Britannia triumphs over Johnny Metric

Pints all round as EU crumples before imperial forces

By Lester Haines • Get more from this author

Posted in Government, 11th September 2007 09:22 GMT

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The EU will abandon all pretentions to enforce its filthy metric system on Britain, thereby guaranteeing once-and-for-all an Englishman's right to sup ale in pints, buy spuds by the pound, and measure the distance between the greengrocer and the boozer in miles.

That's according to the BBC, which says the European Commission will, in future, leave all decisions regarding weights and measures to the British Government, which "had been due to set a date for phasing out all its imperial measurements within three years".

The decision is a triumph for the so-called "metric martyrs", inspired by late Sunderland grocer Steve Thorburn, who refused point-blank to sell goods in garlic-tainted kilograms, in the process earning himself a criminal conviction for flogging bananas by the pound.

The surrender was offered by European Commission's industry commissioner Gunter Verheugen, who admited to the Beeb "the EU had been making itself unpopular on an issue that didn't really matter".

A humiliated Verheugen offered: "I organised a huge consultation, and the result was that industry told us there was no problem with the existing system. I want to bring to an end a bitter, bitter battle that has lasted for decades and which, in my view, is completely pointless. We're bringing this battle to an end."

While the EU's backdown will preserve for future generations the ounce, the quart and the furlong, it also opens the door for the adoption of Vulture Central's own standards, including the grapefuit (gf), linguine (lg), the nanoWales (nWa) and, of course, the maximum speed of a sheep in a vacuum, viz: 2997.5 km/sec for those of you still measuring these things in old money. ®

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