Room for imperial and metric measurements in the shops

AMID the continuing battle against the coronavirus pandemic and the struggle to reduce carbon emissions to offset the risks from climate change, bringing back pounds and ounces for the way we weigh and pay for our apples and pears seems like a pretty low priority.

But that won’t stop some people from welcoming the news that now Britain is out of the European Union a return to imperial measurements is under consideration.

In fact metric measurements in Britain long pre-date the European Union and Britain’s membership. The UK signed up to joining a uniform system of measurement in 1875 since when metric weights and measures have been technically legal.

But that has not stopped the introduction of enforceable metrification being seen as one of the effects of European Union membership. The battle by the metric martyrs, including traders here in the Westcountry, to defy the law on grams and kilos became a totemic issue for anti-EU campaigners.

The fact that Boris Johnson and Lord Frost, the minister in charge of breaking free from Europe, have now announced a review of the use of metric measurements demonstrates just how potent a symbol it remains.

George Eustice, Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been an opponent of Britain’s membership of the EU for decades. It was appropriate, therefore, that he should have been quizzed on Times Radio yesterday about plans to bring back the pound and the ounce.

He, rightly, refused to treat the matter with too much seriousness, but his view, that the traders who were taken to court for continuing to sell their goods in pounds and ounces was “disproportionate” will chime with many. So too will his suggestion that it should be for individual businesses and premises to decide if they want to revert to imperial measurements.

There are flaws with that, of course. Customers need to know that whatever they are buying is being accurately weighed and priced. One weights and measures inspector complained yesterday that there was a national shortage of officials qualified in the role and that the machines which ensure scales weighing in pounds and ounces are accurate no longer have valid certificates of approval.

It is also true to say that imperial measurements were last taught in schools in the 1970s. That’s two generations with little or no idea of what a quarter of bonbons or four pounds of potatoes looks like.

Britain has settled into a kind of half-way house towards metrification. We walk a mile to the pub to drink a pint of bitter; still measure lots of raw materials, from planks of wood to curtains, in feet and inches and there are plenty of shoppers who ask the butcher for a pound of sausages and six ounces of sliced ham.

It might sound muddled but it works. And if traders find their customers would like to once again be able to use those measurements when they do their shopping, it ought to be possible to meet that need. Metric is here to stay – but if imperial is hanging on, who’s complaining?