The pint and pound to stay  

Metric money may be O.K. but who can easily see a millimetre and when the cops are looking for a metric sized person I don't even bother to think about it. Tell me in feet an inches and I will pick him out straight away. Also after all these decades I immediately convert kilometres to miles by simply multiplying the first digit by six. That is 10 Ks = 6 Miles, or 90K = 54 miles I can then visualise how far I have to go.

Hooray for the Brits!

*********************************************************************************************

 

11th September 2007

News article filed by BNP news team

 
The right of Britons to use imperial weights and measures will be enshrined in EU law under plans being announced by the European Commission. Gunther Verheugen, the Commissioner for the Single Market is expected to confirm the ruling later today. The Commissioner has also placed the blame for the farcical situation where traders have been prosecuted and convicted for selling in traditional units, squarely at the feet of the British government

The decision was hailed as a victory for the "metric martyrs" and campaigners who have refused to accept successive governments' attempts to abolish measurements dating back to the Middle Ages.

A directive published today will be put to the Council of Ministers to be approved by EU member states within the next few months. It will confirm the UK's right to carry on using non-metric measures such as the pint, the mile, and pounds and ounces. But shops and traders will have to stick to current rules which require those using Imperial weights and measures to show their equivalents in metric as well.

British governments have repeatedly asked for delays in implementing the switch to metric agreed by the EU nearly 30 years ago. The current delay - or derogation - expires in 2009 and it would have become illegal for UK shops to display the imperial measurements after January 1, 2010.

But a consultation by the Commission found that the UK could carry on using imperial measures without harming the single market, which governs trade across the 27-member bloc.

Not EU's fault

Mr Verheugen said: "Let's get one thing straight from the off.

"Neither the European Commission nor any faceless 'Eurocrat' has or will ever be responsible for banning the great British pint, the mile, and weight measures in pounds and the ounces.

"These imperial measures form part of the traditions that are the very essence of the Britishness that all Europeans know and love."

He added: "We at the Commission have decided the time has come to nail these myths once and for all by setting out in black and white what has always been our view: that Britain should continue to use imperial measures for as long as it likes.

"Much as it may dismay those who have peddled the metric myth for far too long, we have now proposed legislation enshrining Britain's right to retain pints of milk and beer, miles on road signs and dual indications of weights and measures from now until Kingdom come."

A Commission spokesman said: "We have thought long and hard about this and rather than getting periodically slagged off we have decided to solve the problem once and for all.

"We are effectively getting the British government out of a hole. And we are happy to do that."
 

***********************************************************************************************

"I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do. What I can do, I should do. And what I should do, by the grace of God, I will do." - Edward Everett Hale