Time for me to butt in.

I will confess to be a metric fan, partly because I find it easier to divide and multiply by ten than any other number (save for 1 and 0), partly because I've grown up with it.

I'm certain that whether we find one scale "abstract" vs. "concrete" is completely down to what we have been trained to. I'm convinced that if I moved to a region where imperial units were used exclusively, I'd soon gain an intuitive idea of them.

But ... who are these people who feel the need to legislate on this type of matter? I can understand it when we are dealing with cross-border phenomena, like speeds of travelling trains (or sattelites...), amounts of wine crossing a border, etc. But if a customer is confused by a grocerer selling bananas in pounds or decagrams or whatever, then that customer should either refrain from dealing with that grocerer, trust that grocerer (his goods are probably priced within an dime, sorry, centipound of his competitors'), or make the effort.

So I agree with you, wintermute. I believe that, since metric units are more logical (IMHO), they will over time take over in UK as they have elsewhere: There should be no need for legislation.

The above mentioned case is silly, and more importantly, exactly the kind of thing that turn common (no disrespect) people against the EU.

BTW, us foreigners have you brits clearly outnumbered, so for the sake of democracy, your convenience will be an acceptable sacrifice :-)

jul"granted, imperial units are much cooler"ian