Imperial benefits...

With reference to Mike Batiste's complaint about the use of imperial units in (

, 27 February) I totally disagree with him.

I am very much under 40 and believe that people of our level of education and experience should be 'bi-lingual', especially today when countries like the US still widely use what it calls the 'Standard' system.

There are times when it may be easier to use a system geared around Base 10, but it is globally natural to use Base 12 systems. An obvious example of this is time. Remember, 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, 24 hours in a day, 12 months to a year.

These are all Base 12, which is the same as what? Oh yes, the imperial system.

I believe the metric system is a pain — if Mr Batiste and I were to ever hold a technical conversation it would be slow as I would have to convert all metric units into imperial in my head so as to get a full appreciation as to what he would be talking about.

Consider this when thinking about Mr Batiste's call to scrap imperial. Who says that their car — even though engines are sized in litres — delivered 12.5kpl rather than 35mpg, or managed to do 200kph (124.27mph) on the M6? (the speed, of course, is just meant as a figure of speech). The answer, no-one, not even youngsters just out of school.

The imperial system will never go — not in our lifetime anyway. I suggest Mr Batiste does what I had to do and learn a 'second language' — he'll need it!

Neil Hutton
Dagenham, Essex