Time's up?

[Frank]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/ne ... 321798.stm

A good argument for two time-zones in Britain?

Truth be told, I found it to be a compelling idea. I imagine it rile up all sorts of horrid nationalist victimisation sentiment (human nature)?

Reading a lovely book on time just now and again I find our attitudes to time to be quite fascinating.

[Delts]

I just think it's idiotic for England to move away from UTC during the winter. Stupidity at it's greatest. Portugal doesn't seem to suffer from being in the same time zone as us. And it would also cause massive confusion between Scotland and England (Northern Ireland and the Republic). Yes it would be easier for dealings with Europe, but the problems that it would end up causing would be absurd.

[orudge]

Oh, not this again. The UK should just stick with GMT all year round, would be much simpler. After all, that's geographically the timezone we're meant to be. France used to be in GMT too, until the Nazis invaded (at least, I think that was the case), but they moved it over to CET, where it has since stayed.

Timezones, of course, are an east-west thing, not a north-south thing. If you live further north, you're going to have less light during the winter, it's a simple fact. (And, on the flip side, we get more daylight during the summer.) We shouldn't be trying to compensate for this. If you don't like it, move further south. The whole argument that we can create "extra daylight" is rubbish.

We should also remember that "double summer time" was trialled in the 70s, and while it apparently reduced accidents in the evening rush hour, accidents in the morning rush hour - where it would often be dark until after 10am in Scotland and the north of England - were increased quite significantly. I can't be bothered finding references just now, but I think Wikipedia has various links to sources.

While we're at it, if we're going to stick with DST, perhaps North America would like to synchronise their DST times with Europe's? We now have the fun situation where there's a period of two weeks or so where we're "out of sync" with North America. Lots of potential for confusion there!

[Gubbins]

Timezones, of course, are an east-west thing, not a north-south thing. If you live further north, you're going to have less light during the winter, it's a simple fact. (And, on the flip side, we get more daylight during the summer.) We shouldn't be trying to compensate for this. If you don't like it, move further south. The whole argument that we can create "extra daylight" is rubbish.

I hate to be pedantic when you make some good points, but Scotland is actually west of England, as a whole, as well as being further north. (Furthermore, our "natural" (i.e. solar) time-zone - in St Andrews' at least - is 11 minutes behind GMT.)

I can also speak from better first-hand experience than most in saying that Portugal copes more than admirably with its out-of-sync neighbours. There's no good reason to change the status quo, though given the choice, I'd much rather stick with GMT the whole year round. It'd make my job so much easier.

[LonelyPilgrim]

For most of my life, up until 2006 I believe, my state - Indiana - did not observe Daylight Savings Time. This meant that for half the year, we were out of sync with all of our neighbours. Since I live 40 miles from the Michigan border, and both sets of my grandparents lived just the other side of the state line, you can imagine all the confusion that could ensue at planning family functions and understand why, around here, DST used to be referred to as 'Michigan Time'.

On top of that confusion, Indiana is geographically in the Central Time Zone, but due to long established political realities our fine state has observed Eastern Standard, and now Eastern Daylight, Time. Well, all except for the western counties which *have* observed Central Time, but every few years exactly which counties the line is drawn through has been changed by the state government. At the moment, it's about 20 miles west of where I live.

And so, up until a few years ago, it was possible, at certain times of the year for my home to be one hour behind Michigan and for my place of employment (at that time) to be two hours behind Michigan. Again, much of my family lived in Michigan, and so I would have to go around keeping track of three different times in order to know what time it was in areas that were never more than 50 miles apart from each other.

That long anecdote is by way of explaining my visceral hatred of time zones. Even the US military, on this side of the world, does just fine scheduling everything by GMT. I really wish everyone could do the same. At the very least, contiguous territories of small to moderate size - such as the UK - should not have a time zone split. It would simply lead to confusion and lost revenues by creating two hours a day in which it would not be possible to conduct business across the time zone demarcation. In dealing with other countries, such a reality is unavoidable, but why would the Scottish and English economies, which presumably co-exist in a very close arrangement, consent to making co-ordination more difficult and decreasing the number of hours per day during which orders can be placed and processed same day and the whole other host of business communication that requires two companies to be open and staffed concurrently for efficient operation?

[Delts]

I hate to be pedantic when you make some good points, but Scotland is actually west of England, as a whole, as well as being further north. (Furthermore, our "natural" (i.e. solar) time-zone - in St Andrews' at least - is 11 minutes behind GMT.)

Whilst some of England is East of Scotland, the West Country isn't, so I'm confused as to your point. Also, Greenwich is the most easterly point of GMT, so the vast majority of the British Isles is well within the UTC time zone. So yeah, I really don't understand your point, unless it's to propose StAMT at -0:11 GMT?

I also don't like BST. I think it's an absurd practice, especially when it lasts more than half the year, and follows the calendar rather than the actual solar cycle. The reasons for it's use seem particularly idiotic. Between supposed energy saving and extra time for leisure at night (which makes no sense since it's getting lighter anyway), the most obvious thing to do would be to just move the working day. 8-4 makes more sense if you want to maximise the daylight out with the times that you are working before and after.

[Gubbins]

I hate to be pedantic when you make some good points, but Scotland is actually west of England, as a whole, as well as being further north. (Furthermore, our "natural" (i.e. solar) time-zone - in St Andrews' at least - is 11 minutes behind GMT.)

Whilst some of England is East of Scotland, the West Country isn't, so I'm confused as to your point. Also, Greenwich is the most easterly point of GMT, so the vast majority of the British Isles is well within the UTC time zone. So yeah, I really don't understand your point, unless it's to propose StAMT at -0:11 GMT?

I was referring to Orudge's comment about time zones not being a N-S thing, but an E-W thing. This is true, but given the median point of Scotland is several minutes (of time) west of the median point of England (with or without Wales). That extra few minutes - while it isn't a whole hour - makes a difference to how things work.

My other point was that time zones are arbitrary anyway. If you want to tie in the time to what is "natural" then you should look at when the Sun crosses the meridian. The UK lies (on solar time) between GMT-33 minutes and GMT+7 minutes. Greenwich is the centre of GMT, and that was only chosen for a variety of historical quirks. If you want to look at what is more natural for the country as a whole, then we should be thinking of *subtracting* time from GMT, not *adding* it on to join central European time. The trouble is, there's more politics than what's "natural" coming into play.

(I pay also have posted my last message while drunk... oops! )

[What?]

Is it wrong that I'm excited to watch the time change on my computer as if by magic in 65 seconds?

[RedCelt69]

I don't own a watch. Now I'm confused... have my computers automatically switched to GMT or are they still on BST? I have no point of reference.

Aha! Thanks, www.timeanddate.com