The European parliament on Tuesday 16 Dec 2008 saved the pint and mile from EU extinction, saving British and Irish drinkers from having to order half litres or drive at under 110 kilometres per hour.
Under the measure, agreed without a vote at a second reading in the Strasbourg chamber, traders will also be able to display imperial and metric measurements side by side in shops and elsewhere.

My friend Jeff obstinately uses Celsius units when describing the weather regardless to whom he's talking. Celsius might be one of the most difficult of day-to-day Metric units for an American because most of us have no clue what to wear based solely on a Celsius reading of the temperature. Is 20° C hot or cold? Most of us don't know without performing a conversion to Fahrenheit first. As it turns out, 20° C is a pleasant 68° F.
Jeff's independent change of habit to using metric temperature units inspired me to do the same; I reconfigured the weather widget on my Google homepage to display metric units. Doing so has increased my familiarity with the range of temperatures from 30° C to 45° C this summer but has done little else to spark a greater comfort with the Celsius unit.

St Lucia will soon turn away from the old Imperial System of measurements and usher in the international system of units; the Metric System. The metric system is not entirely new to the island; over the past few years St Lucia has been using both the imperial and metric systems of measurements. It isn’t the first time a transition from the imperial to metric system has been attempted.
In 1978, St Lucia’s then metrication committee took the first steps to move towards the international system of measurements. Their achievements included the inclusion of the metric system in school programs. Back then there was no obligation for the commercial sector to adopt the metric system but now with the European Union’s January 1st deadline for the metric system to be put in place, further steps have been taken to fully implement the metric system.