Does that make any sense to you, really?

It rather depends on how much (or even if) you want answers. The Specific Gravity of water is 1; multiply the S.G. (of any liquid) by 10, and you get the weight, in pounds, of one gallon, therefore I gallon of water weighs 10 pounds, and a gallon of white spirit weighs 7.6 lbs. Remove all of that weights and measures gobbledygook, and use the generally accepted figures; multiply 4.54 (litres in a gallon) by 2.2046 (lbs in a kilo,) and, surprise, you get (near enough for government work) 10. Load a lorry, cart, or whatever, with gallon cans of water, multiply by 10, and you have its volumetric carrying capacity, and the weight.
An inch is the (near enough) measurement of the thumb’s top joint; a foot is (or should be) self-explanatory; a yard is the distance from the nose to the end of a sideways-extended hand (it’s how merchants would measure lengths of cloth.)

There is still confusion – miles per hour or kilometres per hour, anyone?

No, there isn’t; an average man can walk a mile in 1/4 (not 1/10) of an hour. An ox-cart can travel no more than 10 miles (not 16 kilometres) in a day, before the animal is exhausted, which is why market towns tend to be around 7-10 miles apart.
During French lessons, in the late 1950s, a Frenchman admitted that the whole system is based on an error; they got the circumference of the Earth wrong, so the metre is a meaningless length. The French also wanted a 10-day week, and a 10-month year, but Mother Nature refused to play along

How about kilometres rather than miles on signposts?

Figure out the cost of replacing every single one, for a totally meaningless whim.
I do find it sad that, when I was 8 years old, my class, in the infants’ school, was considered capable of learning the metric system (and that includes the decimetre and decametre,) but modern children are not, which is something of an insult to their intelligence, and their desire to learn.

No, not really, not to the lengths (no pun intended) you’ve gone to – the point was to the quote immediately above my question, the lengths (no pun intended) you had to go to for a precise gallon.

Take a container, add water until the container weighs 10 lbs more, and you have a gallon.

– how long should a bar of steel be if you require 27 items from it, all 3/16’s of an inch.

5.0625″ (27 x 3 divided by 16,) with .0625 equalling an odd 1/16″. Now calculate 27 items at 4.7625mm.

No, you are looking in to it too deeply
We are taught metric, yet the speed signs and our cars speedometers are all mph (with kph on the speedo, but not as noticeable)..

No, I have an interest in learning (and history.) The mile predates the kilometre, and evolved from use, rather than a desire for conformity. If I’m 4 miles from somewhere, I know that I can walk it in about an hour, and I find dividing distances by 4 a lot easier than by 6.4.

You are right, but – like my answer above – I was actually referring to the fact that distances on signposts are not metric…

And have no need to be.

Not sure what you are saying here – my own eight year old has long been knowledgeable on the metric system, and even explained to me that they had been shown all the bits about the length of the thumb joint and the arm-stretched to nose yard, the foot, etc. It amused them.

And it amused me, as I learnt. My point is that, at 8, I was quite capable of learning, and using, two systems, but today’s children are not given the opportunity.

My mother, a retired teacher, said to one of my kids “you cannot work the Imperial system out on a calculator very easily“, and I think that is as good a reason as any for why kids won’t go back to the Imperial system.

Which is fine, until the day the calculator’s battery goes flat, and the shops are shut. Teach children arithmetic, and they have everything they need; we had to learn from 2x to 12x tables, and, every afternoon, had a 10-minute session, where “something times something” were thrown at us, and we only had mental arithmetic to rely on.
For nearly 20 years I worked in the carpet industry, in which the old looms are all 27″, 36″, or 12′ wide, and too expensive for companies to replace them with metric. One day a woman showed interest in a particular carpet, and asked its width, so I told her it was 12′. “Oh, I work in metric.” “Fine, it’s 3.66 metres wide, and I’ll need a calculator to work out the area. On a 12′ carpet, every 9″ equals a square yard, which is why we price it in square yards.” On some carpets, there’s a pattern, which “repeats” at regular intervals down their length, which can be down to quarter inches. During my training, I asked a veteran carpet-fitter how to do the calculations over a room, and he handed me a set of pre-historic L.s.d tables. “Replace shillings and pence with feet and inches, and it’s a doddle.” (Which it was, but I was conversant in two systems, of course.)

