Market Stall holders trading Illegally
Some fruit and vegetable sellers around the UK are failing to comply with metric trading regulations. [article contributed by PB]
Two examples of this failure are the markets in Redditch town centre and the Portobello Road in London.
Despite several requests to Trading Standards Officers, they are not enforcing the regulations.
The law requires that items sold by weight must have a metric price shown. If an imperial price is shown the imperial price must not be more prominent than the metric price.
The Prime Minister has been made aware of this problem.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:22
If one looks at the spirit of the pricing orders, then one will see that prices of loose goods must be per UNIT weight - usually per kilogram, but for some goods per 100 g or per 10 g. This means that a market trader advertising apples at 80p/3 lbs is not using unit weight in either metric or imperial.
December 21st, 2006 at 14:57
Somebody really needs to clarify exactly what current Weights and Measures legislation covers and doesn’t cover. I’m no expert but from what I’ve read it seems that it’s everything except for roads, draught beer, doorstep milk, a few “specialist” industries such as jewlery and things covered by international treaty (such as flying).
If my interpretation is correct then surely the “Quarter Pounder” is illegal unless the metric weight is shown alongside - along with the “6 Inch/Footlong” Subways (and the n oz drinks they sell) and the many weight restriction signs in Cambridgeshire which still show “tons” (one even shows both tons AND tonnes!!!).
December 24th, 2006 at 09:11
In response to Alex Bailey, I’m no expert either, but I can tell you that draught beer and doorstep milk are covered by UK weights and measures legislation. The derogation in the EU directive is merely to allow the UK and Ireland to retain imperial measures for those items but it doesn’t exempt them from regulation.
A similar story applies to road signs exept that they are covered by other regulations within the UK, namely the Transport Sign Regulations and General Directions (TSRGD), which is not part of W&M legislation. You are quite right about the use of “ton” in the sense that it does not comply with TSRGD.
The “Quarter Pounder” example is probably in the realm of “product description” which is covered by advertising regulations rather than W&M. It is legal unless it can be shown to be misleading in some way but, unfortunately, metric units are not formally required for advertising.
December 29th, 2006 at 01:03
In regards to the quarter pounder example, I believe the description is misleading, as it refers to the approximate uncooked weight, which is not what the buyer gets when the item is cooked. Burger places should start advertising their burgers by more meaningful names, and if they feel they have to give a weight, do so based on the cooked weight, in grams only. Not only would the number used be a lot bigger than “quarter”, it might make it clearer to people on diets how much they are consuming.
December 31st, 2006 at 19:41
I’d like to raise one or two things as regards draught beer.
As I understand it, if we complete metrication a pint of beer will be the same but will be called a glass of beer. However, someone I know reckons that colloquially it may still be called a pint - in fact, it already tends to be used more as a colloquiallism for the beer or the glass rather than as the actual name for the quantity. As the UKMA site says, figures of speech don’t have to change with metrication and pints of beer are a sort of figure of speech, so let’s keep that as it is but use metric for everything else!
January 5th, 2007 at 13:37
I reply to Philip S Hall I understand what you’re saying (I know all about the derogations and am also familiar with TSRGD). What you don’t say is that in some cases it is actually illegal to use metric - such as on speed/distance signs and the sale of draught beer in pubs. As for the “Quarterpounder” example I gave, BWMA also seems to have made my “mistake” in thinking this comes under Weights and Measures rather than advertising - there seems to be a very fine line between the two in most cases; ok so “Quarterpounder” is more a product name than an actual description of what I’m going to eat (which I’m not going to go into herre!), but a 21oz drink or a 12 inch pizza is a physical description of weights and measures of the product so wether this be on the price board in the shop or a newspaper/tv ad surely the same rule should be applied.
In reply to Philip Ion, although personally I’m not against colloquial names for sizes, this in itself brings up problems when the man-in-the-pub starts to complain that his 500ml “pint” of larger is actually smaller than the 568.3ml one he got last week and he’s still paying the same for it. That is one of the places that even us pro-metric folk have to agree is wrong. If the names are defined in law as being a specific size and laws are also brought in to prevent pricing issues that might be ok - but the laws are alread far too complex!
January 16th, 2007 at 09:32
If you read the web pages of the “metric martyrs” (should be called the “imperial idiots” really), they claim that the noise they made over the case of the trader in Sunderland makes it impossible for the authorities to bring any further prosecutions related to pricing and trading in non-standard imperial units. It strikes me that some other body needs to make an equal amount of noise in order to push the authorities to uphold the law. I have recently complained to Hertfordshire trading standards about traders in Bishop’s Stortford market who advertise all their produce in £/lb (sometimes with 454g pencilled in lightly). I asked one for the price of bananas the other day. 50p a lb I was told. “what’s that per Kg?” I asked - “dunno mate”. I didn’t buy them - it’s more expensive than 85p/kg in the supermarket.