Everyone forgotten???

[cee-dee]

Clocks go on this weekend.

Not a peep out of anyone yet?

[john.b74]

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@cee-dee wrote:

Clocks go on this weekend.

Not a peep out of anyone yet?

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Yes you will be able to see the rain for an extra hour.

[cee-dee]

Thank your lucky stars you're able to see it. Lots of people will not only not see it, they'll never feel rain ever again.

[5129frederick]

Do they go  forward, do they go back??  An easy way to remember is you SPRING FORWARD and later you FALL BACK (Canadian Falls - Autumn)  Thought it might help.

[mustard-tree]

Isnt it time we forgot about this silliness and left the clocks alone

[fallen-archie]

How can one have forgotten what is yet to happen?😯

[upthecreekyetagain]

I demand my hour back - if I don't make it to Autumn then I'll have lost an hour of my life!

Where are the protests, the street marches, what right have politicians to rob me like this - rise up UK and revolt.

Top priority to change this intolerable system if we leave the EU.

[artful_dodgings]

This stupid and inane bi-annual ritual of fiddling around with the clocks, is long overdue someone banishing it unceremoniously to the annals of history.

'The idea of summer time, or daylight saving time, was first suggested in a whimsical article by Benjamin Franklin in 1784, but it was first seriously proposed in 1907 in Britain by a keen horse-rider, William Willett, who was incensed at the 'waste' of useful daylight first thing in the morning, during summer'.

The above is like something from a Monty Python script. It's difficult to invent, even for comedic purposes.

[******lynda******]

Waste of daylight? All he had to do was get up earlier and use it.

when my eldest was a toddler, he would not believe 3 am was the middle of the night because the sun was shining. Many a morning, we had picnics at that time

[fallen-archie]

It is on the same scale as the calculation used to choose when Easter will fall which as this time can result in two falling within 12 months. Then we have the retail sector demanding to be open throughout (Easter Sunday will be next) which means that their employees get no respite. Did you know that some stores are open today from 06.30 to 21.00. what kind of graveyard shift is that?

[artful_dodgings]

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@******lynda****** wrote:

Waste of daylight? All he had to do was get up earlier and use it.

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Probably a member of the landed gentry Lynda, in which case you couldn't expect him to drag himself out of bed until the streets are aired.

[upthecreekyetagain]

So if, as seems the case from the above replies, most would like to keep just one 'time zone', which would be the choice - Summer Time which makes sunrise and sunset later or GMT doing the opposite?

[cee-dee]

If you look at a World map (such as the one in front of me here), you'll see that the World has a series of 18 major "vertical" lines on it (lines of latitude). (OK, so each of those is subdivided and subdivided but we're only concerned timewise with the 18 major lines).

There are 18 of them and that means that each represents 20º of longitude which in turn means that each has therefore 80 minutes of time between them.

Just where do you start "counting" from? = You start at zero and you're either East or West of that line. Where does that line pass through? Greenwich, that's where.

In the World, there are no end of agitators who would dearly love to move that line someplace else and do away with what is known Worldwide as Greenwick Mean Time.

Today, I don't really see the need for BST or Daylight Saving Time and I would like to see the World stick to GMT as the standard time upon which each time zone determines whether they are GMT + or GMT - and be done with clocks on or clocks back.

[upthecreekyetagain]

Which meridian is used to quote time zones from is irrelevant - the US don't use GMT in reference to their timezones, neither do Australia or countries in Asia nor Africa.

As for agitators wanting to move the prime meridian, well that's a new one on me!

Personally I'd prefer BST, or GMT+1 if you must.  Extra daylights in the evening are far more 'useful to me, to others the extra hour daylight in the morning might be more useful.  Which is why I posed the question as to what others prefer.

[cee-dee]

The Grenwich meridian was in the wrong place anyway, it was 100 yards out.

When Greenwich was settled, France abstained because they wanted a Paris meridian. When arguments rage, there's always some group or other advocating someplace else as the prime meridian.

As to time, they've already tried to cut out GMT and instead refer to UTC but all time standards really start with GMT. Arguing for arguing sake will always produce those with an argument for everything and a reason for nothing except more arguing.

[upthecreekyetagain]

GMT is a time zone defined as UTC+0 in the  same way  as CET equals UTC+1

This has been internationally accepted since the 60s - the Greenwich meridian is still the prime meridian for terrestrial navigation - coordinated universal time, (UTC), is a time standard. not a time zone.