So you two need more than one warning, do you?

Not in my case; the whole thing has become a tiresome exercise in one-upmanship, and I’m sick of it, so will not rise to any further baiting, in the (possibly faint) hope that this thread dies, and is consigned to the wastebin of history.

If you’re going to remove intent from the equation, you’d better get some extra prisons built sharpish, since anyone seen carrying home a pick-axe handle (with the intention of repairing the tool in his garden shed,) or a baseball bat (for his kids to play with,) will be imprisoned for carrying an offensive weapon.
All this (manufactured) righteous indignation over something that was never intended for viewing, by someone who has an exaggerated idea of how funny he is, plus seeing a man hounded from his job, and driven into illness, because he didn’t know the words of an 80+-year-old record (did anyone before the [single] complaint came in?) becomes even more ludicrous, when one realises that the BBC (that bastion of the upkeep of public morality,) has, along with the whole European TV system, been well-and-truly conned into broadcasting a total obscenity throughout the whole of Saturday night.
Take the name of that creature that was manipulated (by a completely discredited “voting” system) into winning, and look at it carefully; Conchita = “little c—” (that four-letter word snafu will never use,) and Wurst is a sausage, yet the BBC was happy to broadcast it before the so-called “watershed,” and continued the “joke,” on The One Show last night.
Naturally we can expect those wishing to clean the English language of all words which sully it, to take up this particular baton “and run with it,” though I admit to not holding my breath.

His “forename” has apparently assumed a new meaning (and I needed somebody, on another forum, to tell me this.) Had it stopped there, I wouldn’t have had a problem, but add the “surname,” and the two words take on a whole new connotation.
Just as I feel sorry for a former work colleague, whose Christian name is Gay, I have sympathy with Miss (unless she is now married) Martinez, who has had her Christian name hijacked (apparently.)
Material, which is obviously designed to be offensive, leaves me cold; I was never able to watch Kenny Everett, in front of my mother, because of his “Cupid Stunt” character.

You’ll be facing demands to wash your mouth out with soap, at this rate.

By Telegraph View

8:52PM GMT 21 Mar 2014

More than a year after a public inquiry opened into claims that British troops in Iraq unlawfully killed up to 20 civilians, the central charge has now been withdrawn. Public Interest Lawyers (PIL), the human rights law firm acting for the families of the alleged victims, told the hearing that they now accepted that there was no evidence to substantiate the claims. So far some £22 million has been spent on the so-called al-Sweady inquiry, named after one of those who died. Opening in March last year, it has sat for 167 days and heard evidence from 280 witnesses.

To call this a scandalous waste of public money would be an understatement. But more than the drain on public finances, this has been another example of besmirching the reputation of British forces while enriching lawyers courtesy of the taxpayer. The allegations arose out of one of the fiercest battles fought by troops in Iraq, when they were ambushed by armed insurgents at a checkpoint named Danny Boy in May 2004. Soldiers were forced to fix bayonets in desperate close–quarter fighting. Several received bravery commendations, including the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross and the Military Cross. Yet an engagement that showed the courage and professionalism of British forces was turned into an attack on their integrity.

PIL is headed by the socialist lawyer Phil Shiner, who is well known for pursuing British soldiers through the courts over alleged war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. His firm has been paid millions from public funds and hundreds of claimants have been compensated to the tune of about £20 million. But PIL has not acted alone; government ministers have been far too ready to believe the worst of our own troops and should not have set up the inquiries in the first place.

Meanwhile, the relatives of six officers of the Royal Military Police killed in the town of Majar al–Kabir, north of Basra, the previous year have been denied a hearing of their own and are still waiting for justice after a trial of the alleged perpetrators in Iraq collapsed. In addition, soldiers from the Parachute Regiment involved in the Bloody Sunday shootings more than 40 years ago face the prospect of prosecution even though former IRA terrorists have been given an effective amnesty.

The Paras continue to be investigated despite the most expensive inquiry in British legal history, costing more than £200 million. We do not pretend that all our soldiers behaved with total propriety in extreme circumstances, often in fear of their own lives. But this relentless mud-slinging must stop. It is time to shut down what amounts to a blueprint for lining the pockets of lawyers by denigrating our troops.

So how many cases, against the troops, has Mr. Shiner actually won, in court?