On Thursday 8 February 2001 a new law comes into force which bans in the future any mention whatsoever of our popular traditional imperial measures when selling fresh fruit and vegetables, meat, poultry, cheese and fish.

In Tony Blair's current correspondence about compulsory metrication he writes, "Of course, the weight and unit price may also be indicated in pounds and ounces". But meanwhile, his civil servants were publishing a new law, Statutory Instrument 2001 No. 55, to put an end for ever to the use of "authorised supplementary, subordinate indicators" in conjunction with metric units in trade. In other words, any use of pounds and ounces, feet and inches will be a crime after 31 December 2009.

So it is not enough to criminalise selling in pounds and ounces, or feet and inches and pints and gallons - it will become a criminal offence even to assist customers by displaying these measures alongside metric. Yet Tony Blair says in his letters "The most important consideration in all these changes is the need to ensure that consumers are not mislead or confused."

The suppression of supplementary indicators, simply the provision of additional information for the consumer's benefit, constitutes a direct attack on our freedom of expression, in clear contravention of Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

So keen is the European Commission to annihilate our imperial measures, a vital living part of our language and culture, it has instructed our government to enact this Regulation immediately. Just like the 1994 Metrication law being tested in court in Sunderland, this new one was not debated in Parliament, and is just as illegal.

Mr Vivian Linacre, Director of the British Weights & Measures Association says, "We are determined to arouse national opposition to this totalitarian dictat".

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