‘tomaeto’, I say ‘tomahto’, you say ‘potaeto’, I say ‘potahto’. You say color, I say colour. You say tons, I say tonnes.

Where are we going with this you ask? Well, if one our Belly Ache colleagues had his way, this page would be a nasty diatribe about all that is wrong with the good ole’ US of A – inspired of course, not by yet another school shooting or geopolitical misadventure somewhere in the world, but rather, as a result of the race riots in Ferguson, Missouri. Reality check: It is the year 2014 yeah?

Ok… so, rather than letting our colleague run-riot with his rant (you see what did there right?!) we told him he could only complain about something innocuous about the US. That of course spurred an intense debate in the office as to what really bugs us about the land of the free and the brave, or whatever it likes to call itself. We very quickly came to the conclusion that from a professional point of view, America’s phobia, no paranoia of the metric system was the thing we were looking for.

We’re pretty sure many American conspiracy theorists reckon it’s an evil European plot to take over the US, but no need to worry, they already have their hooks into Canada. Actually one member of the team reckons it was only called ‘The Metric System’ when it was first introduced into his elementary school (replacing the ‘Imperial’ system!) when he was ‘but-a-wee-bit-of-lad’. Now – and please pay attention here USA – it’s just called the GLOBAL MEASUREMENT SYSTEM – hint, hint, wink, wink.

There are not many things that rankle the Belly Ache team more than getting press releases or reading reports where cargo volumes are quoted as ’tons’. Ok fine, we get a press release from an obviously American company quoting figures in ‘tons’… zip over to Google, convert and hey presto, we have our metric equivalent expressed in tonnes.

But here lies the rub. A good portion of the global air cargo industry seems to fail to grasp the very basic concept that ‘tons’ pretty much automatically means NOT METRIC, while ‘tonnes’ conversely can only mean METRIC. And for the record we have the utmost respect for the companies who – knowing many (mainstream) journalists are not so clever on air cargo terms – make it crystal clear by saying XX ‘METRIC tons’, or in some woe-be-gotten cases will put it as ‘metric tonnes’ (which is really metric metric and one could logically argue that the two cancel each other out making it nonmetric… but we won’t go there!).

In actual fact, what REALLY bugs the crap out of us, is not so much the refusal to use metric – as absurd, isolationist and just plain dumb as that may be – it’s the people who use the word ‘tons’ when they really mean ‘tonnes’! Come on, life is already too complicated! And just because we know some of you are annoyingly skeptical we wish to back up our argument with some esteemed third party opinion. First step… enter ‘ton’ into Google. The answer: “1 short ton is 907.185kg” (that would be 2,000lbs for our American friends). Now same thing, but enter ‘tonne’ into Google.

The answer this time: “1 metric ton is 1,000kg” – hey whad’ya know!?! So maybe you still don’t believe us? For the next bit of evidence we will turn to the ‘Dictionary of International Trade: Handbook of the Global Trade Community’ which was sponsored by DHL. Looking up ‘ton’ we see that it is a unit of measure equivalent to 1.1016 metric tons, or 2,240 pounds. Two entries down we find ‘tonne’ for which the esteemed tome says: “The French spelling of ‘ton’ used especially in the air cargo industry to denote a metric ton, or 1,000kg, or 2,204.6lbs.” We’re not quite sure about the French spelling bit, but clearly one word references metric and the other non-metric.

But did you spot the problem? While there is agreement on the fact there is a metric and non-metric version, there is disagreement on the value of them. One tonne=1,000kg, fine that was easy. But how can one ‘ton’ be both 907.185kg (2,000lbs) and 1,016kg (2,240lbs)? Well, we’re glad you asked! The whole problem is that there isn’t simply a ‘ton’, but rather there is a ‘long ton’, a ‘short ton’ and of course our fave, the ‘metric ton’ (tonne). Ok we seriously get the fact that your eyes are glazing over, so to cut to the chase… the ‘long’ or ‘Imperial’ ton is the British version while the ‘short’ ton is the American version – both of which are different values.

I think it should be clear by now that there really is only one common sense solution to all of this – USE METRIC. Well duh, wasn’t that why 99 per cent of the world went metric in the first place? Yes, yes and YES.

And in conclusion, the Belly Achers BEG you please, just use tonnes… ok? Oh and one bit of irony before we sign off, because we so love irony! One particular culprit – a seriously large, global, European-based company – likes to send out its press releases stating its air cargo volumes in ‘tons’. One of the Belly Achers even entered into a bit of an argument with a press person from said company, who insisted that their figures expressed in ‘tons’ were metric! The poor woman obviously didn’t read her own handbook (hint, hint, wink, wink… oops, have we said too much?).