I remember reading a tirade some time back about a British vendor who put out scales calibrated in pounds and ounces for his customers. His customers were used to the old pounds/ounces units, and liked being able to use them. However, a scale has to register metric units in order to receive an official stamp certifying it for use in trade. Because his scales registered pounds and were thus unstamped, the British government confiscated the scales and charged him with a crime.
What I want to know is, if the scales had registered BOTH kilograms AND pounds, would they have been allowed to have an official stamp?
Presumably this is a reference to the “Metric Martyrs” cases of 2001.
Dual displays are allowed under the relevant EU legislation, but metric must be more prominent. Interestingly, the exceptions are “draught beer, cider, bottled milk and road signs in the United Kingdom”. These must be measured in imperial units only.
Hmmm … I know this is the case for product labelling (e.g. you can label a can of paint as 1 imperial gallon, so long as it’s also labelled as 4.546 liters in type that’s at least as big).
But are you sure that’s also the case for the measuring devices themselves, e.g. a scale that the customer sets produce down on to determine how many pounds/kilograms of yams he’s buying?
The Wikipedia article only states that they were convicted “of two offences of using a scale that was only capable of weighing in the imperial system.”
It’s silent on what the law is regarding a dual-display weighing scale.
Recent story of a market trader who refuses to use metric measurements here.
One change that the various regulations which came into force in January this year enacted was the removal of the deadline for switching totally over to metric. So dual labelling can continue indefinitely, the logic being that it would save on the expense of having to use seperate labels for goods exported to the US and Europe. Link to article on the National Measurement Office website
The National Measurement Office is the place to go if you’re interested in the various regulations and/or suffer chronic insomnia.
The analog scales in the fruit and vegetable section of all the supermarkets I’ve shopped at in London (including smaller independent chains such as TFC, as well as major chains like Tesco and Sainsbury’s) show both metric and imperial units. The digital scales that the butchers use at TFC show only kilograms, and indeed the butchers seem rather confused when you ask them for “a pound” of meat—without fail they give you £1 worth of meat, not 454 grams.