Acres? who cares. Just another obsolete measurement left over from the middle ages. Just as a question - without looking it up, how many readers can actually say how many square feet (or yards, or metres) there are in an acre? Easier: how many acres are there in a square mile?

Nobody, huh. Thought so. It's simply a word that people cling on to with no real clue as to it's meaning. Give me a nice, simple 10,000 square metres (yes, 1 hectare) any day.

Use hectares when dealing with the Governemnt, and use your local, ancestral land units for all other conversations. The Brits are so slavish about following rules!

What's wrong with square metres? Why would one ever want more than one unit of area, except to amuse El Reg readers?

Oh, I get it. There must be a French IT news website that has a penchant for inventing bizarre new units and "hectare" must be one of theirs. I expect it's really funny in French or something.

So how many London Buses can you fit in a hectare?

We just need everyone to register land in the same units because it looks neater.

It's absolutely nothing to do with a federalist frog-boil.

Can Johnny Foreigner not use a calculator?

The EU seems fixed on removing anything that might require the use of one... Join all the currencies together into the Euro, tada! None of that annoying conversion. Maybe it's so nobody will have the ability to check their expenses claims!

Come on you lazy buggers, we manage it all the time over here... Here are some rough conversions which you can do in your head. Please note I say rough.

When cooking, or talking about the weather C = ( F - 30 ) / 2

When talking about distance or speed, Miles = Kilometre / 1.5

When employing a plumber, Złoty = UKP / 4

And if you think that's bad, try dealing with Americans who take our units, and then short change you with them... 4 Fluid ounces missing from a pint, that's flamin' criminal!

Oh, and well done to our unelected leader for being so spineless. Pity Hadrian didn't put rusty nails on the top of his wall, or you'd never have had the guts to cross it.

How long would it take to clone Maggy and get her back in power? I know she did many unpopular things, but she had more bollocks (especially when it came to Europe) than all the leaders we've had since put together! Back in those days you could always cross the channel and hold your head and middle finger high and proud!

Never mind, we've still got the carrucate.

I've actually beaten Anonymous Coward to this one.

I should not need to know how many square feet there are in an acre. As a child I was shown an acre and can visualise it, that's the important bit. It's sad to see one more thing that formed part of my life just slung away. Capitulation to Euro measures should be after those brought up with British measurements are all in their pine boxes. Until then dual systems should remain. And that is particularly true for weather forecasters and their temperatures !

Didn't really give us much of a chance there, did you?

FWIW I always remember it as a chain by a furlong (22yds x 220yds), so 4840 square yards.

You dick.

I can easily picture a square metre. I can easily picture an acre. I can easily picture a square mile. I cannot easily picture 10000 square metres. I cannot easily convert between any of them.

The point is that I grew up with certain measurements based on physical examples. I don't give a shit what it's measured in as long as I can picture it. I certainly don't want anyone telling me what I should be measuring things in.

Fortunately, no is.

Which makes this post just as pointless as yours, albeit a lot less patronising.

I can honestly say that I have never seen anything measured in acres, always m2 or hectares.

I'd be happy for us to follow Ireland's lead and go to km for distance on road signs as well. It's not like people will be confused if you put km after the number - I learned the metric system at school in the 70s.

Wait... the abolition of an arcane system of measurements in news?

Wake me when something real happens

*goes back to sleep*

With 10 chains to the furlong and 8 furlongs to the mile there are (10 x 8 x 8) = 640 acres in a square mile.

Simple really.

simply the distance between the stumps multiplied by ten times the distance between the stumps.

Those countries who don't play cricket have to make do with hectares, in the UK we are much more civilised.

"Back in those days you could always cross the channel and hold your head and middle finger high and proud!"

