Letter from Derek Allen, Executive Director of LACORS
which is the new name for LACOTS.

Dear Victoria

Tesco Signage

I suspect that our respective correspondence may have crossed and that you ought to by now have received a response to your earlier letter of 15 April.

I am afraid that we are not able to make a positive statement one way or the other on a specific instance such as this, as only the courts can decide such matters and I hope my letter of l4 May clarifies LACORS position on this.

LACORS remit does not extend to answering queries from members of the public, but I hope our earlier response is helpful. However this from a LACORS perspective now draws a line under the matter.

Yours sincerely,


I did phone the Mr. Allen's office and asked whether LACORS received public funds. They did not know but would enquire and phone me back. I am still waiting.
I took the opportunity to point out that I did not consider the correspondence closed and that, as I have never met Mr. Allen and nobody ever called me Victoria, I would prefer it if he called me by my surname preceded by Mrs.

November 14, 2002

Dear Mr. Allen

Thank you for your letters of May 14 and 21, 2002 regarding Tesco's illegal use of Imperial measure.

I am aware that Tesco has been prosecuted by Trading Standards. The offence, I understand was selling a cherry yogurt after its sell-by date. This, I hope you will agree, is a health and safety issue far removed from a shopkeeper selling in Imperial measure when the customer has specified Imperial measure.

Regarding your comment that you take issue with my suggestion that local authorities adopt different interpretational decisions between large and small traders, I understand Mr. Les Oxer, Principal Trading Standards Officer for Doncaster, when asked if an official complaint had been made against Tesco, stated that the authority would not be prepared to get involved in a legal dispute with someone as big as Tesco. I was not a party to this conversation but have no reason to doubt it, especially as my own conversations with small traders have confirmed that trading standards officers have been prepared to use threatening tactics to obtain compliance.

You state that LACORS remit does not extend to answering queries from the public. As LACORS is paid for out of the public purse, maybe this should be amended in the name of accountability. However, I do expect an answer to the two questions below.

I enclose a photocopy of a label taken from a pack of Sainsbury's meat. You will notice the Imperial weight comes first and is larger than the kilo weight which is offered as a supplementary indication. Can you confirm if this is legal or illegal? If it is illegal, will you give guidance to your Principal Trading Stadards Officer as to how they should proceed?

Incidentally in your letter of the 14th, you used the words "democratic process". At no time did compulsary metrication appear in any party manifesto and no supermarket or consumer group asked consumers whether they wanted compulsary metrication.

Sainsburys? Making preference for imperial?

I thought that sainsbury's were agressively pro-metric (they've been losing customers too) while tescos were the only pro-imperial ones left (who, by contrast, have gained customers)

I think I'm right in saying that sainsburys are pro-euro too, something to do with the chairman

"Sainsburys make preference for imperial".

In announcing with great fanfare that it was going to re-introduce imperial markings, Tesco managed the greatest public relations coup of all time. And it cost them hardly anything. Afterwards, on one of my rare visits to Sainsburys, I noticed that the deli counter, which previously had been all metric, had reverted to dual markings. When I enquired, the assistant said it was in response to Tesco's use of imperial weights.

As of today, there are just 2,602 days still to go before Sainsburys dual pricing - and everyone else's - becomes illegal.

That's one way of putting it!

Come now BWMA

What are you worried about?

Haven't you said in the past that laws forbidding supplementary indications are un-enforceable?

Letter sent by Mr. Derek Allen of Lacors dated 6,12,02 in reply to my letter of 14,1102.

Dear Mrs Gardner (I am no longer Victoria)

The reference to the prosecution of Tesco merely illustrates that local authorities are prepared to prosecute larger concerns. The same considerations would be applied to an alleged offence of selling goods after their use by date as they would for any other breach. Local authorities would be mindful of the various consideratins prior to enforcement action as laid down in the Attorney General's Guidelines, which include such factors as necessary and the likelihood of success. I cannot offer views upon the alleged comments of Mr. Oxer.

I cannot say whether or not the label to which you refer is legal or otherwise. Only a court of law can make such a determination. LACORS and many authorities subscribe to the view that the lesser prominence given to the metric statement may be a contravention. There are other concerns who take a wholly different view.

My earlier reference to the democratic process would include the right of any individual local authority, through its elected members, to consider the necessity to prosecute and the likelihood of a prosecution being successful.

Signed Derek Allen, Executive Director LACORS

"LACORS and many authorities subscribe to the view that the lesser prominence given to the metric statement may be a contravention"

Is it just me or does that just sound pathetic? Can you imagine them going around with a tape saying "ooh, that's half a millimetre smaller than the imperial weight" [flap flap flap]


(get ready for Meter Man with "No, you are pathetic" or something equally hilarious with no substance!)

Is it a bird? ... is it plane? ... No its METRE MAN!

Gulp.

There, I swallowed the bait Steve.

I'm here!!

Now lets see:

<<
(get ready for Meter Man with "No, you are pathetic" or something equally hilarious with no substance!)
>>

Aawe Steve, as if I would?

I shop at Tesco, you know.