Victory for the ‘metric martyrs’
Shops are set to be allowed to sell their produce in the old imperial measurements of pounds and ounces once again as part of a government post-Brexit pledge to cut the ban on imperial units.
The pledge was set out on Thursday to ditch many EU rules which Brexit minister Lord Frost said no longer are appropriate for the UK following its departure from the trading bloc, reports The Times.
Lord Frost told peers that ‘a lot of things haven’t happened that the gloom-mongers said would happen and I don’t think are going to happen,’ in an apparent dig at remainers.
Wow…well I didn’t see that coming! 😂 hopefully we can go back to shillings to! Ooh how exciting! Getting our country back to how it used to be! 😂😂 https://t.co/nXnHWXZV6h
— Jason Manford (@JasonManford) September 16, 2021
Boris Johnson has also said that he would bring imperial units back as part of his 2019 general election campaign.
Johnson promised an ‘era of generosity and tolerance towards traditional measurements.’
Despite the chirpy sentiment, Brexit has been roundly blamed for empty shelves and struggling supply chains across the UK, resulting in some of Britain’s biggest food suppliers struggling to keep businesses open.
Roger Scruton wrote: “Muddled though imperial measures may appear to those obsessed by mathematics, they are – unlike the metric system – self-evidently the product of life.” Public policy in C21st has now reached this level of ludicrousness. https://t.co/lfaYVtTpu5
— Oliver Kamm (@OliverKamm) September 16, 2021
Labour’s shadow international trade secretary Emily Thornberry criticised the plans on Thursday, stating the title of the plan – ‘Brexit opportunities’ – was in bad taste in light of empty supermarket shelves up and down the country.
The issue of imperial measurements became a sticking point for eurosceptics decades ago with a handful of fruit and veg traders – most famous among them a greengrocer from Sunderland – faced prosecution for still using pounds and ounces to sell produce in 2001.
