Petrol less than £1 a gallon!!!!!!

And you're telling me I can't read a UK group from Germany?

 

Very good at what exactly?

 

And yet you're moaning about "people not worrying about the
price of petrol"

 

Yeah, given the obsession with obsolete measurement systems
he's obviously retired. Not working means he doesn't have
to give DIY advise to teenagers at B&Q.

 

No you can read it from where you like but you must assume matters
relate to the UK by default.

 

I wasn't actually involved in the debate at the point, it just looked a
bit odd for one to complement another on their education with
a sentence which contained up to 3-4 errors.
I found it slightly ironic.

 

Whatever, I don't understand gambling at all.

I still don't see why you'd be distracted because you needed
to know how much you'd win. If the odds were close to 2:1
you'd get three times your money back.

Anyhow I agree I don't understand gambling.

Why? What does the unit matter, it's the delta in the price
of the unit. 54.6 to 56.2 or 2.82 to 2.90 is all the same.
Both show a raise of around 3%.

Your point is what? I thought your point was "you know where
you stand with gallons" Now it's "the Government are
shafting you". Make up your mind.

OK, how did metric measurements ease the introduction of
"corrupt subsidies"?

So the simplicity of 10 isn't of much use. I don't get
confused over grammes and kilos, mm or cm. Maybe it's just
me.

Oh really.

 

That depends though, doesn't it.

 

Not really, otherwise the group might as just as well be called
alt.legal or even just "legal"

 

....

I rather doubt that the original idea was to save characters, although it
may have been to save space in written text. The notation system dates back
to the middle ages, when pounds and shillings were only a convenient
accounting concept and did not exist as coins.

Colin Bignell

 

Well as you don't know whether you will win or lose it doesn't
matter how much you bet (as long as you can afford it) so its
simpler to bet £4 at 9/4, rather than £3 because
a) Its easier to know you have been paid out the correct amount.
b) You will end up with less loose change in you pockets at the end
of the day (assuming you have anything in your pockets at all at the
end of the day). After all you might make 20-30 bets over the day.
c) It makes the decision of how much to bet a little easier. The horse
you choose to back may change rapidly as the odds fluctuate so you
won't have much time to think about it.

Granted it doesn't make that much difference. If the odds are 100/30
you might as well bet £3 to win a tenner. If you have had a few winners
it makes it easier to tot up whether you are 'up' or 'down'.

Well for a start 12 X 8p is easier than 54*1.8, fractions of a penny
are a bit of a 'pain', people tend to forget the figure after the decimal
point as it doesn't seem much (untill you multiply it by 50).

Well its both actually but it was primerially? the latter.

As Europe was 'decimal' it helped that we were also decimal
to join th EU comon market.
Being decimal made joining 'easier'.

Well maybe not the best example. But when measurement and numbering
systems were devised people had a choice of which system to use,
they could have chose any system, however they rarely chose base ten.
Probably people chose numbers which divided easilly, or were based
around real world applications ie inch, foot, yard, acre.
I can easilly estimate an inch, a foot, a yard and 8 inchs
Its not so easy to estimate a meter or a centimetre.
Want to estimate a mile? Walk 2000 paces and you won't
be far off.

Not too many jobs for engineers in my local paper.
Manufacturing and engineering are vastly shrunked job sectors.
A degree in shelf stacking or media studies (watching Telly)
could take you a long away

 

It was normally written as 1/8 rather than 1/8d.

In those days very little was over £1. 19/11 was a popular price ;-)

 

The other variation was writing, say, £2 10s as 50/- There was lots of
stuff over a quid if you weren't too poor to acknowledge its existence,
and fifty bob was a good price for it. As was 25 guineas. Half crowns,
florins, tanners, thruppenny bits...

--
Platypus - Faster Than Champ
VN800 Drifter, R80RT
DIAABTCOD#2 GPOTHUF#19
BOTAFOS#6 BOTAFOT#89 FTB#11
BOB#1 SBS#35 ANORAK#18 TWA#15

 

That I am OK doesn't mean I am not unconcerned about others

 

Both styles were used. My father's cousin, who ran a grocery shop, used to
get us kids to write out price tags for him and he was very particular about
the layout. While most of the stuff didn't run into shillings, if it did,
the separator was a ' mark, half the height of the numbers and a narrow V
shape, with the leading edge vertical, while the pennies were followed by a
capital D, also half the height of the numbers and at the top. The numbers
had to be in a neat Times-like serif face, all done in indian ink on stiff
white card. We would get a choice from the broken biscuit tin if he approved
of the ones we made.

You missed the ha'penny off the end.

Colin Bignell

 

The fridge manufacturers, presumably.

It's a lot easier to pop in a decimal point than to fiddle around with 'real
money' as you put it.

 

Oh dear...

 

Ever heard of a typo?

 

.....

When I learnt mental arithmetic, electronic pocket calculators were pure
science fiction.

Colin Bignell

 

Well since you weren't even sure if you'd posted to a uk
group or not in the first place...