from: http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59882 (and many other places)

A woman running a vegetable stand in London's West End is facing fines of up to $130,000 and the possible loss of her business because she was caught by the government selling her produce by the ounce and pound.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Janet Devers, 63, was notified of the criminal counts with a 67-page letter that arrived in the mail, outlining 13 criminal charges relating to the "improper" pricing of goods as well as the offense of selling vegetables in bowls.

"It's disgusting," she told the newspaper. "We have knifings. We have killings. And they're taking me to court because I'm selling in pounds and ounces."

That, of course, isn't allowed under a European Union-mandated rule that all its nations must use metric measures, so veggies have to be weighed in grams and kilograms.

But pounds, pints and miles are what Britishers know best, said Scott Lomax, another vegetable stall owner. "Who's to tell us to change?"

Devers has entered a plea of not guilty to the charges, and says she's confident of her case because it will be decided by a jury, which could include sympathetic shoppers, the newspaper reported.

When Britain wrote the EU-required law in 2000, it included an exemption that businesses could use imperial measures as well as metric weights, but the metric weights could not be omitted.

That, apparently, was Devers' alleged offense, because two of her scales measured only in pounds and ounces, the report said.

Her trouble began in September when officials from the local government council and police officers came and seized her scales. The newspaper said they told her they were illegal.

Later came the 67-page charges.

Alan Laing, an official with the local government that is prosecuting Devers, said it is the government's obligation to see that laws are upheld. He must make sure "traders comply with weights-and-measures legislation," he said.

But Devers wouldn't be the first to have been ticketed for such an offense. Four market-stall owners, including her brother, lost a 2002 case that was similar, the newspaper said.

They were told that there would be no further action if they didn't break the law again, but a group is campaigning for them to be pardoned, and that group now has taken up Devers' case, too.

It's all about "who governs Britain," campaigner Neil Herron told the newspaper.

Ahh, gotta keep those rogue veggie vendors in line, Al-Carrota, don'tcha know. Society would crumble into chaos, if they're not reigned in. Weapons of Mass Roughage. Now this woman has her life interrupted plus lawyer fees for this type of bull. Meanwhile, some A$$hat bureaucr@p will no-doubt include this in the statistics of "crime preventions" for the year, and get a budget increase for next year, so that he can make life miserable for more peaceable citizens. After all, they are easier targets than the violent ones. It remains to be seen if the community will get together and demand these idiots be fired and/or vote their bosses out of office.

This is why I'm always railing about intellectually lazy sheeple who bleat along with "wut eva de law say", rather than ask themselves if a particular law makes sense. We end up in slave societies where you can't take a dump without filling out zee proper paper-verk. Meanwhile, all the things you really need 'protecting' from go unchecked. England is, maybe, 10 years ahead of America in terms of this kind of garbage, and given what passes for sense over here, I see no reason to think we won't catch up to them. More citizens can name the three stooges than can name the three branches of gov't... well, when we had three.

Oh, and the reason there are "knifings" & "killings" is because you can no longer legally own a gun in England. Guess the criminals didn't heed the memo. Another fine example that disarming law-abiding people doesn't make them safer! But socialists never let your reality get in the way of their f_e_e_l_i_n_g_s. Sadly, they can always convince enough pudding-headed emo-types to let them have their way.

The 'Elites' don't get close enough to the 'commoners' to ever be in any danger.