Forum Topic

Quarter of toffee bonbons please

wahey Except you cant get them any more, only the fake ones online More pounds and ounces please

Julian Pavey ● 1864d41 Comments

Just as well you would have choke on them by now 😉

Janice Evans ● 1864d

How will an electronic till cope with imperial? Prices will have to rise. I dont think the rest of the world will repackage everything? We buy petrol in litres and measure MPG, madness.

Nicholas Beard ● 1863d

It’s a little distraction from 160k Covid deaths, food rotting in the fields and the fact that Brexit is costing the UK billions of shillings.

Stewart Jones ● 1863d

Try adding 9st 7lb 3oz and 10st 4lb 6oz on a calculator. Or 5ft 10ins plus 4ft 9ins.

Stephen Gould ● 1863d

Julian Pavey ● 1863d

Agree absolutely Stewart, the billions that this ill-fated and damaging venture has cost just for morons like Farage to witter on about crowns on pint glasses and pounds and ounces, pathetic. Never mind that we can't get European workers to fill the gaps here as you say in agriculture, and also care homes not to mention HGV drivers. And what do we get? A cabinet 're-shuffle' so that the people supposedly running our poor country are replaced by more compliant mates of the worst P.M. we've ever had, and that takes some beating after T. May, and Cameron!

Vanessa Smith ● 1863d

Striking ridiculous poses, harking back to a supposed golden age and engaging in artificially-whipped-up culture wars is all this useless, malign government can do. Utterly pathetic!

Robert Fish ● 1863d

I found this site take me back! ... https://www.aquarterof.co.uk

John Roberts ● 1863d

Invented nonsense with the purpose of inciting the right wing baboons to jump up and down and show their bottoms! Ridiculous that they don't get excited about this nonsense government that has killed its own citizens.

Basil Finnis ● 1863d

People cannot see it. The NHS waiting list seems to be gaining attention. Also the looming food shortage. Anyone who doubts the  damage Brexit has done should look on CITY AM and read what the owner of a Derbyshire cheese company has to to say. Also the city say they could take a 900 billion euro hit.

Nicholas Beard ● 1863d

And a mere 800,000 people slip into poverty because of the taking away of the Universal Credit uplift.

Stewart Jones ● 1862d

I admit I just cannot see what the fuss about using imperial or metric weights is.As long as the scale is completely accurate in both imperial and metric surely it should be up to the customer what weight system they prefer ordering in.The reality is that the EU regulations went too far, they decided that customers who preferred to use imperial weights were "wrong".  The regulations are probably unnecessary in the UK now - only those over 55 were even taught about imperial weight measurements in school.Sure I still think of my weight in stones and pounds, I drink beer in pints, I travel miles and if I need to specify my height I do so in feet and inches but for everything else I use metric and I am over 55

Justin Stephenson ● 1862d

I do not recall the EU regulations stopping the presentation of anything in imperial (such as pints of milk) provided that the exact metric measure was clearly provided (even if this was 2pts and 1136 ml rather than having to be 1 litre and 1.88 pints). That does not look like determining that pints were 'wrong'. Rather, retailers who presented confusing mixes of measures to make pricing opaque were wrong.And as you state, there are increasingly few of us who think in terms of imperial - height in feet, weight in stones, liquids in pints. If you grew up with metric then your immediate reference is metric: centimetres in height, litres in volume, etc. It is quite easy to make the mindset switch - 185cm in height, 90 kilo in weight, 5km walk this morning, 30 m sq living room, 25cl beer. Soon you can have no interest in or need for the imperial equivalent. Imperial is yesterday's suite of measures - complex, confusing and redundant.

Alan Clark ● 1862d

"Sure I still think of my weight in stones and pounds, I drink beer in pints, I travel miles and if I need to specify my height I do so in feet and inches but for everything else I use metric and I am over 55". So do I, Justin, and I'm considerably older. What the fuss is about is that permitting the use of imperial units is an empty populist gesture, completely devoid of practical relevance - a waste of parliamentary time. It serves only to burnish Johnson's 'libertarian' image and yet again to cock two fingers to the EU. Truly pathetic!

Robert Fish ● 1862d

I am 60 next Sunday and I never want to see the imperial weights and measures system ever again. The metric system brought in combined easy to follow scientific measuring which made collaboration much easier across the sciences.  Why would we hobble our children with a system that has no use whatsoever except when buying Bon bons or drugs. I am 168 centimetres tall,162 kilo's and I drink beer in a glass the measurement of which is irrelevant.  The quickest way to isolate this country in the capitalist market system is to make it use an antiquated system of weights and measures that will no tally with everywhere else.

Caroline Carney ● 1862d

Guinea, Crown, Half-crown, Florin, Bob, Tanner or sixpence, Thrupenny bit, Farthing, Ha'penny and other terms for the dear old coins. What quaint names have todays metric coins got ~ not that it matters as it's mostly buying with 'plastic' ain't it? 'Plastic' ~ well, at least there's quaint terminology there.

