Overkill

[Gibbo2286]

Look what they're using to lift the roof rafters onto a new build bungalow across from me.

[mickthemaverick]

Apparenrly they don't understand the origin of bungalows.
I'm told they date back to the middle ages when a bunch of builders were asked to build 6 houses for the king. They completed five and the ground floor of the sixth when they ran out of wood. They asked the king's agent what they should do and after thinking for a few minutes he replied " Nothing much we can do so bung a low roof on it and he may not notice!"

[white exec]

Perhaps your neighbour's builders got their units wrong. Feet? Metres? What's the difference??
Expect more of this with the renewed glee for lbs. and ozs.

[Hell Razor5543]

It could be worse. In the books by Sir Terry Pratchett there was a famed 'designer' called Bergholt Stuttley Johnson, shortened to BS Johnson (and then often known as 'Bloody Stupid' Johnson) whose designs were often wonderful, but NEVER did what they were meant to do (other than the three musical organs, but even then the one in the Unseen University caused the various Archchancellors problems with their private bathroom!). There was the "Improved Manicure Device" that was used for peeling potatoes, the "Chiming Sundial" that usually explodes around noon and may also fall over, the "Crazy Paving" that has committed suicide, and the ornamental "Trout Lake" that was 150 yards long and 1 inch wide (the last three objects were in the gardens of the Patrician's Palace, Ankh Morpork.

It became fashionable to be 'Johnsoned', but Lady Sybil Ramkin is proud to state that the Ramkin family did not let this happen to them. Her Grandfather saw BS Johnson walking up the driveway with a hopeful salesman's smile on his face; Grandfather promptly shot him in the leg as a warning!

https://wiki.lspace.org/Bergholt_Stuttley_Johnson

I loved the way Sir Terry phrased things. In the book "Thud" there is a short paragraph that reads; "On this day in 1802 the painter Methodia Rascal woke up in the night because the sounds of warfare were coming from a drawer in his bedside table. Again.".

[Michel]

Perhaps your neighbour's builders got their units wrong. Feet? Metres? What's the difference??
Expect more of this with the renewed glee for lbs. and ozs.

I'm 48. I was never taught imperial. That must mean pretty much no one under my age was.

What a wonderful Brexit benefit, eh?

"The EU has allowed the UK to use imperial measurement indefinitely. Additionally, it is permitted to show an equivalent 'supplementary indication' in imperial providing it is no more prominent than the metric price. ... Weighing machines that use pounds and ounces remain illegal as is imperial-only pricing"

So, the whole Metric Martyrs thing was *b0ll0ck5*. They hadn't been banned from selling in imperial at all.

[myglaren]

Although I am old enough to still think in pre-metric measurements, I do hope they don't revert to imperial and be like yanks. 99 different measurement systems all conflicting. Cups for measuring food ingredients. Quarts! OK quarts are a reasonable measure but when they say 'nine quarts' it is like fingernails on a blackboard - which in itself I don't mind, so a poor analogy.
Metric is far better but should be universal. Three meters of 2x1" is just insane.

[Gibbo2286]

Are we getting into politics chaps?

[Dormouse]

No. just the workings of the human mind. I grew up on the diet of imperial and sliderules but when I measure my 2 x1's I do it in millimetres. Partly because most tape measures are metric but also because I do like the metric system for size calculations. I have my bathroom scales set to stones and pounds though.

[Michel]

Although I am old enough to still think in pre-metric measurements, I do hope they don't revert to imperial and be like yanks. 99 different measurement systems all conflicting. Cups for measuring food ingredients. Quarts! OK quarts are a reasonable measure but when they say 'nine quarts' it is like fingernails on a blackboard - which in itself I don't mind, so a poor analogy.
Metric is far better but should be universal. Three meters of 2x1" is just insane.

There's also the fact that *every* industry uses metric in the UK now. Builders, architects, paper mills, wool making.. whatever. It would be utterly ridiculous to expect anyone to change. As above, it was never illegal to display weight of produce in imperial..

I'm 1m84cm tall
I weigh 102kgs
I have sized 44 feet

Bizarrely I have a 44" chest.. I've known that since 1990 though and have never had reason to measure it in metric. The very fact that I can still and have always been able to buy a shirt or jacket that says 44" on it shows the whole metric martyrs case to be based on nonsense...

[white exec]

It's just another distraction, and goes down well with some folk.
What next - florins, half-crowns and guineas, foolscap and quarto?
Pleeeease...

[Dormouse]

CLS is responsible for the "4 x 2" mentality. Stress graded timber is always selected and planed from the stock sizes and was never actually "4 x 2"- it just got called the stock sizes by the people who used it. And, 100 mm is just about 4 inches so who argues when it is actually 97. Us, apparently.

[Dormouse]

Look what they're using to lift the roof rafters onto a new build bungalow across from me.

Some of you might remember Doctor John's garage. Well, I converted his single storey garage to the two storey one I talked about by bringing in a HUGE 50t mobile crane in the morning, lifting the 2 1/2 ton roof completely off in one piece and placing it in his garden beside this bomb shelter/ gun range, setting 4 joiners to work installing the pre made wall panels and gable extensions and lifting the old roof back on again by the time he got home from work. What a day that was. The crane driver did two 15 minutes stints for his whole day. Everyone else scooted about like blue ****** flies! Whole job, start to finish, was nearly 3 weeks on site plus weeks of planning prior to that. His architect scarpered when the lift started and didn't come back til after lunch. He did stay to watch it going back into place by 3 o'clock but b******* off again once the strops were off. We fixed it securely and sheeted the 4 holes in the roof and came back the next day to repair the holes in the roof and sealed all the gables. Wind and watertight within 48 hours.
Really have to get up the loft to fish out all my old photos. This knee of mine is a real pain!