JOHN Gardner (Letters, December 22) of the British Weights and Measures Association rightly says our traditional methods of measuring allotments remain lawful despite a recent rogue suggestion that metric units must be adopted.

As Mr Gardner points out, rods, poles, perches, yards and lugs have been used for centuries to describe allotments.

Any attempt to metricate here is worse than bureaucratic interference for it reveals, as is so often the case, a failure of perception of the significance of units of measurement and their purpose.

The worst culprits in a relentless drive to force us to go metric are the BBC and the Met Office both of which operate a regime of metres, kilometres, kilograms, temperatures in centigrade and rainfall in centimetres without any authority to do this.

Such organisations like compulsory metrication exactly because it destroys landmarks.

Others, including some commercial entities, use metrication to bamboozle customers when sneakily raising prices by reducing the weight of their products.

So let’s keep imperial as our principal measurement and fight back whenever threats to its primacy are discovered, as in the case of allotments.

COLIN SMITH, Totton.