A NEW METRIC MARTYR Most reasonable people would ask the question: What exactly is so wrong with someone selling their goods and services to their customers in weights and measures they want and understand? If someone walks into a shop and asks for a pound of unbent EU regulation bananas, what is so unreasonable for the shopkeeper to sell them a pound of bananas as long as they do not give short measure. The trouble is, we are not dealing with reasonable people who make the laws, which for some idiotic reason wish to ban the use of weights and measures around half the populace - if not more - understand. Sadly, the unreasonable squad have been out and about in Hackney, an area where its council is not noted for commonsense decisions. On Friday 18th January a 63 year old market trader, Janet Devers who is the UK’s latest Metric Martyr, attended court after being prosecuted by Hackney Council for the heinous crime of selling in pounds and ounces. She made a brief appearance at Thames Magistrates’ Court where she opted for trial by jury. She branded the case as “disgusting”. Mrs Devers continues to run the same market stall her mother set up at the height of the blitz when the Germans were dropping metric bombs, in the days when no one would have ever imagined the leaders of the UK could surrender to foreign control after they went through so much for the defence of the realm. The frustrating thing about this case for many anti-metric campaigners is although our UK based officials are dealing with this case with the vigour of the KGB dealing with an insurgent, the EU Commissioner Gunter Verheugen, stated last year that the metric rules were never meant to cover market traders selling loose goods such as fruit and vegetables. Although Janet Devers originally complied with metric rules, she converted back to imperial as many of her customers did not like grams and kilograms, so was complying with her customers' wishes. I