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Europe | ||||||||
The Lying, Brutalitarian Face Of The EU | ||||||||
2008-01-15 | ||||||||
For Janet Devers, a 63-year old pensioner who still runs the fruit and veg stall on an East London market started by her mother at the height of the Blitz in 1940, Christmas 2007 was the most frightening she can ever remember. On Friday, Janet will step into the dock of a courtroom to face 13 criminal charges - putting her at the centre of one of the most shameful farces of recent British politics. She has become Britain's latest "Metric Martyr" - under EU directives compelling Britain to use only the metric system of weights and measures. She faces financial ruin for breaking that same law which, in 2002, created the original "Martyrs" - the five traders who were found guilty of the crime of selling goods in pounds and ounces. Since the Metric Martyrs' case aroused massive publicity, around 40,000 market traders all over the country have continued to sell in pounds and ounces without further prosecutions. But on September 13 last year, trading standards officials from Hackney Council, supported by two police officers, arrived at Janet's Ridley Road market stall to confiscate two sets of imperial, non-metric scales.
What makes Janet's plight even more bizarre is that only two days before Hackney's officials seized her scales under EU law, a senior EU Commissioner claimed in Brussels that no such law existed.
Commissioner Verheugen wished to point out that it was never Brussels' intention that it should be a criminal offence for the British to sell in pounds and ounces. We could continue drinking our beer in pints and marking our signposts in miles for as long as we wished. Mr Verheugen went further. Astonishingly, he insisted that the claim that it was an offence to sell in non-metric measures was merely an invention of Britain's "tabloid press", which had "repeatedly and erroneously" printed stories about "people having to buy their food from markets in kilograms rather than pounds".
This baffling story goes back to the time in 2000 when the EU's compulsory metrication policy exploded into a national cause celebre, after it became illegal to sell any goods in Britain in non-metric weights and measures. When Sunderland market trader Steve Thoburn became the first person in Britain to be charged with the new crime of selling a pound of bananas, and four more traders were prosecuted soon after, they were scornfully dubbed, by a senior trading standards official, "the Metric Martyrs".
However, their cause had won such support that no other prosecutions followed - and Brussels was left uncomfortably aware that in Britain the case had done the image of the EU much harm. This was one reason why, last September, Commissioner Verheugen was keen to show that the EU had softened its line. But something else which lay behind its U-turn was that, for more than a year, some of the biggest industrial firms on both sides of the Atlantic had been lobbying Brussels to withdraw another highly damaging provision of its metrication policy which was about to do them serious damage. Still due to come into force in January 2010 is what was intended to be the final step in making Europe totally metric - a law making it illegal for any business not just to sell goods in non-metric measures but to make any reference to them. After the ban on imperial measures came in seven years ago, businesses were still allowed to assist their customers by providing translations from kilograms into pounds. But at the end of next year even this will be forbidden. To mention non-metric measures in any context whatsoever will become illegal. It will even become a criminal offence for McDonald's to sell a "quarterpounder".
On this, the EU finally saw sense. But in announcing his U-turn on one aspect of metrication (although the law is still on the EU and UK statute books), Verheugen went out of his way to make those further claims about how it had never been an offence to sell in non-metric measures in the first place (so absurd was his suggestion that this had all been invented by the "tabloid press" that this particular claim has been removed from the Commission website). But all this raises a question mark over Hackney Council's decision to charge Janet Devers with an offence which Verheugen maintains never existed. Just before Christmas, she was served with a 67-page document, setting out 13 charges, such as weighing her goods on the scales seized by the officials, and ordering her to appear at Thames Magistrates' Court on Friday.
When her ordeal began, she and her brother Colin Hunt - one of the original five Martyrs, who runs a stall in the same Hackney market - turned to the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund, so helpful before but which has now run out of money. Council officials will argue that they are only doing their duty by enforcing the law as it stands. In a sense they are right. Despite Mr Verheugen's huffing and puffing, the laws under which Janet faces prosecution are still on the statute books.
This is such an absurd anomaly that it would be an affront to justice if her case was not presented with all the force that it deserves. Opinion polls have consistently shown that more than 90 per cent of the British people are opposed to making it a criminal offence to sell goods in the measures most understand and prefer. In that sense, Mrs Devers will be standing in the dock on Friday on behalf of all of us. | ||||||||
Posted by:Anonymoose |
#5 The author Jerry Pournelle, among others, calls this "Anarcho-Tyranny." No-go places in the UK where the Queen's law doesn't apply and, elsewhere, harassment of decent citizens to remind them they are under the thumb of the authorities so they keep their mouths shut and their heads down in submission. Coming soon to a country near you. |
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 2008-01-15 23:14 |
#4 LA TIMES OP-ED [paraph] > THE FRENCH SURRENDER/GIVE UP THEIR FRENCHINESS. |
Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-01-15 17:51 |
#3 Quantitative Nationalism vs. [pan]Continentalism??? "An invention of the British Tabloid press" - so, is the point here that the Brit Judiciary System follows the sensational medias before they follow Brit laws or even Parliamentary legislation for same. D *** NG IT, EVEN IN "PIRATES" THE OUTLAW CREW OF THE BLACK PEARL WANTED TO SHOOT CAPT. JACK SPARROW FOR USING THE FRENCH WORD "PARLAY/ PARLEY"! |
Posted by: JosephMendiola 2008-01-15 17:49 |
#2 While the EU is legalizing jihadism, they criminalize weights and measures law. What a sick joke. |
Posted by: Gromosh Forkbeard2610 2008-01-15 17:41 |
#1 "Afro-Caribbean customers protested that they found grams and kilograms baffling." This made much chuckle because Afro-Caribbans would have no experience with a gram of pot, or a kilo of coke transhipping through the Caribbean. |
Posted by: rjschwarz 2008-01-15 14:11 |