This is one area where countries benefit from not having the obsessive, to-the-precise-millilitre weights and measures rules that the UK imposes.

Sure, there are customer rights standardisation benefits to that, but it just feels so Dickensian and mean-spirited (literally) to be served a whisky from a thimble.

In Spain - and I presume in Portugal and plenty of other continental European countries - a 'glass' of X is no more specific than that. Poured as if you were a guest at someone's home, not an inmate at a workhouse. It might be a bit more or a bit less, but it will always be a damned sight more generous, and feel a so much more pleasant experience, than an equivalent establishment in the UK could ever be allowed to offer.

I think that the weights and measures culture is another ingrained aspect of the UK that the population like to think makes them somehow superior to their Southern European neighbours. When in fact it makes them inferior, and unhappier.

It conveys miserliness and mistrust - hardly the soundest basis for a convivial evening out.