By Chris Davies, Liberal Democrat MEP for the North-west

I REMEMBER farthings (just!). And I remember sixpences, threepenny bits, half crowns, and shillings, and, of course, all those clunky old pennies.

But when I mention this fund of experience to my 10-year-old daughter she looks at me pityingly as though I came out of the Ark.

She has grown up being taught at school in metric measurements. She knows nothing other than decimal coins, having used pounds and pennies here, and euros and cents on visits to Belgium and France over the last two months.

There aren't many young people now who can tell you that there are 16 ounces to a pound, 14 pounds to a stone, and eight stone to a hundredweight. The ridiculous measurements which were so familiar when I grew up have simply no relevance to them.

So perhaps it's not surprising that very little attention was paid to the so-called "Metric Martyrs" when their case was thrown out by the High Court a few weeks ago.

British law now says that while pounds and ounces can still be used, metric weights shall take priority. Parliament first called for metric measurements more than 100 years ago, and the last Conservative government took advantage of new European rules to get their way. There wasn't a proper debate when the measure was introduced, but that's typical of the way our House of Commons works.

No one wants to see time and money used in prosecuting people for minor matters, but my local greengrocer invested in a new set of metric scales a good while ago and doesn't see why others should not obey the rules too.

We shall all carry on using pounds as a simple expression when buying loose vegetables. The word is used on the other side of the Channel too. But the details of pounds and ounces have nothing to do with my daughter's generation. It's time to move on.

Now let me upset all the eurosceptics by saying that Britain and others should abandon their right to a veto over key areas of EU policy. And if this means that we surrender more of our so-called "sovereignty" -- then so be it.

Britain was late to join the old EEC, and when we did we had to sign up to the existing Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy. The former pays huge subsidies for growing food which shouldn't need subsidising, and the latter is doing far too little to prevent overfishing and the complete destruction of fish stocks.

Both policies need fundamental reform, and many of our EU partners agree with Britain in wanting just that. But those countries which benefit most want to protect their interests, and any one of them can use their veto to prevent the majority achieving real change.

The question for eurosceptics is this. Do you want to change these policies, or do you want every nation to keep its right to a veto? You can't have both!