Shoppers at British supermarket chain Asda can now buy 1lb punnets of strawberries.
It may not seem a big deal at first until you realise that they haven't been able to do this since 1995.
This is a result of Britain being in the bossy EU, an organisation which made it illegal for goods in BRITAIN to be sold in traditional BRITISH measures - measures which the British people are used to and have used for centuries - and had to be sold in metric measures instead, despite the fact that, unlike in many other countries, the average Brit cannot fathom metric measures.
But the British people didn't just stand by and let the EU have its way quite so easily. Shops traders rose up against the metric-only ruling. The most famous of these Metric Martyrs was Steve Thoburn. He was convicted of the heinous, despicable and truly evil crime of selling bananas using nonmetric scales (welcome to the EUSSR).
Despite the fact that some organisations embraced all this silly metric stuff, such as the lefty BBC, metric measures still didn't make much headway in Britain.
We measure our height in feet and inches and our weight in stones. Footballers on the opposing team have to be ten yards from the ball during a free kick and roadsigns are all in miles. Kilograms, grams, metres and kilometres are all completely alien.
Even Britain's youngsters who were taught, for some reason, to use metric measures when they were at school, still overwhemingly use traditional imperial measures in everyday life.
In surveys, 90 per cent of the British people, and more than 80 per cent of those aged between 15 and 19, still measure things such as height in the traditional way.
It's yet another triumph of the British way of life over interference from continental Europe.
The rebirth of imperial measures: Why pounds are on their weigh back
By Warwick Cairns
4th June 2011
Daily Mail
Warwick Cairns is the author of About The Size Of It: The Common Sense Approach To Measuring Things, published by Pan.
It is with pleasure and astonishment that shoppers have found 1lb punnets of strawberries back on the shelves of Asda for the first time in 16 years - and not just because soft fruit is unusually early this year.
Pleasure because, despite four decades of attempts to make us go fully metric, most people in this country still feel more comfortable buying food in pounds and ounces.
The astonishment is that most of us thought we had no choice. Isn't everything now sold in kilogrammes, by law?
Metric martyr: In 2001 greengrocer Steve Thoburn fell foul of the new Weights and Measures Act after using non-metric scales to sell bananas. He died from a heart attack in March 2004.
Clearly, the answer is no. Both the Co-op and Waitrose have recently - and very quietly - reintroduced traditional weights on loose fruit and vegetables.
The Co-op is even selling chicken breasts in carefully calibrated packs of 454g: that is, 1lb.
It wasn't supposed to be like this, or not at any rate as seen from Brussels or the offices of our own bureaucratic enforcers.
In 2001, Sunderland market trader Steve Thoburn fell foul of the new Weights And Measures Act.
The first 'metric martyr' was convicted of using nonmetric scales to sell bananas. From then on, nearly all selling by weight or volume would be metric only.
The Government did buy a little time from Europe, securing a seven-year 'changeover': traders could show both sets of measures, so long as produce was weighed on metric scales.
But 2009 would see the end of imperial measures. For a trader even to mention traditional measures would be illegal.
Metrification had its cheerleaders. BBC news and weather dealt in kilometres, metres and millimetres. Cookery books dropped pounds, ounces and Farenheit.
France was so hostile to metres and kilogrammes and so fond of the 'pied de roi' (foot) and 'livre de marc' (pound) that Napoleon allowed a return to the old measures
Supermarkets served produce in shrink-wrapped metric. Then something happened - or didn't happen. Prosecutions dried up.
A new EU trading commissioner proved more sympathetic to traditional measures; trading standards officers tired of bad publicity from 'metric martyr' cases; and 2009's deadline was quietly dropped.
But the strange rebirth of imperial is less a shock than a matter of common sense.
Imperial measures never really went away. Not long ago, I took a walk in Shepherd's Bush market, West London, just yards from the BBC.
I was struck by how little headway metric had made, and how many customers still asked for produce in pounds.
And how traders found ways round the rules: using a bold black marker for prices per pound, but writing the metric equivalents in red, which is less visible from a distance.