Bobbie Carnegie ● 1862d

Sucking up to the Americans who use the antiquated system of lbs and oz.

Philippa Bond ● 1862d

Is it an urban myth or did NASA lose a Mars lander because of some metric/imperial miscalculation ?

Tessa Russell ● 1862d

Just because it's got a nice sounding name it must be efficient? Twit.

Basil Finnis ● 1862d

No urban myth: "Mars Climate Orbiter - Wikipedia" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter

Robert Fish ● 1862d

Your point being.....?

Stewart Jones ● 1862d

"I do not recall the EU regulations stopping the presentation of anything in imperial"It has long been the case, for obvious consumer protection issues, that when consumers are buying goods by weight (1lb of tomatoes for example) that they must be weighed using approved scales only.  As from 2000 the only scales approved for loose food stuff in the UK has been metric only.  The customer can ask for 1lb of tomatoes but the seller would need to know that 1lb equals 453.592g because the scales would not tell him/her.There is absolutely no reason why approved scales could not weigh in both metric and imperial measurements.There is no reason why the buying public should be confused as long as the information is presented correctly

Justin Stephenson ● 1862d

@BC

Stewart Jones ● 1861d

I always thought that the use of imperial measures and the sterling monetary system (£-s-d) must have helped to sharpen up everyone's mental arithmetic from an early age. Having said that, I much prefer the way we do it now, though like everyone over a certain age, I still think in a mixture of the two when it comes to measurements.

Colin Jordan ● 1861d

Yes, I agree Colin.  The calculator was nowhere to be seen and the computer as big as a house.  I do think we can also rely far too much on measuring exact amounts of some things and especially where cooking is concerned be too nervous and precise and afraid to experiment and it is wonderful to get to the stage where you know what a mixture should look like.  There is a time and a place for precision.

Philippa Bond ● 1861d

Bring back bear baiting I say.

Basil Finnis ● 1861d

A very long time ago in Italy I wanted to buy some sweets. A quarter would have been the right sort of quantity, but that was not easily translatable into kilos. The chap selling them offered a quadretto, which seemed to be a quarter of an Etto which was an old Italian measure much like our pound. Not sure if this is still in use.

Vivienne Cox ● 1861d

It's also many years since I bought an etto of anything in Italy, but I think the measure still survives. It's 100 grammes, or slightly less than a quarter pound, so a quarter of that would be a minute amount. A couple of very thin slices of prosciutto perhaps!

Robert Fish ● 1861d

Sweets tasted better in small amounts...  but I still can't remember toffee bonbons but keep thinking they may have had a dusting of icing sugar?

Philippa Bond ● 1861d

No, I don't remember them either. I remember the Callard & Bowser toffee jars. I think they made cream, almond and mint toffees. They disappeared shortly before Wrigleys' acquisition of the more than 200 years old Scottish firm.

Robert Fish ● 1861d

Toffee bon bons did have a dusting of what I think was icing sugar and I have a feeling that they are still available.

Bob Guyett ● 1861d

Just searched online and found several brands still alive. Usually from retro sweet suppliers and amazon.

Bob Guyett ● 1861d

'Bring back bear baiting I say.'Sshh! If Rees Mogg gets a whisper of this it'll be goodbye Match of the Day on a Saturday! We might even get Gladiators at Wembley - Raab will want to empty out the prisons - make 'em fight to the death!

Vanessa Smith ● 1861d

Spherical in a white dust...I preferred pear drops or sherbet lemons.. and they hurt the roof of your mouth if you had too many.  Just enough to have in a small paper bag that fitted in your coat pocket - and you could still peel the last lost ones off the paper.  I loved seeing all those big jars up on the top shelves and making a choice.

Philippa Bond ● 1861d

Both of which are also readily available but unfortunately all seem to be in plastic. I also used to like scanning all the big jars. No doubt they would be contrary to H&S these days.

Bob Guyett ● 1861d

I'm sure Morrison's sells blue Bonbons.

Janice Evans ● 1860d

A country that has confidence in itself looks forward to the future.A country that has lost its confidence looks back to a glorious, mythical past.The bigger question is what has caused the United Kingdom to lose its confidence to such an extent that a return to imperial measures is in on the table?

T P Howell ● 1860d

'The bigger question is what has caused the United Kingdom to lose its confidence to such an extent that a return to imperial measures is in on the table?'The Tory obsession with Brexit?

Vanessa Smith ● 1860d

Ha, a 24 inch waist sounds better than 60.96 cm.

Janice Evans ● 1860d

Correction they now have pink strawberry bonbons on self serve sweetsat Morrisons.

Janice Evans ● 1859d

An application to become the 51st state?

Philippa Bond ● 1859d