A RATHER silly debate is due to dominate the headlines next week. Should a Sunderland grocer be fined thousands of pounds and imprisoned for months for selling a pound of bananas?

Of course he shouldn't. This is metric madness.

As William Hague says, British people should be able to buy their groceries in whichever weight they feel the most comfortable with.

But it is a silly debate because in this age of computerised scales - or even just cheap solar-powered calculators - it is no trouble to convert from imperial to metric. Even the building trade has accepted as much: no matter how many yards of skirting board you ask for, they will saw you off the metric equivalent.

It is also a generational debate. The under 30s will be as mystified by pounds and ounces as the over 50s are by grams and kilograms. Therefore, both groups should be catered for as they go about their shopping.

It is probably safest to follow the lead set by people aged between 30 and 50 who were brought up using both and so settled on neither.

They don't bother with grams or ounces. They ask for seven bananas because there are seven days in a week and they know that four pork chops will feed all four people at the table.

And how many people know how many litres (or gallons) of petrol their car takes? All they know is that if it costs more than thirty quid to fill it up, the Chancellor must have put the tax up again.

So it is a silly argument.

The traders should be helping all their customers; the justice system should be concentrating on catching criminals; the politicians should be concentrating on why it isn't catching criminals, and Europe should be content that we can work in metric when dealing with the single market.

It should be a case of live and let live - or vive la difference, as they say elsewhere.