I think part of the reason that the British still use imperial units is that they are about the right size, i.e. in a few digits, in the metric system you often have to use micro, mili or kilo multipliers to put the numbers into a few digits. Take beer for example, we tend to drink pints, the nearest metric measure is 500mL or 0.5L. Fuel is odd, we changed our pumps to measure in litres in the late 80's but most drivers still think of fuel economy in miles per gallon. There are of course the odd exception, like the Bel for sound levels is just too large and so we use decibels. Calories are too small so we usually call a kilocalorie a calorie (quirky I know). Back in the 80's there was a move to change us over to metric measurement but it ground to a halt part way through so we have a real mixture of units. I doubt if we will change. Virtually all tape measures and rulers here have both metric and imperial scales on them. Some units like spoon sizes have been rounded to metric equivalents, at least we don't generally use cups as a measure unlike the Americans, and we generally use Celsius rather then Fahrenheit.
