The way political cooperation, negotiation and compromise are viewed as acts of unforgivable weakness in the US sets up a climate where functional democracy appears impossible. The US seems destined to lurch from one impulse to another with half the country thinking each is a colossal mistake and an affront to their way of life.

No, I do not mean this as any kind of "both sides" argument. The fact there are only sides to determining how a society governs itself, the winners and the losers, is the point.

You're right, but also stones are mostly used as an approximate unit of bodyweight in casual conversation, so people would usually say "I'm about 10 and a half stone".

If you're dealing with bodyweight where accuracy matters, like in a medical sense, it's metric anyway. Plenty of people here aren't even sure of how many pounds make up a stone, despite regularly using the latter as a measurement.