Tuesday, January 30

Fog over Channel, continent isolated

Ever wondered why Britain is in a different timezone to other parts of Western Europe. Well clearly so do some representatives of the British public. Tim Yeo has introduced a bill (follow its progress here) to the House of Commons to align the UK with mainland Europe in matters of the clock.

This is not the way it is being sold of course. The following is Yeo's attempt to describe the situation that would pertain following the change:

"This means that in the summer the time would be British Summer Time + 1 hour and in the winter it would be Greenwich Mean Time + 1 hour."

Would it not be easier just to call it Central European Time?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why should it matter to anybody else if Britain is an hour behind? Or more appropriately if mainland Europe is an hour ahead. GMT, Greenwich, not Grenoble, Geneva or Girona. Europhiles again telling us what to do no doubt without election by the British people. Europe are just angry that we were not so quick to impose their ideas and laws e.g. a single currency.

dorean paxorales said...

No, Portugal is GMT too.
Using the same argument, we had a spell with GMT+1 back in the nineties. Being even more to the west of Europe, it didn't really agree with solar time and the idea was rejected after a year.