BWMA makes the above assertion on another thread.

They also use misleading headlines like "Trading Standards Officer attacks weighing machine" to illustrate an article which includes the paragraph "a trading standards official of Torbay council, on entering Dennis Webb's fruit shop, produced a hammer and punch. He then used these to strike Mr Webb's lb/oz weighing machine with the result that they stopped working."

I think that both BWMA and myself know what was going on here (the words "obliteration of stamps" spring to mind). The article in question, however, seems to imply an attempt to destroy the scales. In reality, the TSO was following the advice given in the Enforcement Concordat. BWMA find no fault in the Lacors advice on this point.

Traditionally, TSO's in the UK have always used hammers and stamps to verify, reverify & disqualify weighing machines. The only exception is the use of stickers on weighing machines tested to EC regulations.

Do BWMA now advise that TSO's should use UK stamps or should they now use EC stickers in future?

Personally I believe that TSO's should close down filthy restaraunts, ban far-east toys with concealed dangerous spikes and stop pirate DVD's from being sold rather than ban weighing equipments for having these two words on them:

lb

oz

But that's just me - and not the view that you are after from the BWMA.

I hope you understand that I did need to make a point, realising that its a real bizzare situation where TSO's are told to render scales useless because it uses language that the majority of customers ask for their produce in.

And I re-affirm my other point - considering more than 80% prefer to use imperial I find it hard to believe that only 20% of the population send their CV's to jobs advertising a TSO role.
Thus - many TSO's must be pretty fed up and even demoralised for taking out these bizzare actions against the family butcher, grocer, etc. I'm sure they'd rather catch real criminals rather than the EU-thought crime folk.