My brain doesn’t get kph, whereas miles per hour conveys an instant meaning.

Nor can I envisage centigrade, grammes and tonnes.

We are a totally messed up country because we affect to be metric yet still have imperial measures.

Why must we buy petrol in litres when we still think in miles per gallon and speed in mph?

Why do we have to buy commodities in metric yet still talk about pints of milk or beer?

The Americans have got it right.

They have ploughed (plowed?) on with the system that the early settlers took with them give or take a few variations.

Their weather forecasts are in good old Fahrenheit and they deal in pounds, tons and gallons.

We pathetically tried to suck up to Europe with a half-hearted metric conversion that no one wanted or liked.

It would be a symbolic and excellent thing if after Brexit (if ever!) we return to proper British weights and measures.

The only exception I’d make would be to stick with the decimal money which admittedly is a lot easier than shillings and pence.

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LEAVE supporters should be thanking Tony Blair.

The more he calls for new referendums and harangues the voters on their ignorance and stupidity the more we know we are right to want to get out.

Ditto Nick Clegg. Here are two politicians who embody the arrogance of the Westminster elite.

The Brexit vote was as much a rejection of these self-righteous luvvies as it was two fingers to EU dictatorship.

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I AM delighted that British Airways plans to scrap reclining seats on short-haul flights.

My blood boils when the inconsiderate prat in front tilts back immediately the “Fasten seat belt” signs switch off, shortly followed by the horrid kid behind kicking my back.

Plain-speaking Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary was right when he said that we should regard air travel like catching a bus.

On short flights we don’t need feeding or plying with duty free.

We just want to get there in the quickest possible time.

It would also be a good idea to stop serving booze.

Alcohol is highly inflammable and also tends to inflame some passengers – not a good combination in a flying machine filled with aviation fuel.

Between here and anywhere in Europe a bottle of water is enough.

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IT was infuriating though not surprising to learn that wind farm operators are paid more when their windmills are switched off than when they are supplying electricity.

They received £100million from the National Grid for not generating power last year.

The cost is passed on to the consumer, thee and me.

The grid sometimes can’t cope with the amount of electricity from wind farms and that’s why the operators have to be compensated, but why must they receive £70 per megawatt hour to switch off and only £49 per MWh to actually produce electricity?

The farce is straight out of Catch 22, where the more alfalfa the farmer didn’t grow the more he was paid by the government.

Fiction has become fact.

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TEACHER recruiting is down but when you talk to people in the profession you quickly understand why.

My wife’s niece has decided to quit her secondary school job because she is worn out having to cope with 15 big classes of teenagers, marking hundreds of homework papers and keeping up with the reams of paperwork demanded by head office.

To say nothing of maintaining discipline and trying to give attention to so many.

It’s a crying shame because she really wanted to be a teacher.

It’s not so much the low pay but the unremitting, thankless drudgery that is driving her away.

Teachers had to cope with big classes when I was at school but that was in the relatively simple days before constant “reforms” and Byzantine bureaucracy turned the job into a nightmare.

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MIND you I obviously wasn’t very well taught.

I have to thank reader Frank Hardy for correcting my error last week when I said that 1,400 per cent inflation meant a £1 loaf of bread in Venezuela now cost £1,400.

It’s actually “only” £14.

Embarrassing.

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I AGREE with people who protest that a lot of our foreign aid should be diverted to the NHS but you are wasting your breath because it’s never going to happen.

Foreign aid is much more sacred to the great and good who run the country than anything at home, even “our” NHS.

Foreign aid is what makes them feel good about themselves.

That it is in many cases patronising, unnecessary, counter-productive and feeds corruption and tyranny matters not a jot.

It is the establishment’s ultimate virtue signal and the more they scatter around the greater the benefit to their egos and troubled consciences.

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A NEW kitchen gadget called Instant Pot is in such demand that it’s being resold on eBay for 10 times the shop price.

Its main function appears to be no more than a pressure cooker and good luck with that.

I will never forget visiting my Auntie Phyllis, who “cooked” everything in her pressure cooker.

The result was meat that had the texture of string and vegetables that tasted of cardboard.

Correction: cardboard would have been a treat.

The last time I tried a pressure cooker the valve blew and the entire kitchen ended up plastered with sheep’s brains that I was cooking for my dogs.