B R I T I S H W E I G H T S & M E A S U R E S ASSOCIATION

The British Weights and Measures Association (BWMA) welcomes the Early Day Motion tabled in the House of Commons by Mrs Gwyneth P. Dunwoody, Labour MP for Crewe and Nantwich, with cross-party support from many other MPs.

The motion calls for the repeal of the law that makes it a criminal offence to use our traditional system of weights and measures. It is now a crime to sell petrol by the gallon and carpet by the square yard. After 31 December 1999, pounds and ounces will be illegal and imperial units on packaging will be banned.

Surveys show that the vast majority of the population prefers to use imperial measures; they are comfortable with pounds and ounces, yards, feet and inches. They inflate their car tyres with pounds per square inch, not kiloPascals; they judge their cars on horsepower and miles per gallon, not watts and kilometers per hundred litres. Women especially object to metric units, 82% of those asked prefer imperial measures.

If most Britons want to retain their traditional units they should not be coerced by the threat of imprisonment to use the metric system. Even the European Union did not impose the criminal law.

That same majority of the population wants to be given the choice of which system to use, in other words, to retain dual marking of weights and measures.

Members of the BWMA all report that their MPs are sympathetic to the aims of the Early Day Motion.

The BWMA hopes that the tide of opinion in favour of retaining a choice will persuade the Ministers of the Department of Trade and Industry to issue an order repealing the use of criminal penalties against our popular and traditional weights and measures system.

Press release distributed by David Delaney, BWMA Hon Public Relations Officer, Mortimers Cross Mill, Leominster, HR6 9PE, (Tel: 01568 708 820, FAX 01568 708 765, e-mail dtdelaney@compuserve.com).