Hackney market greengrocer Colin Hunt is due to appear before Thames Magistrates Court on June 20th, 2001 for selling plantain and cassava by the pound (source: Evening Standard June 12th, 2001).
Trader Colin Hunt was today found guilty at Thames Magistrates court of using pounds and ounces after trading standards officers visited his Ridley Road market stall, Hackney, in September 2000. Mr Hunt told the press, "I'm doing this for the customers. My mum would have been proud of me". Mr Hunt was ordered to pay £4,000 costs.
The following is from Christopher Booker's column in the June 24th edition of the Sunday Telegraph:
ONE can only marvel at the sense of priorities of Hackney council in east London, all but broke and with the worst educational record in Britain. Last September, the council sent undercover trading standards officials to buy plantains and cassava at Colin Hunt's stall in Ridley Road market, because these were not priced in kilograms.
As a result, Hackney was last Wednesday able to celebrate its successful prosecution of Mr Hunt in Bow magistrates' court on nine criminal charges, brought under price-marking regulations brought in under Brussels metrication directives.
Mr Hunt's stall, one of 200 in the market, was set up by his mother in 1940 at the height of the Blitz, although his customers these days are mainly West Indian. When Mrs Hunt died last year, aged 82, after 60 years on the stall, she was given a full East End horse-and-carriage funeral, with 30 Rastafarians prominent among a vast crowd of mourners.
Just before Christmas in 1999 the Ridley Road market traders received a letter from Hackney council telling them that from January 1 they would have to sell their wares exclusively in metric. As Mr Hunt puts it: "It was not like when we switched to decimal 30 years ago, and were showered with advice and conversion charts. We had no help from the council at all, just the letter."
The traders dutifully complied, spending between them tens of thousands of pounds on metric scales which can cost up to £600 each. Like a number of other traders, Mr Hunt needed four sets. But the changeover threw the West Indians, Asians and Turks who mainly frequent the market into confusion. Within weeks the traders had to switch back from pricing in kilograms because, as Mr Hunt puts it: "None of our customers had a clue what they were."
In September Mr Hunt's stall was singled out as a test case for offering plantains, a banana-like Caribbean vegetable, at "39p a lb". There were additional charges because when the officials posing as members of the public asked for vegetables in kilos from two young assistants, including a 17-year-old girl, supposedly educated solely in metric, they became confused by the conversion, and overcharged by a few pence. No customer had ever asked for goods in metric before.
Last week, when Mr Hunt was represented in court by Michael Shrimpton, who defended the Sunderland greengrocer Steve Thoburn, the district judge Alan Baldwin seemed wholly unconcerned by his explanation of why he had switched back to pounds for the benefit of his customers.
He found the accused criminally guilty on all counts, giving him a conditional discharge, and gave him 21 days to pay the council's costs of £4,638.48p, far more than Mr Hunt has in the bank and representing several months' profit on the stall. Mr Hunt later observed: "I never thought it would cost £4,000 just to take a few pictures of a pound of bananas. It's beyond me."
Fortunately for Mr Hunt, Neil Herron, the Sunderland trader who has acted as Steve Thoburn's chief ally, was also in the courtroom. He was able to pay the £546 costs Mr Hunt owed legal aid for his own defence. Mr Herron dedicates his time to running the "Metric Martyr Defence Fund", now organised as a nationwide campaign to take under its wing the growing number of traders falling foul of the unpopular metrication laws.
Mr Hunt's case will be joined to those of Thoburn and others, due to go before the Court of Appeal this autumn. Only recently has a text of Judge Morgan's judgment in the Thoburn case on April 9 at last become publicly available, and lawyers are confident that his uncompromising stance, emphasising that European Community law now takes precedence over the wishes of Parliament, leaves abundant scope for legal challenge.
Contributions are still being welcomed via the campaign's website (www.metricmartyrs.com) or by cheque to Metric Martyrs Defence Fund, PO Box 526 Sunderland SR1 3YS. But the real question, reinforced by the Hunt case, is whether it is fair, on an issue of such national importance, that a group of small traders supported only by public donations should have to risk taking on the ranks of officialdom, free to call for their own legal expenses on limitless funds from the taxpayers.
Today's Daily Mail (26/6/01) contained a feature demonstrating Hackney Council's double standards: while it on one hand prosecutes traders for using lb/oz, it meanwhile breaks the law by installing illegal metric road signs.
Perhaps Ruby was trying to suggest Mr. Hunt had riped someone off? I would have thought the metrification of our weights and measures is the rip off and not Mr. Hunt
"It was a rough conversion - I am not very familiar with lbs."
Never been on a diet?
And ****PLEASE**** don't say that you've consistently weighed yourself in grammes as we know you're not a metric-loon, and as such will fall in with the norm!
No never been on a diet, and very rarely weigh myself. When I do I look at kilo's and stones. I have never weighed myself accurately enough to require any more than fractions of a stone - and if I ever did go on a diet or wanted to monitor my weight accurately, I would use kilo's.
"and if I ever did go on a diet or wanted to monitor my weight accurately, I would use kilo's"
You will, of course, realise that any diet in the UK will use lb's. Whether it be from the TV, in the newspapers, in books or from the docs.
To have some form of belief that you'd cut yourself off from the dieting community just for the burning desire to say 'kilo' is rather a bizzare prospect.
Here's a question you don't have to answer - do you have a lady in your life? If the answer is no then that goes at least a millimetre toward your notion being slightly believable. But I still doubt it!
I appreciate that most people talk in imperial when it comes to dieting, but many people weigh themselves in metric in gyms etc these days.
If I was to go on a diet, why would it matter if I used kilo's anyway? All I would be doing is recording my weight, and monitoring how much it goes down. I really can't imagine any real problems!
"If I was to go on a diet, why would it matter if I used kilo's anyway? All I would be doing is recording my weight, and monitoring how much it goes down. I really can't imagine any real problems! "
The community has a feel for LBs in weight management. Go into a room and say "I've lost 4 lbs in 4 days" and compare the reaction to "I've lost 2 kg in 4 days". Dare you!
"<<<do you have a lady in your life?>>>
a metric one! (not from the UK)"