With the credit crunch kicking in and many people in Britain under threat of redundancy or shorter working hours many might believe that continuing metrication is nothing more than a waste of time and money that could be better used elsewhere... however I believe that Britain's slow and lumbering conversion is probably part of the problem!

This is the mess that Britain is in and nothing says it more than something I was told in an email yesterday. Apparently (I've yet to hear this for myself) a BBC Radio 1 DJ was talking about needing exercise to build up a weak arm muscle and a helpful truck driver phoned in to suggest that he get some weights - and work up to about 30 kg or so over a period of time.

Sounds ok so far...

Except that it would seem that the DJ in question claimed to be ignorant of what a kg is and after the usual in-studio banter from this kind of thing they apparently came to the horrified conclusion that at "over 60 lbs"! It may well have been that the caller meant to say 30 lb and not 30 kg, but to be honest that's not really the point here.

Our countries and the businesses that provide employment here depend on the education of our children to be able to operate. Many of those businesses use measurement. Be it engineering, science, manufacturing, building, medicine or even retail, measurement is all important. To be able to work well in those environments you need an understanding of the language of measurement and need to be able to communicate with collegues, suppliers and customers. It's the job of our educators to ensure that the workforce is properly equiped to use this "language" and it's clearly failing.

Radio 1 is clearly targetted towards a younger audience and many of it's DJ's are clearly also young too... so it seems to me that it's not only poor that the BBC are broadcasting this sort of ignorance to the young people of our country but also that our younger generation is clearly so ignorant of something that should be so simple!

After all, how many people in this country don't know what a bag of sugar looks or feels like? Sugar has only been sold in metric in Britain for many years and so a 1 kg bag of sugar should be an easy reference for anybody. The same is the case with the litre... it's been impossible to buy petrol in gallons in Britain for many many years yet so many people still claim to not undestand it despite being regular purchasers of soft drinks and bottled water, both of which are only sold in metric sizes!

Is it any wonder that foreign businesses are closing up shop in Britain and moving elsewhere?

All that this country needs is a few simple actions from our govenment. Plenty of money is spent for flashy TV commercials advising us about things like adult education and climate change, surely it wouldn't be much of an outlay to run a campaign explaining the kilogram and the litre to a clearly confused public. Just something simple, making the general public aware that metric is all around them and comparing everyday items... and then encouraging the press and broadcasters to be a little more responsible too!

It doesn't have to be hard, a good example was this simple cartoon posted the xkcd on-line comment this week. Brilliant!

And when our younger generation and the general public as a whole understand metric better we'll be able to work with our international neighbours more easilly, fewer mistakes will be made, less money wasted... more money in our pockets for a rainy day!