GIVE those Brussels bureaucrats an inch and they will take 0.9144 of a metre. That sums up the British attitude to the imposition of metric weights and measures on our nation of shopkeepers.

Since the beginning of the year Euro law has insisted that we think metric. But old habits die hard: pounds and ounces have been around for centuries. We have little choice but to comply, however. Traders who flout the law to appease confused customers face stiff penalties.

That was before Tesco's intervention today. Britain's biggest supermarket has announced it is converting back to pounds and ounces, whatever the law says.

Now we will see who really controls our retail sector. Tesco has the financial might to absorb the costs of any legal challenge. What the big supermarket chains want, they usually get. They forced the Government's hand over Sunday trading by illegally opening all hours, to the delight of shoppers.

On the weights and measures issue, too, Tesco knows it has customer support. Most shoppers will back the cause to the hilt.

We are still wedded to the imperial system, more than 100 years after Britain first recognised metric weights, because there has never been a clear-cut transition. Unlike the change from old to new money, we have not been compelled to accept kilos and grams.

Tesco's switch back to imperial ensures we never will. To the relief of many - although not the younger generation schooled in metric measures - imperial weights look set to be saved.

The law allows traders to display imperial measures for the next ten years, so long as they are in smaller print than their metric equivalents.

A sensible way forward would be to scrap that time limit and allow each measure equal prominence. Then shoppers could choose to buy food in either imperial or metric. Anyone with half an ounce (or 14.175 grams) of common sense would approve this compromise.