>>- a trader was convicted of selling a pound of bananas >This is really open to interpretation!
No it isn't. It is simply a lie. > ...Whichever way you try to spin it the >man in question was ultimately convicted because he used lbs and oz instead >of kg and g. What you are doing is using symantics. He was not convicted for selling a pound of bananas. There is nothing illegal about a person coming into a shop and asking for a pound of bananas. There is nothing illegal about displaying the price of a pound of bananas. There is nothing illegal about the trader weighing out a pound of bananas on a dual metric/imperial machine. What is illegal is to have signs in imperial *only*, and (what he was convicted for) using a scale that is not capable of measuring using the official units of the Realm. The trader could have used lbs and oz instead of kg and g and *still* have stayed within the law (unlike your speeding example). He deliberately chose to provoke a prosecution by using an unapproved scales. Now, if the law had been framed so that he couldn't have used lbs & ozs without falling foul of it, then you'd be right - it would have been only semantics, but this is not the case. What he was claiming to be trying to do was perfectly legal and *not* what he was conviced of. As for the issue of choice, it's a complete red herring. He could have given his customers the choice of imperial or metric if that's what he wanted. He could have selected "metric" on his scale when a customer asked for 500 g, and "imperial" when they asked for 1/2 a pound. he could have displayed signs in both metric and imperial (of equal prominence). He could have accepted orders in either units if he wanted to. Instead, he continued to use an imperial-only scale which was not approved, thus reducing the choice offered to customers rather than providing it. This was done to deliberately provoke a prosecution so that people like the BWMA could propagage the lie that he was "prosecuted for selling a pound of bananas", and provide valuable if totally dishonest publicity. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Tom Wade | EMail: tee dot wade at eurokom dot ie EuroKom | Tel: +353 (1) 296-9696 A2, Nutgrove Office Park | Fax: +353 (1) 296-9697 Rathfarnham | Disclaimer: This is not a disclaimer Dublin 14 | Tip: "Friends don't let friends do Unix !" Ireland
