Some of you may have read the 'Mail on Sunday' report three days ago of the fishmonger in Codicote, Hertfordshire, selling wet fish by the pound and defying Trading Standards Officers by reorganising his 'shop' as a members' club. On the BBC1 Regional news programme for London and the South East tonight, this was the lead item.

For interest, this was the leaflet put out by ARM just over two years ago on the subject:

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“It’s a Club, not a Shop”
One man’s way of carrying on selling in pounds and ounces

In a Home Counties wet fish shop, a family carries on the tradition of selling fish in pounds and ounces - a natural, human system of weights, not a recently-invented artificial one. They carry on another vital British tradition - intelligently resisting foreign powers. They changed their wet fish shop into a wet fish club. We’ll call the shop ‘Quayside Fishmongers’, though that’s not it’s real name. The family do not seek publicity. The family changed to metric scales when the new rules came in but found customers much preferred to buy in pounds and ounces. They got the idea from the Matalan retail outlet (now with 9 million members) which also has a membership scheme.

How the scheme works

On the left-hand side of the shop is a notice: “Fish sold only to members of Quayside Imperial Club”. The family will only sell fish to their club members. The shop has hundreds of loyal customers, and already has over 600 members. On boards outside and inside the shop are the prices of an impressive range of wet fish, all given exclusively in pounds, i.e. no prices in kilograms just to confuse you.

How do you join the Quayside Imperial Club?

If you want to buy fish and are not a member, you put your membership fee of 1p. in a charity box on the windowsill. You then become a member by writing your name and address in a book, numbered from 000 to 999. You enter your details against the same number as the last three digits of your telephone number (so no-one forgets their membership number!). It does mean that a few people share the same membership number, but that’s a practical point of no importance. Having duly entered your name and address in the book, you are then free to buy some of the best wet fish on sale in the British Isles.

What about customers who don’t want to join the Quayside Imperial Club?

There have been two so far. Both have now joined the club since they can’t find an alternative supply of good wet fish in the area.

What do the Trading Standards Department make of the scheme?

They visited the shop a few months ago and were clearly bemused when the family said: “It’s a Club not a Shop”. The Council concerned has a ‘softly, softly’ approach to ‘Imperial traders’ and have not yet prosecuted anyone.

Is this really legal?

The family has taken advice about their club and they are satisfied that the law does indeed allow them to supply wet fish to a members’ club. The advice also suggests that virtually any product could be ‘sold’ to ‘customers’ who are a members of a club. It’s a way of selling in pounds and ounces that’s been running successfully since 1 January 2000, when the government tried to make selling in pound and ounces illegal. That’s an impressive 937 days on the date of publication of this leaflet.

FURTHER INFORMATION: This leaflet is published by Active Resistance to Metrication, 66 Chippingfield, HARLOW, Essex, CM17 0DJ Tel: 01279 635789 (ask for Tony Bennett). We’ll give the ’phone number of family only to people making genuine enquiries about operating similar schemes

Printed & Published by Active Resistance to Metrication (ARM)
26 July 2002

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P.S. Today is Day No. 1,705 since the Labour Government, using a Conservative Regulation, tried to make it illegal to weigh and sell in pounds and ounces. The shop's open for 56 hours a week, so that's 818,400 minutes of successful defiance of the E.U. plus its Labour and Conservative supporters - and 9.5 hours' trading tomorrow will make that another 570 minutes

Tone

Surely you meant "9 1/2" or "nine and a half"

Decimals from the arch-imperialist!!!!!

(lol)

Won't bother cut'n'pasting my reply to your very similar post of September 1 2004 at 10:12 PM to a second thread. Why split this topic into two?

As a request, could we please keep all discussion of this interesting technicality on one thread - I don't care which one we use, but will be annoying to have to skip between the 2 threads for something that may be an interesting debate....

re (Beranger): "Surely you meant '9 1/2' or 'nine and a half'. Decimals from the arch-imperialist!!!!!"

REPLY: I don't like the look of 1/2; it doesn't look like a proper 'half' so I avoid using 1/2 unless the computer allows it to look like a proper fraction.

I think '98.4' Degrees Fahrenheit was acceptable to most people, rather than saying 98 and two fifths. Mind you, when we went over to Celsius, they upgraded it to 98.6. Was that so we ended up with a neat Celcius blood heat temperatute of 37 degrees, rathr than 36.9?

I used a thermometer to bunk off school now and then. My temperature would be normal, but I'd 'shake' the thermometer 'up' rather than 'down' so it came to something worrying like 100.5 or 101. My mother never noticed the 'gap' at the bottom of the mercury and I successfully avoided a number of history lessons when I hadn't done my homework that way. I can't remember much about the European history we did apart from the Diet of Worms. Maybe that's how I started thinking they were a funny lot over on the Continent

I like to fractionalise or decimalise imperial measures, that's the beauty of imperial - flexibility

(and yes, I'm taking the **** out of someone)

Tony

Agree re the 1/2 looking wrong. I seem to remember old typewriters having those keys....

Wish I hadn't made the joke now. Your reference to 98.4 in your response seems to have woken up Xcole!

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What do the Trading Standards Department make of the scheme?

They visited the shop a few months ago and were clearly bemused when the family said: “It’s a Club not a Shop”. The Council concerned has a ‘softly, softly’ approach to ‘Imperial traders’ and have not yet prosecuted anyone.
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No wonder then that this scam wasn't challenged.

Scams involve people suffering in some way or another