At any provincial market, I believe most customers use traditional measures. And so long as traders show a metric equivalent, there is nothing the law can do about it.
But what of the young who have been indoctrinated into the metric system? In surveys, 90 per cent of us, and more than 80 per cent of those aged between 15 and 19, still measure things such as height in the traditional way.
For food shopping, imperial measures are twice as popular as metric. The most popular option of all is to display both systems, as in America.
Only a fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds want metric-only packages. Attachment to traditional measures is an international phenomenon.
In the majority of cases of a government introducing new systems, the people are less than grateful.
Even France was so hostile to metres and kilogrammes, and so fond of the 'pied de roi' (foot) and 'livre de marc' (pound), that Napoleon allowed a return to the old measures.
It was government officials, not revolutionaries, who prevailed with the metre in time.
Italians signed up to the metric system in the 1860s, but still do as they please in markets and kitchens, measuring in tazzas (about an espresso cup), bicchieres (a wine glass) and countless other traditional sizes.
Japan replaced its 1 ,000-year-old shakkanho system with metric measures in 1929 but people took so little notice that it had to do it again in 1966.
Large areas of Japanese life still use the old system-In theory, it's illegal to use it for official purposes, but it's crept back: the 2005 census allowed properties to be described in traditional units.
All the traditional measures have roots in the distant past. Neolithic farmers would calculate the length of fields in paces, and the height of cattle using hands.
Such measures are shaped by history - from the Romans we get our words for mile (mille passus), pound (libra pondo) and inch (uncia).
These systems are remarkably similar around the world: an English foot is almost identical to Japan's kanejaku, both the length of an average man's shoe.
Of course, for scientists the metric system is invaluable. But the right system for complex laboratory calculations is not the same as the right way to buy fruit for the family.
So, thanks to our stubborn insistence, it seems we have a classic British compromise, one that leaves people free to choose.
And that is probably the best measure of all.
The rebirth of imperial measures: Why pounds are on their weigh back | Mail Online
It may not seem a big deal at first until you realise that they haven't been able to do this since 1995.
This is a result of Britain being in the bossy EU, an organisation which made it illegal for goods in BRITAIN to be sold in traditional BRITISH measures - measures which the British people are used to and have used for centuries - and had to be sold in metric measures instead, despite the fact that, unlike in many other countries, the average Brit cannot fathom metric measures.
But the British people didn't just stand by and let the EU have its way quite so easily. Shops traders rose up against the metric-only ruling. The most famous of these Metric Martyrs was Steve Thoburn. He was convicted of the heinous, despicable and truly evil crime of selling bananas using nonmetric scales (welcome to the EUSSR).
Despite the fact that some organisations embraced all this silly metric stuff, such as the lefty BBC, metric measures still didn't make much headway in Britain.
We measure our height in feet and inches and our weight in stones. Footballers on the opposing team have to be ten yards from the ball during a free kick and roadsigns are all in miles. Kilograms, grams, metres and kilometres are all completely alien.
Even Britain's youngsters who were taught, for some reason, to use metric measures when they were at school, still overwhemingly use traditional imperial measures in everyday life.
In surveys, 90 per cent of the British people, and more than 80 per cent of those aged between 15 and 19, still measure things such as height in the traditional way.
It's yet another triumph of the British way of life over interference from continental Europe.
The rebirth of imperial measures: Why pounds are on their weigh back
By Warwick Cairns
4th June 2011
Daily Mail
Warwick Cairns is the author of About The Size Of It: The Common Sense Approach To Measuring Things, published by Pan.
It is with pleasure and astonishment that shoppers have found 1lb punnets of strawberries back on the shelves of Asda for the first time in 16 years - and not just because soft fruit is unusually early this year.
Pleasure because, despite four decades of attempts to make us go fully metric, most people in this country still feel more comfortable buying food in pounds and ounces.
The astonishment is that most of us thought we had no choice. Isn't everything now sold in kilogrammes, by law?
