I've had Stewart Steven's permission to reproduce his second story. I may also add it to my Web site. OK, LET'S HELP YOU GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT Stewart Steven Mail on Sunday, 2001-01-28 Even if I didn't know it before, I sure as hell know it now: the British love their imperial measures. Last week I had the temerity to use this space to criticise Steve Thoburn, the greengrocer from Sunderland who is being prosecuted, so everyone persists in believing, for selling bananas in good old British pounds and ounces. He is, I implied, not so much a martyr as a metric madman. Oh dear, oh dear. I didn't know that readers of the Mail on Sunday knew such language. One man said i was a 'fascist' and would, he said, post his opinion on the Internet. Cripes! But why do people feel so strongly? Mr Thoburn and his friends say it is because the British people will never bow the knee to tyranny. I say differently. I say that a lot of people who ought to know better have grievously misled the British people. I don't want to convert anyone. I just want to restore balance to the argument. I received so many messages containing so many misconceptions and plain simple errors that I return to the subject this week. Allow me to take the most common points one by one. 'Mr Thoburns' costs have not been covered solely by anti-European Union organisations' True. I was wrong. Out of a fund now standing at £65 000 only £5 400 has come from political organisations and a further £2 500 from a newspaper. The rest came from ordinary people, though one suspects that many were individual members of these organisations. But there's nothing wrong with that. 'It is a wicked government that would send a man to prison for selling bananas in units of measurement that his customers want and understand.' Not the case. He is being prosecuted for using the wrong scales. If Mr Thoburn goes to prison it will not be because of his offence but because he has refused to pay a fine. That has always been the law. 'This is a tyranny because traders and customers alike are being denied freedom of choice.' Simple nonsense. If people were permitted to pick and choose what units of measurement they wanted there would be absolute havoc. That is why it has never been allowed in 1000 years of weights and measures legislation. There wasn't an outcry when a British publican was recently prosecuted by trading standards officers for measuring and selling his beer in litres. I wonder why? 'It has always been promised that metrication would come by consent. That is the British way - a voluntary switch and not one backed by legislation.' Most countries in the world who have gone metric have desperate;y tried to do so without compulsion and most, if not all, have failed. They have all experienced a similar pattern - everything has been fine, or nearly so, until the final and most human hurdle, small retailers selling loose goods. Australia and New Zealand - just two countries taken at random, neither of whom, as far as I know, are members of the European Union - made the decision to go metric after we did but completed the process in 20 years rather that the 35 it has so far taken us. Both counties tried the voluntary approach but came unstuck when it came to loose goods. People like the measurements they grow up with and resist change,and will do so for ever unless there is a degree of coercion. Eventually and inevitably Australia and New Zealand, and everywhere else that went metric, introduced legislation which made it compulsory. In each case consumer resistance quickly evaporated. Does anyone remember the incredible row in this country in the 70s about carpet sizes? This had nothing to do with the EU. 'If America can resist metrication, why can't we?' It is true that America has managed to stand out from the crowd. It is the greatest economy in the world and perhaps feels it can afford to march to its own drumbeat. But there aren't many sensible Americans who don't believe that one day soon even they will have to bow to the inevitable. The US Metrication Board, which was set up in 1978, says things are moving. The car industry went metric in the 80s, and about 40% of US businesses now employ metric measures, with dual labelling of goods mandatory for most products. In a couple of years' time, the EU regulations will come into force that will make it mandatory for all goods arriving at EU ports to be weighed in metric. The Americans have asked for a time extension because they're not ready. They recognise they are going to have to speed up their programme, at which point they will discover, just as we have, that a dual system is expensive, confusing and only of short-term political value, and finally will have to go. The wheel of history makes some fascinating turns. In July 1871 the British Government lost a vote to male metrication compulsory by 82 votes to 77. Why? Because enough MPs were persuaded by the argument that top do so would let down the Americans who had just decided to accept British imperial measures. 'Why are we more rigorous than the French who permit their traders, as any visit to a French market will show, to continue to use the old livre?' A demi-canard. The livre is not the old unit of measurement (equivalent to 0.4895 of a kilo) but modern French slang for half a kilo, on the metric scales. Perhaps we should do this ourselves and call half a kilo a pound. There's nothing to stop us. 'There are lots of countries around the world which haven't gone metric. Why are we so pathetic?' I've mentioned the US. Here are other countries with populations of more than 5 million who have not gone metric: Myanmar (Burma), North and South Yemen, Rwanda, Burundi and er, that's it. I wonder what the good people of Burundi know that we don't? 'Everyone in Sunderland is on Mr Thoburn's side' I doubt it. Would Nissan be building its new Micra in Sunderland if the UK Independence Party, which has given £2700 to Mr Thoburn, had its way? Would there be a Nissan plant there at all? Last week I said that Mr Thoburn was a puppet. That was unfair. He's a decent and independent guy. But he's swimming in shark-infested waters, being used by people who do not have his (or Sunderland's) best interests at heart. 'Any other business?' Yes. Vivian Linacre, director of the British Weights and Measures Association, has written a very long letter pointing out that there is no connection between his association and the UKIP. I accept, contrary to what I suggested, that a speech advocating civil disobedience by a keynote speaker at one of its conferences was specifically repudiated by the organisation, but I am surprised that Mr Linacre has not pointed out his calls for an 'October Revolution' over weights and measures two years previously. I'm sure Mr Linacre is right, too, when he says there is no connection between the BWMA and the UKIP. I would have been happier, however, if he had come clean and admitted straight out that he stood as its candidate at the Perth and Kinross parliamentary by-election in 1995. It's little sins of omission like this that make one question the real agenda of some of these people. Stewart Steven -- UK Metrication Association: http://www.metric.org.uk/
