The threat to Britain's imperial measures is to be lifted today after a climbdown by the European commission.
The plans to switch over to metric and abandon imperial measures became a cause celebre for Eurosceptics, unhappy about Brussels's intrusion into British life.
Since 1995, goods sold in Europe have had to display metric weights and measurements, but to appease the public outcry in the UK, imperial indications have also been allowed.
That concession to British tradition was due to expire in 2009, when imperial measures were to be finally banished from packaging and market stalls.
But now the commission has decided to abandon its attempt to force Britain to adopt the metric system.
The reprieve follows months of commission consultations with British industry, trade and consumer groups - an exercise which convinced European officials that emotions were still running high over the issue and a move to metric-only in the UK would simply provide ammunition to Eurosceptics.
Gunter Verheugen, the EU's industry commissioner, will announce that miles per hour, pints of milk, and the Troy ounce for weighing gold bullion are all here to stay.
A spokesman for the commission said that Brussels was responding to "serious confusion" among British consumers and traders and wanted to "put a full stop on this issue".
"This means that measurements such as pints and miles are in no way under threat from Brussels and never will be," she said.
One argument that helped persuade the commission to keep imperial measures was the UK government's insistence that European industry needed to sell to American markets which would not take kindly to importing products only bearing metric weights and measures.
The British weights and measures association has been fighting compulsory metric conversion for years, most publicly by supporting the so-called "metric martyrs" who lost a battle to trade only in pounds and ounces.
One of them, Steve Thoburn, who died suddenly in 2004, was convicted in 2001 of selling bananas only by the pound.
His offence was to fail to provide customers with the metric equivalent, as required under EU law.
The metric saga pre-dates the EU, beginning when the government set up the UK metrication board in 1969, four years before joining the common market. The request to look into metrication had come from industry in the mid-'60s.
Now schools routinely teach children to think of their weight in kilograms and their height in metres and centimetres, and petrol by the litre is common.
But, unlike the Irish, the British are not prepared to consider switching miles to kilometres.
Many traders and consumers might choose to celebrate the lifting of the threat with 0.57 litres of beer - better known as a pint.