Metric martyr: In 2001 greengrocer Steve Thoburn fell foul of the new Weights and Measures Act after using non-metric scales to sell bananas. He died from a heart attack in March 2004.
Clearly, the answer is no. Both the Co-op and Waitrose have recently - and very quietly - reintroduced traditional weights on loose fruit and vegetables.
The Co-op is even selling chicken breasts in carefully calibrated packs of 454g: that is, 1lb.
It wasn't supposed to be like this, or not at any rate as seen from Brussels or the offices of our own bureaucratic enforcers.
In 2001, Sunderland market trader Steve Thoburn fell foul of the new Weights And Measures Act.
The first 'metric martyr' was convicted of using nonmetric scales to sell bananas. From then on, nearly all selling by weight or volume would be metric only.
The Government did buy a little time from Europe, securing a seven-year 'changeover': traders could show both sets of measures, so long as produce was weighed on metric scales.
But 2009 would see the end of imperial measures. For a trader even to mention traditional measures would be illegal.
Metrification had its cheerleaders. BBC news and weather dealt in kilometres, metres and millimetres. Cookery books dropped pounds, ounces and Farenheit.
France was so hostile to metres and kilogrammes and so fond of the 'pied de roi' (foot) and 'livre de marc' (pound) that Napoleon allowed a return to the old measures
Supermarkets served produce in shrink-wrapped metric. Then something happened - or didn't happen. Prosecutions dried up.
A new EU trading commissioner proved more sympathetic to traditional measures; trading standards officers tired of bad publicity from 'metric martyr' cases; and 2009's deadline was quietly dropped.
But the strange rebirth of imperial is less a shock than a matter of common sense.
Imperial measures never really went away. Not long ago, I took a walk in Shepherd's Bush market, West London, just yards from the BBC.
I was struck by how little headway metric had made, and how many customers still asked for produce in pounds.
And how traders found ways round the rules: using a bold black marker for prices per pound, but writing the metric equivalents in red, which is less visible from a distance.
At any provincial market, I believe most customers use traditional measures. And so long as traders show a metric equivalent, there is nothing the law can do about it.
But what of the young who have been indoctrinated into the metric system? In surveys, 90 per cent of us, and more than 80 per cent of those aged between 15 and 19, still measure things such as height in the traditional way.
For food shopping, imperial measures are twice as popular as metric. The most popular option of all is to display both systems, as in America.
Only a fifth of 16 to 24-year-olds want metric-only packages. Attachment to traditional measures is an international phenomenon.
In the majority of cases of a government introducing new systems, the people are less than grateful.
Even France was so hostile to metres and kilogrammes, and so fond of the 'pied de roi' (foot) and 'livre de marc' (pound), that Napoleon allowed a return to the old measures.
It was government officials, not revolutionaries, who prevailed with the metre in time.
Italians signed up to the metric system in the 1860s, but still do as they please in markets and kitchens, measuring in tazzas (about an espresso cup), bicchieres (a wine glass) and countless other traditional sizes.
Japan replaced its 1 ,000-year-old shakkanho system with metric measures in 1929 but people took so little notice that it had to do it again in 1966.
Large areas of Japanese life still use the old system-In theory, it's illegal to use it for official purposes, but it's crept back: the 2005 census allowed properties to be described in traditional units.
All the traditional measures have roots in the distant past. Neolithic farmers would calculate the length of fields in paces, and the height of cattle using hands.
Such measures are shaped by history - from the Romans we get our words for mile (mille passus), pound (libra pondo) and inch (uncia).
These systems are remarkably similar around the world: an English foot is almost identical to Japan's kanejaku, both the length of an average man's shoe.
Of course, for scientists the metric system is invaluable. But the right system for complex laboratory calculations is not the same as the right way to buy fruit for the family.
So, thanks to our stubborn insistence, it seems we have a classic British compromise, one that leaves people free to choose.
And that is probably the best measure of all.
The rebirth of imperial measures: Why pounds are on their weigh back | Mail Online
Last edited:
