This happened in London, but we're probably not far behind...
BIZNETDAILY
Woman charged with selling veggies by pound
'We have knifings. We have killings, and they're taking me to court'
Posted: January 25, 2008
© 2008 WorldNetDaily.com
A woman running a vegetable stand in London's West End is facing fines of up to $130,000 and the possible loss of her business because she was caught by the government selling her produce by the ounce and pound.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Janet Devers, 63, was notified of the criminal counts with a 67-page letter that arrived in the mail, outlining 13 criminal charges relating to the "improper" pricing of goods as well as the offense of selling vegetables in bowls.
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59882
it is stupid.. but she knew that she was going to get in trouble..Her brother had the same problem 5 years before and she was warned...All she had to do was list her prices in both metric and SAE... not too big a deal...And have a scale that measured both units of measurement.
I hope the charges are dismissed here...But she had to know she was going to be getting into trouble..I mean I cannot point the finger...I am pretty set against anyone telling me what to do... but there is a difference in what you do in your own home... and what goes on in public in a place of business in a market... Sadly there you have to follow some sort of rules to avoid chaos
Bull crap. There is no reason that the produce shouldn't be sold in units people can actually picture and identify with.... the government needs to butt out.
actually metric is better in the long run...Canada switched and they are better for it...It saves money and is easer to teach kids...Metric rules!
Quote from: benevolance on January 25, 2008, 04:36:14 PM
actually metric is better in the long run...Canada switched and they are better for it...It saves money and is easer to teach kids...Metric rules!
Absolutely! I insist on it on every building crew I work with.
Guys?
Guys?
:)
Inches and feet for me. By the way, what does a whisker translate to in metric? ??? We always knew when hanging drywall.
My 0.02 worth...
It's not the organics or the heirloom that's the problem.
Why butt your head against a brick wall for something like this. Let's say she's an elder Brit who remembers buying produce, meat etc. in pounds and ounces... what is there to gain at this point by bucking the system. Britain, Canada, etc are not going to change back to the avoirdupois system in a million years.
Peter is correct in that it is easier to understand metric lengths, weights and volumes, especially when going from small to larger amounts/distances, ONCE you get USED TO IT. It takes a generation, maybe two. Even the Celsius temperature scale is easier to relate to in the end.
I don't know if metric saves money, but calculations are easier with a base of 10.
Didn't we (USA) try that in the 80's?
The whole point is, why the heavy duty fines & possibility of losing her business just because she's using pounds & ounces... the gov't & financial gurus are always finding creative ways of measuring things ???
Anyway, me thinks its a lot of misdirected policing... >:(
Helmets...seat belts....I was accused of trying to enter a court house with a weapon last week...It was a 2" long Uncle Henry pocket knife that I've carried for the last 35 years. Luckly on seeing the x-ray machine......I woke up the security guard and ask about it BEFORE I entered the building.....I guess IF I had allowed the alarm to awaken him, I'd be in jail now.....He wouldn't holdit for me and he wouldn't allow me to enter with it...so I left. Most things can be done by mail or on-line without having to deal with the fools who PROTECT us...while being asleep!
We need some more regulations and laws to keep us safe...or at the very least to bring in money for the crooks in office.
Sounds like that law was to keep them safe from us. I had that happen to me once and they just held the knife until I left. No big deal. I guess they are more paranoid where you live.
I agree that it is unnecessary policing... Metric is simple, but when I cook I never go by grams and liters... it just would not do to have to convert everything :P The biggest thing is that she could lose her business and have to pay a hefty fine, and the article doesn't mention any of her customers complaining.... Back home I was going to sell in the farmer's market one time, and they had a rule about not selling by weight unless you had a professionally calibrated scale of some sort; instead, the rule was that you sold by container. You could sell a lunch bag size bag of green beans, but dare not call it a pound unless you had some hoity-toity scale. So, most folks, rather than use weights, sold per piece or by container. The difference was that this was a rule made by the grower's association to avoid people of accusing people of using faulty scales and cheating people. Whether one system is "simpler" or not should not dictate freedom to use either one. Besides, IMO the metric thermometer is about useless... and less accurate than Farenheit...
I have to use a lot of metric in ER - funny thing is, we use Farenheit temps but in ICU we used celcius... just like we were the last hospital to go to military time although we serve the veterans... [noidea'
I can figure out all sorts of medical machinery, monitors, calculations at work but can't translate that to trouble shooting computers (have Glenn to do that for me ;) ) or working on the solar or machinery around the house... d*
Metric Sucks.
Long live feet, inches, pounds, ounces, etc. I'm uh-mericun.
My husband, born and raised in Korea, did his dissertation for college in standard units rather than metric! He said that he could visualize it better, once he learned the inch, foot, yard, mile system.
Metric --- English Hohum. Thank God Whitworth went the way of the Dodo bird.
I still have some combination end Whitworth wrenches from way back when I had a couple ancient British motorcycles.
More than you ever needed to know about Whitworth....(links)
http://www.enginehistory.org/british_fasteners.htm
http://www.jag-lovers.org/xk-lovers/library/whitworth_system.html
http://www.timebus.co.uk/rlh/whitworth.htm
...talk about drift......