"Richard B. Langley" wrote on 2011-10-28 17:05 UTC: > "The government is considering moving the UK's clocks forward by an > hour for a three-year trial period." > > More: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-15490249
I first thought this really belongs more onto the Time Zone Database mailing list, which no doubt many here also subscribe to: http://www.iana.org/time-zones https://mm.icann.org/mailman/listinfo/tz This mailing list here is about keeping clocks in sync with terrestrial astronomy (when does the sun rise?), whereas the other one is about keeping clocks in sync with regional politics (when do we have to get out of bed?). Then it dawned me that there is of course a subtle overlap; the Babylonians knew already too well that you can't ever separate astronomy from politics. If we abandon leap seconds in the global reference time (currently called UTC), the meridian where the global reference time matches local mean solar time (currently going through London Greenwich) will accelerate eastwards. So if the UK government is concerned, say for reasons of prestige and spin, about maintaining the UK's status as a place where civilian (winter) time and global reference time coincide, adopting the civil time of Paris would be a wise things to do in the long run, e.g., from about the year 2600 onwards, especially considering that the practical implementation of the alternative, namely UTC leap hours, are a rather unrealistic prospect. So no harm done in practicing such an important strategic move as conquering the French/German timezone already early on, *at least* 600 years in advance ... Markus ;-) -- Markus Kuhn, Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ || CB3 0FD, Great Britain _______________________________________________ LEAPSECS mailing list [email protected] http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/listinfo/leapsecs
