By Catriona Forrest BBC Scotland news website

Wholesalers usually work with metric weights and measures

The effect on everyday life comes down to how you think.

Do you think of your height in feet and inches, or in metres and centimetres?

Would you ask the butchers for two pounds of mince?

Or are you with the many who use metric or imperial measures as it suits you?

It had been proposed to make it a criminal offence for traders to use anything other than metric measurements from 2010, but after years of pressure the European Commission decided not to force Britain's retailers to "go metric".

Old fashioned

Like many Scottish sweetie shops and caf�s, the Brooklyn Caf� on the south side of Glasgow still serves its sweets the old fashioned way, weighed out carefully from large colourful jars.

Customers watch their 113g or 'quarter' of Kola Kubes or Soor Plooms being poured into a traditional white bag.

People tend to still want to buy their sweets in quarters Mark Becci Caf� manager

Mark Becci, the Brooklyn Caf�'s manager, said customers were by-and-large unaware of changes in legislation: "People tend to still want to buy their sweets in quarters as it's the most recognisable denomination.

"Some customers tend to be quite lost as to what weight they should be asking for. They tend to wait and let us take the lead."

Mr Becci said that retailers had not been worrying about the impending EU ruling because most of the expense of the change would have been borne by manufacturers in the form of re-packaging.

There have been cases of "metric martyrs" refusing to make the switch to metric measures, but Mr Becci said that if it had come to legislation he would have followed any new ruling.

"I'm no maverick sweet-seller," he added.

Local greengrocers had a similar tale to tell, with the announcement of the EU back-down barely registering on busy shopkeepers' and customers' radars.

We would have had to explain the metric system to every customer Ali Haider Greengrocer

Ali Haider, owner of the specialist greengrocer and florist Stalks and Stems, said that he was pleased with the decision because the metric system was less popular with his customers.

He said: "We choose to put both metric and imperial pricing on our labels as it saves us time. Otherwise we would have to explain the metric system to every customer and in a busy shop we just don't have time.

"At first glance, the prices per kilo can look expensive to a customer in comparison to the imperial figures. We choose to display both to avoid confusion."

Generation gap

Stalks and Stems employee Aneala Qaisar said that she believed the metric system would eventually prevail, not so much due to the aging of the empirically-minded generation, but because the younger generation cared less about the details of their spending.

Had the ruling gone through, Stalks and Stems would have had to display their prices solely in grams and kilograms.

Metrically priced goods could appear less attractive to shoppers

But for Mr Haider the greatest outlay to accommodate metric sales had already been made in 2001.

He said: "At that time we were forced to install metric weighing scales and tills, which was very expensive for small shops.

"We make up new labels every day and it costs us no more to put both prices on them."

Scottish local shopkeepers and their customers seem to have been unworried about the impending change in legislation, with retailers taking a pragmatic approach in allowing customers to use whichever unit of measure they are comfortable with.