We have essentially two paths: continued vassalisation to whatever circus of clowns runs the US or a more equal and independent-but-unpopular partnership with the EU.
I’d vote for the EU in a heartbeat.
I’d be fine with the euro, actually going full metric.Just to be clear. The UK is full metric as far as EU rules are concerned.
Heck, as far as the SI is concerned, so is the US. We both changed in the 70s. SI just required all other units to be defined based on metric. The UK and US do this. And the EU just requires all trade to be available as a metric option.
What you actually use to communicate in nation non-sales is your own business. Heck, we can even sell in your own units as long as we also offer conversions on request. (according to EU. I think the UK required display in metric at some point. )
We and the US are just too stubborn to use the better units.
We and the US are just too stubborn to use the better units.
And expensive. Imagine the cost of changing the entire road network over to use metric.
I’d love to see it but the money could go on far better things.
Imagine the cost of changing the entire road network over to use metric.
Here’s a zero-cost plan to migrate the road network over to metric: have a transition period where signs may be shown in either unit, then require all replacement signs to be shown as metric. Since all signs must eventually be replaced, over a long enough period of time the whole network will become metric without any marginal cost increase.
The only downside is that for a time, people have to understand both units and how they relate to each other.
Sounds logical on a just consider it level.
But us old farts know better.
The nation went metric in 1965 joined the EU in 1975.
You know how all road signs are reflective. Well, back then that did not exist. Reflective roadsigns started in the early 1980s.
Add to that, most major roads end up replacing the signs every several years.
And the simple fact is No If in the 80s we decided to double sign (as other nations did. Every nation in the EU did it at some point. France was well before road signs, 1795 I think. But the rest of the EU could not agree on anything before the 1940s. Almost all of them had their own versions of imperial like units divided over regions based on political power.
It was not until the early predecessor to the EU post ww2 that most of Europe changed.
If we started in 1980 by displaying km plus mph on all signs. (Rounded to the nearest unit). The original change would not have cost any more than current spending. Buy now, most major roads would have had many replacements, likely dropping the mph.
We would still see some dual signs in very low use back roads.
But when did you last see a non-reflective sign. Because that is as often as you would see MPH only signs. At 0 extra spending.
And expensive. Imagine the cost of changing the entire road network over to use metric.
“Minister, we have a cunning way to lower the speed limits, and go metric, at the same time…”
