Bring back imperial units
David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, says that on leaving the EU we can start deporting criminals who the EU forces us to retain, on top of preventing such undesirables from coming here in the first place.
It is one of the many benefits of being a sovereign nation. But I know from my postbag that there is another infliction from the decades of our EU membership that many would like to be shot of, and that was the imposition of the metric system on large parts of our life.
Consumer resistance ensured that our beer is still served in pints (though not in half-pint and pint bottles when bought in supermarkets: brewers please note), and that our signposts are still marked in miles. But we have been forced on to the Celsius temperature scale, which is less precise than Fahrenheit; we can’t buy groceries in pounds and ounces, or petrol in gallons, or wallpaper in yards, even though these measurements are second nature to most of us.
Laws criminalising imperial measures must be repealed. Pol Roger has announced that it will once more sell champagne in Churchill’s favourite pint measure: British companies must now follow where a French one has led.
Letters will soon be going out to those whom Her Majesty proposes to favour in her Birthday Honours List, and to millions of us, there can be no good reason why one of those should not be posted to Nigel Farage. His role in securing and winning last year’s referendum was truly a historic public service, and furthered our democracy. Nonentities who ran the losing campaign were showered with baubles in David Cameron’s disgraceful resignation – or, rather, humiliation – honours list. It will be very hard for the Government to explain its reasoning if Mr Farage remains un-knighted come June.