies although recent governments have adopted more European stance and it's highly important in elections because I'd hazard a guess that most of the public are decidedly anti-eurozone.

[Deepcrush]

So what's the deal with england then? You're a part of Europe while being just a few miles apart... But what to say you're not a part of Europe.

[Graham Kennedy]

So you use metric for everything except one particular type of linear measure? That's even more goofball than us not switching at all.

Actually Brits don't use metric much at all. It's a very odd situation here... metric was forced on shops and businesses as a matter of law, one of those absurd top-down attempts to make us all feel European. But nobody actually wants to change, and nobody is really willing to, so the shops just work around it by labelling everything in metric units but sticking to the same imperial amounts. So if you go to a shop and buy a jug of milk, you buy a 4 or 6 pint one, but they are labelled 2.273 or 3.409 litres. Go into a bar and you would order a pint of beer, but the glass has 568 mL written on it.

For sizes nobody would us meters or centimeters - you use feet and inches. I remember a French woman mentioning that she had a bra size of 86C once, I was like "what the hell!" And weirdly, even the government that told everybody else to use metric still uses miles and mph for road signs.

If you told somebody they weighed 70 kilos they wouldn't know what you meant... but then if you told them they weighed 154 lbs they wouldn't know either, you'd have to say 11 stone.

And none of this is a generational thing, by the way. The expectation was that this silly half way house situation would gradually change as the kids grew up thinking in metric, but a ten year old today no more thinks in metric than a ninety year old does.

Welcome to the insanity that is the British use of units!

[Graham Kennedy]

So what's the deal with england then? You're a part of Europe while being just a few miles apart... But what to say you're not a part of Europe.

The situation is that the actual population doesn't consider themselves at all European. Most don't hate Europe at all, but Europe is "them" to us, always has been. It's about how Americans might think of Canadians, say. Most people probably agree with having easy travel, trade cooperation, that kind of thing, but really don't want any more that that. They're dead against political union, common currency, etc.

The main political parties, however, range from being pro European to being very pro European. None of them much care what the people think about it because although the people are against Europe, it's not a very high voting priority. You don't win an election by your stance on Europe, you win it on the economy, jobs, etc.