Go Metric? I'd rather go to prison

The Mail on Sunday
January 2, 2000
by Bruce Robertson

Yesterday, Britain's imperial weights and measures were outlawed in favour of a system cooked up by the French.  Here, one defiant shopkeeper explains why he will never bow to the bureaucrats from Brussels...

Should anyone have told me 20 years ago that a foot, a yard and an inch were all going to become the other kind of four-letter words, and that I could be sent to prison for using them, I would have thought them mad.  But that's what is happening this week.  From now on, shopkeepers like myself are banned  from using imperial measures, even though the vast majority of Britons still visualise distance, height and weight in these ancient measurements.

The Government's political masters in Europe have decreed we must use centimetres, grams and kilos, and anyone who refuses to comply is a criminal.

Shopkeepers, stall-holders and even those selling produce from farms have been forced to buy metric scales, costing about £400.  Those who refuse to do so could face prosecution.

But who does this benefit, apart from the Brussels bureaucrats and their London lackeys?

No government has been elected witha mandate to metricate the country, nor has Parliament debated the issue.

It is time for someone to make a stand, and I have decided to do so.  I own Trago Mills, which has three large general retail outlets in the West Country with a turnover of more than £100 million and 900 employees.

Last week, I told trading standard officers in Cornwall and Devon that my stores are going to continue to use imperial units after January 1 deadline.  I realise I face a fine of up to £2,000: I have no intention of paying it.  If necessary, I am prepared to go to jail over metrication, which I think is a consumer deception measure imposed on us by undemocratic and unaccountable bureaucrats.

Some people call me the 'metric martyr', others say I am mad.  I am neither.  This is an important issue that has to be settled in the courts.  It is time for a British jury to decide whether an Englishman should be jailed for using measurements understood and preferred by his customers.  My views are backed by a recent survey that showed 75 per cent of Britons still think in imperial measures.

My stores display both metric and imperial measurements, and I am not going to scrap the latter on the whim of some Brussels bureaucrat.  It is fundamental principle of any successful transaction that the buyer understands what he is getting.  If you force retailers to use measurements that are unfamiliar and confusing, you have imposed a consumer deception measure.

Petrol is a good example of this.  When it was sold in gallons the price meant something:  there was uproar when it went above £1 per gallon.  When litres were introduced, the confused customer could only measure his purchase by the amount he spent - £5 or £10 at a time.  As the price of petrol rose, the customer kept spending his set amount of money, rarely realising that he was getting less and less petrol for each pound he spent.  Thus hardly anyone noticed when the price passed £3 a gallon.

Imperial measurements are deeply rooted in our language and culture, and are suited for use in everyday life because they derive from the human form - a foot was a foot, yards were the circumference of a man's waist.  Even youngsters who have been educated in the metric system give distances in miles and their height in feet.  One study showed that the vast majority of people over the age of 24 - including those who never encountered inches or ounces at school - still use the old measurements.

The metric system was cooked up by a bunch of French scientists during the French Revolution and imposed on countries conquered by Napoleon.  It has had to be revised several times and parts of it have been ditched altogether.  Plans for a ten-day week were abandoned after workers in Paris rioted.  The French even tried to metricate minutes and hours.  The British, who have a perfectly good system of weights and measures, are being forced to adopt this alien system.

Some trading standards officers have said that it is unfair for some shops to keep using imperial measures while others have gone over to metric.  By this curious logic - given that the bureaucrats have intoduced this job-creating problem in the first place - they justify taking action against people like me.

Their job is to protect consumers, but they are taking away measurements that consumers want and prosecuting people who defy them.

One myth put about by the Department of Trade and Industry is that the world is moving towards the metric system.  It isn't.  Most of it - China and Japan, for example - still uses the imperial system.  The US tried the metric system, but didn't like it - 18 states have abandoned their conversion programmes.

The DTI is probably planning a softly, softly approach, hoping the outrage over metrication will fade.  Then its officials will pick off the weaker non-compliers.  In the end, they will get round to me.  Then the Government will have to decide whether it wants to imprison an Englishman for using his own measures for the benefit of his own people in his own country.

I am prepared to take this all the way.  It's going to be an interesting year.

Bruce Robertson is the chairman of the British Weights and Measures Association, which campains to retain imperial measires