The European Commission decision to allow imperial weights to appear alongside metric measures for sales of meat, fish, fruit and vegetables in perpetuity marks the end of a saga.
The UK Metric Association's view of the latest development is that a dual system is "a costly muddle" - but consumers can manage. They have until now.
Events leading up to the implementation of the Units of Measurement Directive in December 1979 constituted a far more expensive muddle.
As D-day approached, the Department of Trade & Industry produced a wall chart for retailers to display with tables showing conversions from metric to imperial prices, which must have convinced the 'metri-sceptics', to coin a word, of the validity of their opposition - particularly if mental maths while contemplating a pork chop was not their strong point.
Meanwhile, the Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC) issued five pages of A4 to inform the meat industry of its responsibilities. Not an easy task, as it acknowledged by its reference to 'a rather peculiar provision' for weighing machines to give prices in metric units but allowing a supplementary imperial provision on the same machine.
The only advice the MLC could offer was that it was "not easy to envisage how this will work in practice". The MLC ended by saying that it could not cover every possible situation and reference to the legislation might be necessary to work out how to apply the rules. Who could blame it for reneging on this when the UK implementation of the Units of Measurement Directive was spread across six statutory instruments?
To add insult to injury, there was a delay in laying the proposals before parliament as the government was reluctant to sign away imperial measures just before the European Parliamentary elections.
This was not well received by suppliers who had already bought new equipment and had reached agreement for a changeover date with retailers and equipment manufacturers. This had to be re-negotiated to avoid the October - December peak trading period, thereby creating an even greater delay.
Nothing changes.
Director General