> Daylight Saving Time should be abolished...
> that's my 2 cents worth...
Hmmm! I have so many objections to this tinkering
with clocks that I could easily run to 2 dollars worth!
I will try to be temperate. I shall fail!
1. The principal purpose, one assumes, is to get
people out of bed earlier. That's fine but
I don't see why Government's have to tell lies
about the time to achieve this.
2. To a pedant like me the terms a.m. and p.m.
become silly in summer. Where I live (close
to longitude 0 degrees) from 12 noon BST until
1 o'clock BST we are still anti-meridiem (before
the middle of the day) so it is strictly 12:30 a.m.
at what is actually 11:30 GMT but is legally
12:30 p.m. BST.
3. The concept is inherently inflationary. We now
hear talk of using GMT+1 all through the winter
and GMT+2 in the summer, `double summer time'.
Wait 50 years and it will be GMT+2 and GMT+3.
4. Worst of all, in U.S. terminology at least, is
the term `daylight saving' which is an even bigger
lie since no daylight is saved at all. The only
good news is that this term is not used much in
the U.K.
Brian Albinson correctly cites the 1925 (British) Act of
Parliament. The most recent relevant Act came into force
in 1972 and the pertinent passage is:
`the period of summer time for the purposes of this Act
is the period beginning at two o'clock, Greenwich mean
time, in the morning of the day after the third Saturday
in March or, if that day is Easter Day, the day after
the second Saturday in March, and ending at two o'clock,
Greenwich mean time, in the morning of the day after the
fourth Saturday in October.'
That's clear enough so what happens this year? This year
the clocks went forward at ONE o'clock Greenwich mean time
on Sunday 27 March. This was THREE-ways illegal: it was one
hour earlier than specified in the Act, it was on the morning
of the day after the FOURTH Saturday AND it was Easter Day
itself.
In summary: the whole business is about introducing a law
that tells lies about the time and then not following that
law properly having enacted it. [Aside: this is because
European legislation on clock-changing supersedes national
legislation.]
I use God's Magnificent Time, all the time, even when many
time zones displaced. No doubt I shall be clamped in irons
for this eccentricity!
Frank King
Unrepentant Sinner
Cambridge, U.K.
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