26 October 2009

It's an Official Rant

I don't have many, rants that is, but it really gets my goat up when the powers that be start talking we should fall into line with Europe on the clocks front.. why?

I am british, born british, educated across the world, lived in Europe for 3 years and loved it, travel in-frequently to world-wide destinations and done business with both the European Sector and Americans/Canadians during my time here at the University of the Back of Beyond.

First and Foremost : London, England is the home of Greenwich Mean Time which started when British sailors kept at least one chronometer on GMT in order to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was by convention considered to have longitude zero degrees

Shipboard time itself was still solar time. But this practice, combined with mariners from other nations eventually led to GMT being used worldwide as a reference time independent of location.

Most time zones were based upon this reference as a number of hours and half-hours "ahead of GMT" or "behind GMT". So when they talk about us joining the same European time as Spain, which is many degrees further South than London, or even Italy it makes no sense to me as their days will be different to that of London, in terms of daylight.

Secondly : On a business level, I have managed successfully the 12 hour differences between UK and Australia when talking to a firm providing software to us, likewise the 5, 7 or 8 hour differences between zones in the US and Canada so I can find no good reason to align us to Europe for the one hour that exists.

Not only that but our friends in Scotland would be heavily penalised by the time differences involved and yet another wave of power would be held in European hands..

There seems to be no pride in keeping Britain British, instead we weakly surrender ourselves to our European Neighbours and while their interpretation of the rules can be somewhat elastic, we Brits follow it to the letter of the law.

I want to keep Greenwich Mean Time, for the history of what it means to our country, for what it means to us as a people and not just surrender it meekly because of a weak excuse of business needs... What say you?

5 comments:

Bernard said...

I expect you know my views before I even start!
The less interference from brussels the better. I think it is about time they fell into line with us!
I think a lot of countries are miffed that not only do we have GMT, but they have to use it as well. The French have always wanted the meridian to run through Paris and I expect the Americans want it to run through NY.
A statute of 1880, enacted that the word 'time' in any legal document relating to GB, was to be interpreted as the Mean Time of the Greenwich Meridian.
It was later decreed in 1884 by the nations of the world, assembled in Washington, that all would accept that as a compliment to British astronomers and navigators, the Meridian should pass through Greenwich.
They can't change history.
Piss off eu!!!!!

dickiebo said...

I seem to remember when I was at school (No. Not before the War!!!) that the Ruskies (Russians, for our American friends!) started treating Vladivostok as Greenwich. What ever became of that idea, I wonder?
Start a Protest, Herbert. I'll sign up!

Kathy G said...

I wasn't aware of the controversy until I read about it here...the power of blogs!

Rach said...

Just the same as you, I always felt it should have been abolished a long time ago..xx

Fire Byrd said...

Thing is Europe, America, South Africa all change their clocks they just do it the week before us. So what's to change? Let's face it it's winter darkness that stinks whether it's dark mornings or early evenings. We should just shift the whole country down out into the Atlantic to get more light LOL
x