As much as I enjoy my trips to the USA I always come back feeling a little mentally frazzled, although having used my Sat Nav (set to metric) in recent years I've had some relief from road signs I still have to convert weather forecasts from °F to C... but what I didn't expect, especially after complaining about it 2 years ago, was having to do the same on a Virgin Atlantic flight!

The last time I flew with them was in 2007 and on my return I made a point of emailing them, complaining about this and explaining clearly why, at the very least, displaying temperatures in °F only wasn't acceptible. I got a response saying this would be investigated and, quite wrongly, expected the problem to be solved. My outbound flight from Gatwick to Orlando on flight VS15 proved to be a disapointment on that note! Given Richard Branson's outward commitment to the future I wonder if a letter directly to him might be appropriate at this stage.

That aside, looking at some of the newspapers on my return I couldn't help thinking that perhaps time had stopped on this side of the Atlantic since my departure since the reports of the saving of the pint, the pound and the mile still seem to be making a very small stir. The thing I find interesting though is that although nothing has really changed, stories seem to be re-appearing in newspapers every few weeks as if somebody is trying to keep the story alive, but there seems to be very little response to the stories and those that do seem generally in favour of "stop moaning and just get on with it". Probably my favourite was the story in one of my local papers about a market stall holder who is planning to sue the government for the £1000 it cost him to buy metric scales - presumably based on erroneous newspaper reports indicating that he no longer has to sell in metric (Northampton Chronicle & Echo: Trader wants compensation over metric change of heart). The very first readers comment on the story seems to sum it up quite well - "This guy should grow up!". Reader comments to news stories like this seem to be (to me at any rate) starting to show more of an acceptance of metric over imperial, this could be a good thing.

Especially since on December 31st 2009 very little will actually be changing in favour of imperial measures. Ok, so the current law that allows traders to display prices in imperial will remain, but then so does the law that mandates that metric must be shown. The EU rule that required us to ditch pub pints and road miles has been ditched but our government was very much ignoring that anyway so again no difference. However, the EU Weights and Measurements directive does have one interesting change; it's scope will become much broader. To cut a long story short it will cover all aspects of consumer protection so in theory anything that currently does not have to use metric (such as advertising) will have to. That in itself should have an interesting effect on everyday life as those leaflets I keep getting through the door trying to sell me window blinds in inches will become illegal as will estate agents boards showing only square feet or acres. Once metric information is made mandatory in all cases it won't be long until businesses realise that it's costing them money to provide imperial conversions and eventually stop doing so; at this point the general public will be seeing so much metric around them that it will become part of normal conversation!

Perhaps that might be the right time to re-address the issue of the roads.

In the meantime politicians and anti-metric campaigners are using the term "common sense" to describe the changes now all but signed off by the EU. Those of us who want to do metric now need to capitalise on the term "common sense" and insist that the government put it's money where it's mouth is. If people have the right to use imperial measures when and where they want, then people also have the same right to use metric. The ban on pubs selling draught beer and cider in metric units needs to go and road laws need to be reviewed, partly to mandate metric where it is currently only optional, partly to allow metric where it is currently banned, and finally to ban the use of the letter "m" on road signs to mean "mile".

Going back briefly to my holiday I do note that in some aspects the USA seem to be moving towards the same metric muddle that we have here. I noticed more products in the shops that are in rational metric sizes, but one thing sticks in my mind from one evening buying a takeaway pizza in a "Papa Johns" store in the 4 Corners area of Winter Garden, Fl. It was a sign that read "Any 2 liter or 2 20oz drinks for $3.00". How does the buyer know that they get better value from buying 2 20oz bottles?