I don't know about that.the lynx wrote:I have nothing to contribute anyway.
Howzabout considering this - 'Should wet-market stall holders be legally obliged to mark their products in four languages'?
I don't know about that.the lynx wrote:I have nothing to contribute anyway.
Blimey! In UK? English, Arabic, Hindi, what's the fourth one? Chinese?JR8 wrote:I don't know about that.the lynx wrote:I have nothing to contribute anyway.
Howzabout considering this - 'Should wet-market stall holders be legally obliged to mark their products in four languages'?
No, that's not how it works. When you open a shop, you have a very few rules to follow. As one example, if an Asian customer walks into your store (or stops by your stall), you must serve that customer without discrimination.JR8 wrote:The trader is free to trade with whomever he wants, he's not obliged 'to be polite' nor obliged to sell anything if he chooses not to.
JR8 wrote:Ah but a street-market's 'trade area' might be a 1/2 mile radius (miles, there I go again, I better add that that's 805 Metres, just in case some clipboard wielding apparatchik from the council decides to prosecute mex9200 wrote:To have a common unit system over a common trade area is just logical and pragmatic, even a must if there is a freedom of movement and residence involved. Of course, if an individual country wants still to use their own system, it should be allowed, but the other, common system should be used in parallel.). The traders have chosen a system that works for them, and works for their customers. They're not looking to export into the EU. It's about as silly as suggesting the signs on their products should be labelled in every EU language. Perhaps the stall-holders would legally have to speak every EU language just in case a foreigner shows up. Perhaps they should be forced to accept Euros too, so as not to alienate any of our friends from the continent who wonder down that way.
Is it really a big problem for the majority? There is always some damage for anything done on a more massive scale. Those cases you quoted, is their number really significant or they are just audible, isolated cases used by the populist? You know, this kind of rhetorics can be used with practically any change but for most people, having a common system within any type of the union is nothing but natural.The problem is that EU laws like this are a blanket requirement. They apply to street traders in the same way they apply to MNCs. The later have the pricing-power to pass the added costs on to their customers. Just having to buy a new/metric set of scales would made a large hole in most street-traders returns.x9200 wrote:It is sort of like one would like to visit France but the French would only accept your passport if it was in French, in China in Chinese and in Hungary in Hungarian. Fortunately, the passports follow some common standards and use multiple languages for marking/labelling. An unification is needed for any unions involving 2 or more parties so hard to blame EU for this one.
True it's a blanketed requirement, but there are typically grace periods and I feel you exaggerating a bit with this large hole. Please, tell me some number and again, what fraction of the traders is really affected?
Blimey! In UK? English, Arabic, Hindi, what's the fourth one? Chinese?[/quote]the lynx wrote:Howzabout considering this - 'Should wet-market stall holders be legally obliged to mark their products in four languages'?
No, that's incorrect. A vendor is not obliged to sell a product if he chooses not too. Displaying products for sale is an invitation to negotiate a binding contract for sale, in legal terminology an 'invitation to treat', it does not guarantee that a sale will or must occur at the indicated price.BBCWatcher wrote:No, that's not how it works. When you open a shop, you have a very few rules to follow. As one example, if an Asian customer walks into your store (or stops by your stall), you must serve that customer without discrimination.JR8 wrote:The trader is free to trade with whomever he wants, he's not obliged 'to be polite' nor obliged to sell anything if he chooses not to.
Those market traders work on thin-margins, that's why their stalls are so popular, they're much cheaper than going to supermarkets. How much do commercial-grade scales cost, ones good enough to be licensed as fit by the local council Trading Standards dept, no idea, but I bet they aren't cheap. Either way it was enough to motivate the Metric Martyrs to take their case all the way to court in Europe. They didn't do that because they were only slightly upset or inconveniencedx9200 wrote:True it's a blanketed requirement, but there are typically grace periods and I feel you exaggerating a bit with this large hole. Please, tell me some number and again, what fraction of the traders is really affected?
Let's assume for sake of argument that commercial grade scales aren't cheap.JR8 wrote:How much do commercial-grade scales cost, ones good enough to be licensed as fit by the local council Trading Standards dept, no idea, but I bet they aren't cheap.
Slap a sticker on the dial, and presto! It's metric. Slap another sticker on the dial and presto! It's Martian. I've got no problem with an agency wanting accurate scales. The whole reason we have to do this is because of the f*cks who cheat.JR8 wrote:How much do commercial-grade scales cost, ones good enough to be licensed as fit by the local council Trading Standards dept, no idea, but I bet they aren't cheap.
If only the growth was some absolute measure of the economy strength.JR8 wrote:The same is true of many other areas. We may be bad – including our poor schools and infrastructure – but others are, across the whole economy, worse than us. That is why, for example, the Italian economy has shrunk by 1pc since 2000, while the UK (and US) economies have both grown by 30pc. Germany is up by 18pc in that time, as is France.
Yet most people in the UK still probably believe that the German economy is stronger than ours
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