92 Degrees?

>Now, I KNOW the U.K. is on the metric system

This is where you’re being led astray. We’re taking our sweet time in fully embracing metric and, while everything you can buy here is listed in metric measurements, colloquially mostly everything is referred to in imperial (apart from cash unless you’re very, very old and set in your ways).

So pint of milk, height measurements in feet, speed limits in miles…

Adapting to metric temperatures are a bit more advanced, but Lister/Doug is talking Fahrenheit here, for sure. So 33c in new money.

Meanwhile Canada is firmly metric with Celsius and Kilometres when it comes to weather reporting and road usage, but we might very well use Fahrenheit when talking about a fever, use pounds for measuring weight, or feet/inches for height.

Having the freezing point of water be at 32 F° rather than 0 C° will just not do this far north.

RIMMER: (Reading the marker) “Nodnol? 871 selim?” Nodnol? Where’s Nodnol?

KRYTEN: It’s London, 178 miles. It’s backwards.
CAT: What’s the selim?
LISTER: Well, that’s obviously Bulgarian for kilometres, isn’t it?
I do find it odd that Canada seems to have embraced kilometres more than the UK when we have the US for a neighbour.

Ha, I completely misinterpreted your post to start with and typed this all before realising my mistake! But in case anyone else on your side of the pond is curious:

None of our road signs are in km, mostly miles. The countdown signs to a slip road off the motorway are in yards (300, 200, 100) and we have fractions of miles on road signs. The only explanation for km in Backwards I can think of is that at the time of writing they reckoned in the future things will all be measured in metric.

(Incidentally we buy fresh pints of milk but longlife milk is sold in litres. Honey is sold most commonly in weights of 250g(?), 340g (12oz, or 3/4lb) and 454g(1lb). We buy fuel in litres, but measure efficiency in miles per gallon. So yeah, just slightly mixed up over here!)

I have fond memories of a holiday to Ireland and a local giving us directions with miles and kilometers being used interchangeably.

It’s a very weird one. We do tend to use imperial measurement – weight, height, measures of beer, clothing sizes – but temperature is always talked about in C here. I think most people still have a vague idea about the metric equivalents to an extent, but whenever I hear people talk about temperature in Fahrenheit I genuinely have no idea how to convert it in my head. I know body temperature is just over 100 and freezing is 32, but anything outside of those two and you might as well just call it bingleworm degrees plastigrade as far as my understanding goes.

From The Big Bang Theory I know that 72℉ is some sort of room temperature, though I can’t remember what that is in ℃.

92 degrees? Well that’s not quite right.

Very good ;)

I think my overall point about not knowing Fahrenheit has been conclusively proven.

I feel like use of Fahrenheit has declined significantly in the UK since the 90s – it doesn’t even get a mention now on television weather.

I feel like use of Fahrenheit has declined significantly in the UK since the 90s – it doesn’t even get a mention now on television weather.

I have an irritatingly vague memory of the weather forecast consistently telling us both for a few weeks within the last couple of years. I can’t remember whether it was a new presenter or we were on holiday (I did say it was vague!), but it was very unusual and I wondered if it was a new thing they were trying. Clearly not a new thing, but I’ve not heard it since then either.

For context, I was born during the early years of Red Dwarf; I didn’t know people used Fahrenheit outside of science until my 20s, when I became aware of American daily life (thanks to the internet). Interestingly in The Brittas Empire the pool temperature was displayed in ℉ for the first couple of series but was then mostly in ℃ thereafter – I think. [Oh no, what a terrible chore it will be to check … (!)]

Can’t see beer (in pubs at least) ever being sold in anything other than pints. I’ll have 568ml of Guinness please.

We could just go for a half litre (or ‘large’) like the rest of Europe, but you know lots of people would raise a stink about it, even if the price were adjusted correctly.

I absolutely would make a stink because you *know* the price wouldn’t be adjusted accordingly.

I’m making a snarky remark about Express-reading Eurosceptic conservative bores, don’t turn it into a critique on capitalism, please. Let me have this one.