Give 'em a pint and they'll take a kilometre

Give 'em a pint and they'll take a kilometre
The Sun, Friday September 2, 2005
RICHARD LITTLEJOHN

NOT content with hounding greengrocer Steve Thoburn in to an earlygrave for the heinous offence of selling fruit and veg in weights his customers could understand, the Metric Mafia are stepping up their campaign to force Britain to abandon imperial measures for ever.

Brussels is renewing its pressure on the Government to set a date for the abolition of miles, yards, feet, inches and pints.

Ministers are already going public with "over my dead body" bravado. Don't be fooled. They'll give in eventually. They always do.

Even if they don't, the Men In Wigs will over-rule them.

The plain fact is that, with the exception of miles and pints, most of our historic units of measurement have already gone the way of all flesh.

Every once in a while, someone makes a stand. But as in the case of the unfortunate Steve Thoburn they get ground down.

I seem to remember around the time Mr Thoburn was prosecuted for selling bananas in pounds and ounces, Tesco made a great song and dance about never submitting to the Brussels bullies and pledging to sell their produce in pounds and ounces for as long as their customers wanted.

That lasted about five minutes. Having secured acres of free publicity, Tesco quietly let it drop.

Try buying a pound of mince at your local Tesco these days. It's all kilograms or percentages thereof.

Maybe they figured that having had their 400 grams of flesh it wasn't worth the aggravation to keep it going, even though a company the size of Tesco could well have afforded a few hundred quid in fines every month.

That's what the Metric Mafia rely on. They know they can smash the Steve Thoburns of this world while the giant corporations will go along with anything provided the profits keep flowing.

What the hell does Tesco care which units of measurement it uses, just so long as the margin's right?

I can understand why manufacturing companies which trade internationally might favour a standardised system. They don't want to be pitching for a contract in fractions of an inch if the customer's plans have been drawn up in Centigrade, or whatever.

Fair enough.

But what if, as in the case of Steve Thoburn, the customers are largely ladies who have been brought up using pounds and ounces?

Why should they be expected to deal in a system with which they are unfamiliar?

The whole point of weights and measures legislation is to ensure that the customer doesn't get short-changed.

The history of metrication mirrors that of decimalisation. The customer always gets ripped off. A few grams get shaved off here, a few pence added there.

That's what's happened across Europe in the case of the euro. And it's one of the main reasons the Italians want their lira back. Prices have gone through the roof since the changeover.

The purpose of measurement is to clarify, to stop anyone being cheated, not to confuse. But that isn't how the bureaucratic mind works.

Everything must comply, whether or not it is to the advantage of the consumer.

It may well be that in the fullness of time, the universal adoption of the metric system is inevitable -although the USA, the most successful trading nation on earth, manages to rub along quite nicely using imperial measurements.

One of the many joys for an old fart like me visiting America is knowing how much everything weighs and how hot it is.

I get pounds and ounces. I understand Fahrenheit. And there are millions like me.

So why can't the two systems operate side by side until there's no one left who still thinks in old money?

Isn't that the whole point of consumer choice? Why the hell should using measurements which people can understand be a criminal offence?

A criminal offence, for goodness sake, to be punished to the fullest extent of the law?

You never get a Steve Thoburn being given the benefit of the doubt, or being threatened with an Asbo.

All resistance must be crushed. You wouldn't know it, but the official measurement of distance in Britain is still miles, yards and feet.

That doesn't stop local councils sticking up signposts in metres. Technically, the last time I looked, they were in breach of the law. But the Town Hall Metric Mafia are hardly going to prosecute themselves, are they?

Oh, no, they reserve their wrath for recalcitrant greengrocers selling their "potatoe's" and "apple's" in "pound's" and "ounce's"(copyright: K Waterhouse).

None of this is really about standardisation or "bringing us into line with Europe". As if they really give a damn.

Like so much else in Blair's Britain, from speed cameras to nicking radio hams for alleged anti-Muslim sentiment, it's about showing us who's boss.

Throwing their metric weight around enables them to indulge their punishment fantasies while at the same time posing as modern, reasonable and progressive.

What could be more agreeable than using a superior Continental system of measurement?

Only a Little Englander could possibly object. How long before opposition to compulsory metrication is officially declared a racist hate crime?

In their zeal to crush all trace of this country's historic system of measurements, the bureaucrats are aided and abetted by the biggest bureaucracy of all -the British Broadcasting Corporation.

The BBC gives the impression of taking its editorial line direct from Brussels.

While even Channel 4 gives Test match viewers a choice of Fahrenheit/Centigrade when forecasting the weather for that day's play, the Beeb sticks resolutely to new money.

If you don't instantly understand what 18C is -tough. Work it out for yourself and don't forget to carry an umbrella.

Watch any news bulletin and you'll see BBC reporters banging on about, for instance, how many metres away something happened.

Even on documentaries they convert nautical miles and knots into metric.

Perhaps the most ludicrous example came this week as Hurricane Katrina approached America's Gulf coast.

As the US authorities and the national hurricane centre spoke about how many miles an hour Katrina was travelling, the BBC insisted on telling us that she was expected to hit land at speeds of "up to 280 kilometres an hour".

I believe it's known as a Mission To Explain.

How long before they start sending out the licence fee in euros?