Most people who are anti-metric will use the argument that the metric system is hard to use and that older people will find it difficult understand. This is actually quite far from the truth as I will try to show here.

Most people in the UK under the age of about 40 will have been through an education system which was either converting or had converted to teaching in English. Many people under that age will remember that our money used to be non-decimal but few will remember actually using LSD - Pounds, Shillings and Pence. We will probably have many memories of our parents and grandparents speaking in these terms but it is rare that anybody, even at the older end of our population, has any real trouble understanding how much things cost when they go shopping.

The same could be said for metric. Like decimalised money it uses units of 10 rather than a mixture.

Sticking to this simple system makes it easier to teach children to calculate distances, areas and volumes. To this day I still can't tell you how many feet or yards there are in a mile without looking it up and most people up to their mid 30's, when asked, will usually say 1000 before even thinking! It makes it easier to label goods so that consumers can compare prices.

Measuring the same thing in different places is easier too. It's so frustrating having to remember that a nautical mile is different to a normal mile (and I'm not even going to start on the term "country mile"!!!) and that mph on land is replaced by knots on water. Metric uses km and km/h on both land and water! 

Another thing that the anti-metric loby will say is that we should stick with Imperial because it is used in the USA, the largest English-speaking nation, and hence the country we should "stick together" with in trade and commerce. This is a poor argument for the simple reason that the Imperial system used in Britain is not the same as the English system of measures used in the USA with many units differing between the two countries. How many people forget the simple fact that a US and UK gallon is different when comparing fuel consumption of British and American cars for instance?

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