On Wednesday 21 February 2001 BBC 1 TV broadcast an otherwise excellent appraisal of the EU Food Wars but it included some disgraceful lies about compulsory metrication. Mr Vivian Linacre, director of the British Weights & Measures Association said, "The item on metrication was a shocking distortion of the facts in an attempt to fool an ever more sceptical public about what is really happening."

It was claimed that Britain decided to go metric even before we joined the Common Market. The vital omission here was that it was always intended to be VOLUNTARY. Successive prime ministers emphasised this from Wilson, Heath, Callaghan to Thatcher.

Neil Kinnock claimed that a consensus decision was made in 1965 to go fully metric. But this was to be VOLUNTARY. The 1975 White Paper said there would never be an 'M' Day. In 1985 parliament passed the Weights & Measures Act that gave equal legal status to both metric and imperial measures.

James Humble, the ex-director of the ex-Metrication Board did not mention that Margaret Thatcher abolished his Board. He claimed that Brussels' bullying was "nothing further from the truth". This is simply a lie. EC directive 89/61EEC ruled by QMV that metrication was to be COMPULSORY.

James Humble said failing to go metric "blunted our competitive edge." This is dissimulation of the worst type. Martin Bangemann, the EC commissioner who resigned in disgrace, said in 1996 to the BWMA, "Britain is in an anomalous position, as a full partner in the EU but sharing a common system of weights & measures with the USA, thereby enjoying an unfair competitive advantage in transatlantic trade." (The USA is our largest trading partner). It was precisely for the purpose of damaging our international trade that the imperial system was criminalised!

So, presenter Adrian Chiles' summing up that compulsory metrication "was not Brussels' fault" is a prime example of a BBC Whopper, a full blown quarter pounder with cheese!"

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