Post by alancalverd on Oct 28, 2012 9:30:53 GMT 1
Welcome back to GMT - or UTC if you want to be scientifically and politically correct - and a pleasant dawn.
And of course if you live in the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Iceland, or various bits of Africa.
If you live in western Spain it's still dark but your clock reads the same time as Warsaw, where the sun is almost overhead, and the local time is one hour after GMT. At least it would if you had remembered to reset it to European standard winter time. All over Europe people are missing appointments or wondering why the church doors aren't open yet.
But not everywhere! It's still summer time in most (but not all) of the USA.
And parts (but not all) of Australia set their clocks forward 3 weeks ago.
At the very least, this madness is not helpful for business. How can you participate in a truly global economy when such fundamental matters as date and time are not constant? Personally, I found it infuriating to fly between Dallas and Los Angeles with a change in Phoenix: Texas and California use summer time, but Arizona doesn't, and all flight times are quoted as "local" - landing before you take off can be just as confusing as a two-hour stopover that actually only allows you ten minutes to get to the next gate.....
The one-hour flight from Warsaw to Minsk takes 3 hours going east, or minus one hour going west. Great fun, especially if you have business in both places on the same day.
Here's my plan for sanity. Daylight saving began in London so it is incumbent on the Brits to put things right again. Let's begin by not mucking about with the clocks next Spring. If you want to get up an hour earlier, you can do so without an Act of Parliament, surely?
Then next year, persuade everyone in Europe to put their clocks back rather than forward in the Spring, so everyone in this illegitimate political union at least agrees on one thing.
Now remind everyone else that, since most of the world is covered with water, navigation depends on an agreed time base, and tides do not respect politicians (remember Canute?), when it's 0700Z anywhere, it's 0700 Zulu everywhere, so all airline, shipping and railway timetables should be in UTC only, from 2014 onwards.
By 2015, who knows, we might all be speaking the same language, at least in one very important respect!
And of course if you live in the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Iceland, or various bits of Africa.
If you live in western Spain it's still dark but your clock reads the same time as Warsaw, where the sun is almost overhead, and the local time is one hour after GMT. At least it would if you had remembered to reset it to European standard winter time. All over Europe people are missing appointments or wondering why the church doors aren't open yet.
But not everywhere! It's still summer time in most (but not all) of the USA.
And parts (but not all) of Australia set their clocks forward 3 weeks ago.
At the very least, this madness is not helpful for business. How can you participate in a truly global economy when such fundamental matters as date and time are not constant? Personally, I found it infuriating to fly between Dallas and Los Angeles with a change in Phoenix: Texas and California use summer time, but Arizona doesn't, and all flight times are quoted as "local" - landing before you take off can be just as confusing as a two-hour stopover that actually only allows you ten minutes to get to the next gate.....
The one-hour flight from Warsaw to Minsk takes 3 hours going east, or minus one hour going west. Great fun, especially if you have business in both places on the same day.
Here's my plan for sanity. Daylight saving began in London so it is incumbent on the Brits to put things right again. Let's begin by not mucking about with the clocks next Spring. If you want to get up an hour earlier, you can do so without an Act of Parliament, surely?
Then next year, persuade everyone in Europe to put their clocks back rather than forward in the Spring, so everyone in this illegitimate political union at least agrees on one thing.
Now remind everyone else that, since most of the world is covered with water, navigation depends on an agreed time base, and tides do not respect politicians (remember Canute?), when it's 0700Z anywhere, it's 0700 Zulu everywhere, so all airline, shipping and railway timetables should be in UTC only, from 2014 onwards.
By 2015, who knows, we might all be speaking the same language, at least in one very important respect!