It’s tempting to ignore the government’s announcement, made in the doldrums between Christmas and the New Year, that it is to become legal to sell wine and champagne in pint bottles.

Before Brexit, there were the Metric Martyrs. / The key legal case here was a set of appeals which were decided by the High Court in 2002, in a judgment now known as Thoburn.

There are good reasons why imperial measurements, so long the favourite topic of a nostalgia-frenzy in the tabloid media, haven’t been brought back into general use. And it’s not because they are “illegal”.