Should Cameron put England first?

[rov1200]

http://www.dailymail....tml?ito=feeds-newsxml

Why should the Scots need convincing? If the reason is because of the worry about schoolchildren coming home in the dark why don't they start lessons 1 hour earlier? If its because of the Scottish farmers ploughing the fields in the dark why don't they get up 1 hour earlier.

Surely they are such feeble excuses not to have genuine progress?

[rov1200]

Looking out of my window the time would be 9pm rather than the actual 8pm

[jno]

we are on central European time right now.

But central Europeans aren't - they're on central European summer time, because they put their clocks on too.

[THECORBYLOON]

Rov1200 if you want an extra hour's daylight, why do you not go to work an hour earlier and leave an hour earlier?

[rov1200]

Corbyloony I thought I had outlined my case for a change above by saying it is necessary to be in step with Europe and our major partners in the EU. Did you not see the countries signed up to CET in the link above? It makes very lille difference to me personally but when it involves the whole of England and its dealings with Europe we should sit up and take notice.

We are not on CET as jno states. Also look at that link above and you can see we are 1 hour ahead at the moment,

[THECORBYLOON]

CET goes back by an hour in October so if the UK kept an hour ahead we would on the same time. If its okay for the UK to be out of step with countries using CET, why can Scotland not be out of step with England and have its own time zone?

[jno]

it is now 13.28 BST. It is also 13.28 Central European time. As I said, the Central Europeans have put their clocks forward too, so they stay an hour ahead of us; CET summer time is 14.28.

My point is that if we changed to CET, we'd still be changing our clocks twice a year, same as Europeans do.

[New Judge]

It clearly makes no difference to business and commerce what time our clocks say it is. The UK has managed to trade with most of the rest of the world, including some places where the clocks are considerably more than an hour adrift from ours, with no difficulty whatsoever.

Therefore quite why “...it is necessary to be in step with Europe and our major partners in the EU.” Is a bit of a mystery to me. If a local time is to have any meaning it is probably desirable for clocks to show noon when the sun is near enough overhead. (If some justification of this sort did not exist, the entire world could be set to a single time, simply meaning people in New Zealand would get up at 7pm and Coronation Street would be on at 7:30am.

That being the case, CET is not appropriate for the UK, but more so for Berlin, Prague and Naples. Indeed it is unsuitable for much of France, Spain and Portugal, for the simple fact that these nations are not in Central Europe, but in the west of the continent. There is a separation of over 50 degrees of longitude from western Portugal to the Black Sea coasts of Romania and Bulgaria. This represents well over three hours of time difference. Even Portugal and East Germany/South East Italy are separated by over 30 degrees (2 hours). To try to shoehorn all the nations of Europe into one time zone is as foolish as trying to force them all to use the same currency. Mainland USA stretches across approximately the same amount of longitude and manages perfectly well with four time zones. You never hear that New York has difficulty trading with California because of the time difference.

As I said earlier, this is a non-argument and our PM needs to exercise his mind with more pressing matters.

[rov1200]

""You never hear that New York has difficulty trading with California because of the time difference."""...New Judge

Of course there is a problem in dealing with 2 time zones. The New York Trading floor does not start until 2pm (london time) or 5 hours after the London Stock Exchange has opened. Either the NY trader has to get up at 4am in the morning or the London trader has to continue trading until 10pm at night. During those untrading hours you could get a stock market crash with dire results.

The distances from London to Paris and Bonn are 213 and 317 miles respectively. The distance from London to Newcastle is 302 miles. Therefore you could say we have more in common with our European partners than with Northerners or the Scots.

It could be worse. I believe Russia has more than 9 time zones within its own country.

[rov1200]

jno you say we have the same time as the CET at the moment.
This clock shows differently:

http://wwp.greenwichm...entral-european-time/

[New Judge]

Actually, rov, as far as this question goes we have more in common with the people of Timbuktu (in Mali), Ouagadougou (the capital of Burkina Faso) and Accra (the capital of Ghana) than we have with the people of Bonn or Paris. Those three African cities lie close to the Greenwich Meridian – far closer than do the European cities you mention. So your argument is somewhat specious.

Business and commerce run perfectly well all over the globe with the time differences that exist. As I said, it does not matter what time you say it is, it is what time your contacts are available that is critical, and changing one’s own clock will not alter that.

I think I’ve said enough!

[jno]

rov1200, how can I get this across... that is NOT Central European Time. It is Central European SUMMER time (it says so just under the yellow panel). Just as we are currently not on Greenwich Mean Time but British SUMMER Time.

British SUMMER Time is the same as Central European STANDARD Time - GMT+1. Which is what we're now on. They're currently on GMT+2.

[rov1200]

New Judge most of Europe falls within 15deg of the Greenwich meridian line. This means daylight time in most regions has a sunrise/sunset within 1 hour of London and usually much less.. In fact Paris has only 2 deg difference.

http://www.mapsofworl...de-and-longitude.html

I hope Cameron goes ahead with it.

[rov1200]

Jno you don't need to keep quoting those mneumonics. Just look at the website I quoted. It gives in plain English the CET time and time as it is now in Britain.

[New Judge]

Quite so, rov. And so there is no reason whatsoever why they cannot adopt GMT if they are so disposed.

However, another fact is that all of Ireland, almost all of the UK (apart from East Anglia, Kent, and a bit of Sussex) all of Portugal and almost all of Spain lies to the west of the Prime Meridian and so are less suited to CET. Furthermore, huge swathes of the area covered by the EU – including most of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania and Greece, is to the East of longitude15 degrees east and so is similarly unsuited to CET.

In short, there is no justification or practical reason why Europe should adopt a single time zone any more than all of the USA should. It may be politically expedient to force such an homogenisation, but practically it is just plain stupid.