Cheers! At the end of the pint | Letter

It is entirely commendable to try to reduce the country’s alcohol consumption (Pint of no return? Two-thirds measure could boost English health – study, 17 September). Whether reducing the standard size for beer will succeed remains to be seen.

What is inexplicable is the proposal to move from a pint measure (20 fluid ounces) to two-thirds of a pint (13.33 fluid ounces), which is not even a round number in imperial measurements. In fact, it has no name.

If the new size were 500 millilitres, that would be a reduction of around 10% and would remove once and for all the anomaly whereby beer is the only liquid sold in imperial units. Virtually everything from wine and spirits to washing-up liquid and petrol is sold in metric units, and that is of course the norm abroad – not just in Europe, but almost everywhere outside the US. Even the Americans don’t use the UK’s imperial units – their pint is considerably smaller.

The British government decided to metricate it in 1965. When almost all other retail products went metric, an exception was made for the pint, on the grounds that drinkers reportedly had a sentimental affinity with the name. If we were to abolish the pint, that argument collapses. Surely this is an opportunity to bring beer sales into the 21st century.
Doctor Peter Burke
Chairman, UK Metric Association