Well I’m not sure about the validity of the ‘transaction costs’ argument, but your mention of Ester Boserup does point to one good defence of red tape I hadn’t thought of: giving entrepreneurs a little adversity to overcome may make them more imaginative and creative in their needs to get round it (creative accounting and all that). Whether this argument is relevant or not I have no idea, as I doubt anyone has actually carried out a study to look explicitly at this (ie how much innovative change has been produced by the need to get round some stupid rule or other, although in some senses the whole online music file swapping phenomenon could be seen as an attempt to get round a rigid copyright law and an oligopolistic - but transactionally simple - cd pricing policy by the music majors, so there would be material).

Depending on what they did, they would have to explain why they took what action they did (eg if this directly contravened single market rules) and to show it was proportional.

The problem, as an early comment pointed out, may relate to the question of accurate labelling of eggs, given that in principle these might go anywhere in the EU.

- Measures varied by region (a London pound was different from a Newcastle pound)
- Measures varied by object measured (a gallon of beer was different from a gallon of wine)
- Measures varied by trade or context (the nautical mile was different from the geographical mile)
- Measures varied by the origin of the measure (Britain used at least three different sets of measures: avoirdupois, troy and apothecary)
- Measures changed over time (The pint of 1850 was different from the pint of 1800)

It’s obvious the British central government once again shoved standardisation down people’s throat, another proof of their “recurring mania for harmonisation and because some MP and their staff evidently had too little work to do to justify their status and pay”.

Having a gallon of beer different from a gallon of wine was such a brilliant idea I cannot understand why that was scrapped.

“What I think does most to arouse anti-government sentiments in Britain is a continuing impression of an obsessive intent to harmonise matters throughout the country”. I’m sure people from Newcastle still yearn for their old own pound
“Bring it back, London won’t tell us what to do!”

I mean, just have a look at this:

12 lines = 1 inch
12 inches = 1 foot
3 feet = 1 yard
1760 yards = 1 mile

16 dram = 1 oz
16 oz = 1 lb
14 lb = 1 st

20 fl.oz = 1 pint
8 pints = 1 gallon

It’s just a joke. How can you defend such an archaic and haphazard system? Who’s able to mentally convert miles to yards? or square inches to pints? The beauty of the metric system is that all the fundamental units are defined rationally and are related to each other in a rational fashion, ie the liter is the volume of one cubic decimeter, the kilogram the weight of a liter of pure water, etc.

Blaming the death of the imperial measurements on the EU is easy but the system would have vanished sooner or later even without the EU. British people should on the contrary be thankful for the EU to be once again a handy scapegoat.

With our long history and continuously evolving constitution, how do they expect us to take them seriously?

Well certainly if you’re talking about ECB interest rate policy here they haven’t, the various national economies still continue to be decidedly ‘unruly’ :).

Most folks here have little problem dealing concurrently with linear measurements in both miles and metres, perhaps because metres are almost the same length as our historic yards, which go back to the extent of the arm of Henry I in 1101, a tad before France imposed metrication, the Code Napoleon and right-hand drive on the roads as part of the Continental System for Europe.

Things would likely have taken the same modernisation route here too but Napoleon’s invasion plans didn’t work out, mostly because the battles of Trafalgar (1805) and Waterloo (1815) went the wrong way. This year, we are celebrating the bicentenary of Trafalgar and when I last looked, Nelson’s column was still in Trafalgar Square in London and we’ve not yet renamed Waterloo Station or taken down the Wellington memorial in Hyde Park either. As best I can tell, their respective tombs, buried deep in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral, remain undisturbed. For the rest, many of us already know that 1 Km = (5/8) miles.

Shoes and shirts retail in both British and continental sizes. Having just got a somewhat aged PC at home to play DVD videos - since I’ve no other DVD player - I’ve recently been watching with much delight the video of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, based on Tolkein’s books, and was greatly reassured to note that feet and inches still prevail in the Shire, where the esteemed Hobbits dwell, as also with Americans and in other remote civilisations with antediluvian practices of mensuration. Doubtless, as EU metrication imperatives bind deeply, even Hobbits will have to abandon ancient rights and practices and the videos will all have to be officially pulped for promoting atavistic practices. Meanwhile, Frodo lives on. The EU Commission hasn’t yet gained possession of the one ring to rule them all.

Well, what was it the King of Rock’n Roll said: only fools fall in love. More fool me then. I am a dreamer, I own up to it, and I think using a Darwinian argument, if some of us don’t specialise in it then collectively we’re doomed. But… one more time I’m in the middle, pleasing it seems neither one side nor the other.

Stupid regulations being enforced willy-nilly is what the EU does. You either celebrate it, because they deal with externalities however heavy-handedly, or reject it, but hoping for a better and brighter EU where subsidiarity is taken seriously is a fool’s dream.