Boris Johnson is expected to announce soon that the Government plans to revive the use of imperial measures to mark the Queen's Platinum Jubilee later this week.
Apart from appealing to our nostalgia for the good old days many people have questioned the point in going back to pounds and ounces and feet and yards. Of course, in some things, imperial is still usedwidely, our weight and height, for instance, or the distance to drive to our destination, although most children would be able to relate to metres and kilograms more easily. And we still have the imperial system embedded within our language, for instance yardstick, tonnes of work.
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There is actually no law that says fruit and veg, for instance, can't be sold by the lb or oz - it just needs the metric weight to be displayed more prominently. Most traders, however, have gradually dropped the imperial over time and just sell in metric.
A few places - the US, Myanmar and Liberia - still use the old imperial system, and with the help of WalesOnline, we've looked at the possible disadvantages to switching back.
1. Consistency. Put simply, everything in the metric system is based on powers of 10. Take measurements of water. One litre is 1,000 millilitres. one centilitre is 10 millilitres. and one kilolitre is 1,000 litres. This naming system is the same across any kind of measure, nice and tidy. By contrast, imperia l is amore challenging. A bushel is four pecks, a peck is two gallons, a gallon is four quarts, a quart is two pints, a pint is four gills, a gill is five fluid ounces, a fluid ounce is eight fluid drams. To complicate matters even further, there isn't even consistency among countries that use the imperial system. A UK gallon is 4.546 litres whereas a US gallon it is only 3.785.
2. Logical: The imperial system was based on things as they used to be. A yard was originally the length of a man's belt or girdle, as it was called. A furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. By contrast, a kilogram is very nearly equal (it was originally intended to be exactly equal) to the mass of 1,000 cubic cm of water. and 1,000 cubic cm of water is exactly a litre. This means that if you have eight litres of water in your backpack it will add eight kilos.
3. Simple: As well as being consistent and logical, the metric system is also considered easier to use on a day-to-day basis as well as in academic applications. Imagine you weigh 80kg and you want to work out what 10% of your body weight is. Eight kilos right? Now imagine you weigh the same but are doing it in stone. What is 10% of 12.6 stone?
But Warwick Cairns, of the British Weights and Measures Association, says it's all about freedom of choice. "Before January 2020, retailers had the choice of whether to display their goods in both metric and imperial, or just metric or imperial," he said. "The question is - should we restore that choice? Our market research has shown that 69% of people - from all ages over 18 - think traders should be allowed to display their goods in whatever measurements they want. I would say that shows we do want the freedom to choose."
Do you think we should go back to imperial measures? Join in the conversation below
The change in the law in 2020 angered some traders, the most famous of which was Steven Thoburn, from Sunderland, who was the most prominent in a group which became know as the Metric Martyrs. Mr Thoburn became a household name in 2001 when he was prosecuted for selling bananas in pounds and ounces.
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