Three fruit and vegetable market traders are among five 'metric martyrs' who have lost their fight to sell in pounds and ounces. Steve Thoburn, Julian Harman and Colin Hunt were all ordered by the High Court to pay court costs after failing to comply with European metrication directives that made it an offence to weigh and sell goods imperial measures from 2000.

But Sunderland-based Thoburn was defiant after the ruling, vowing to sell what, and how, his customers wanted. Thoburn was charged with selling a pound of bananas, instead of using metric measurements.