Among those interviewed on BBC Radio 4 on 6 January was Chris Howell, lead officer in weights and measures at the Institute of Trading Standards.
Asked, "So is it the end, then, of the pint of whelks? Is it the end of the quarter-pounder in the burger restaurant?" Mr Howell replied:
"Well, there’s an interesting issue here. It’s the end of the pint of whelks, I would say. The issue of the quarter-pounder is an interesting one because there is some debate as to how well the government have actually implemented the EC Units of Measurement directive.
Descriptions of items such as 6-foot beds and 54-inch widths of curtains are not at the moment caught by this legislation. So you have the ludicrous situation where you buy a metre of curtain 54 inches wide."
(According to the Byzantine regulations, while descriptive uses of traditional measures are not banned, their use in pricing is. So goods may be described using traditional measures but not priced using traditional measures!)
Asked, "Do you have sympathy with the shops that haven’t switched?", Mr Howell replied:
"Well, indeed I do. One of the whole problems here is that government – and I’m not talking about the present government but governments over about 30 years – simply have not prepared the way for this sort of change, and I’m not surprised that customers are still unable to come to terms with the metric system."
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