Isn't the middle finger an American vulgarity? We Brits prefer the two fingered salute, honouring our glorious archers at the Battle Of Agincourt! :-D

"Capitulation to Euro measures should be after those brought up with British measurements are all in their pine boxes. Until then dual systems should remain"

I was taught metric at school. Unfortunately since all the adults used imperial it all went pairshaped, and we're not stuck with a ludicrous mess we have now. I'd be muhc happier if we choose - and STICK - with one system: I've no preference with, but since metric seems to be a lot more sensibly done (all multiples of 10) then that seems the better choice to me.

Why bother standardising? What is the need? This is just irrelevant, pointless change because people have too little else to do.

if it is not broken, why waste effort fixing it?

Using the same standardising logic, why not all speak one language?

Why can't both measures co-exist?

Mile = 1,760 yards

Square mile = 640 acres

Simple arithmetic thereafter.

Knowing the square meters in a hectare is equally useless when visualising area.

If you know what an acre looks like, it's easy to scale to multiple acres, regardles of how many square thou there may be floating about in there (I am, BTW, holding up two fingers to you, so bugger off back to your precious Europe).

Outragous. What's wrong with a bit of unit conversion? NASA use metric and imperial units all the time and have no trouble at all getting their Mars Orbiters into space - documented, no doubt, on proper paper sizes like "Letter", "Executive" and "Ledger".

If those damn frenchies must use this "metric" system there are practical sites like http://www.sensibleunits.com to convert to metric from to imperial, or "freedom units" as I like to call of them.

"...When employing a plumber, Złoty = UKP / 4 "

I think you'll find that Zloty = UKP * 4 (or thereabouts). There may be a lesson here.

...is enough to drive a man to drink.

Barkeep, 568ml of your finest lager, please!

It works like this:

UK gov: "Ok, we'll use Hectares"

EU gov: "You only have to use them for legal documents of land registry you know"

UK gov: "Yeah, but feck that, too much like hard work, we'll just make acres totally illegal, it's easier"

That's the typical UK gov response to any EU legislation - even things that start off reasonably sensible in Brussels seem to be twisted into unworkable, inflammatory legislation for the UK just so that the government can complain that "Brussels made them do it".

Of course, nobody mentions the fact that (currently) the "big 3" in Europe are us, the Germans and the French - it's not like our government doesn't have any say in the matter. The Germans help create legislation and implement it (normally) reasonably sensibly, the French help create legislation and just ignore the bits they don't like and us (as in the UK), we help create legislation but throw our toys out of the pram when things don't go totally our way and then implement a "worst possible" reading of said legislation so that we can turn around and go "seeee... told you it wuddun work/look what you maked us do... nerr nerr nerr". Cry more.

and from that it follows that there are 640 per sq mile

In the dim and distant 1970s, when we still had proper summers, I learned land area in ares and hectares; never acres - so what's the fuss? Just the same as I only ever saw SI units in school.

Surely the majority of people in the UK have now only learned SI and metric in school it's time to get rid of the ridiculous Imperial system once and for all?

Ignore this as EU is now illegal having ignoted it's own rules on new treaty(constitution).In faddition, UK is no longer a member having ratified the treatty without the consent o its people by referendum,

If I was Gordon Brown I would be happy to hear the Conservatives bleating on about Europe requesting the use of square kms (Hectare) rather than the out-dated Acre.

Now when he returns from his holiday he has ample ammunition to paint the Tories as Europe hating xenophobes who would rather spend time fussing over units no one cares for than suggesting policies to deal with crime/slowing economy/education etc (his usual "no substance, just sound bites" sound bite).

Note: I'm more likely to vote Conservative than Labour, but even I can see when the Conservatives are sticking their foot in it.

I agree with everything Pete said.

Perhaps the Daily Mail readers and others who bluster about "loss of sovereignty" (how does forcing people to describe things in measuring units which **actually make sense** as opposed to ancient traditions harm anyone anyway?) would prefer us to go back to using Roman numerals, too?

What Ken Hagan said would be nice, but to give everything in m² would require the use of exponential notation.

1. Wait until they're all over here.

2. Storm the building.

3. Take them all out, tie them to a stake, and burn some sense into them.

Can anyone see any flaws with this other than it will damage the environment?