Britons living in an ‘imperial past’

THE government should take urgent action to end the “deeply confusing shambles” of the UK using a mixture of metric and imperial measurements, former foreign secretary Lord Howe of Aberavon has warned.

The Tory peer said the muddle would give visitors to the London Olympics the impression the country was “a nation living in the imperial past”.

He told peers: “Litres for petrol and fizzy drinks, pints for beer and milk, metres and kilometres for athletics and the Ordinance Survey, metric for school, pounds and ounces for the market. This muddle does matter.”