Proposed British Summer Time move - another European conspiracy?

dandelion

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Don't worry, we'll soon have food shortages, food inflation, & petrol shortages/inflation.
Ah well, I doubt it. We in the Uk are only going to have food shortages if the country is bankrupt and it is a long way from that. If the worst case scenario on the economy comes true we will still be rich. It is the poor countries where people will go short of food while we use exactly as much as before. The silver lining is that if there is a bit less spare cash in the Uk it will help bring down house prices, which is where all the spare money has been going for years.

However it seems that the devolved parliament and assemblies will have a veto and that Scotland is most likely to veto.
They want their subsidies to continue?
 

Jason

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They want their subsidies to continue?

:biglaugh:ROFL:biglaugh:

My guess is Cameron won't see this as a big enough issue to be worthwhile taking on the Scottish parliament. He wants his revised constituency boundaries through, which will lower the number of MPs from Scotland and NI.
 

B_crackoff

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Ah well, I doubt it. We in the Uk are only going to have food shortages if the country is bankrupt and it is a long way from that. If the worst case scenario on the economy comes true we will still be rich. It is the poor countries where people will go short of food while we use exactly as much as before.

What, are those the poor countries that have quadrupled their populations in 50 years, that are short of food - provided in a large part by everybody else? LOL.

Think India & China. India ( & I've seen lots of their ministers & experts on this) want to up their consumption of meat. They don't want to grow it at home - though you'd think chickens & goats would flourish there - they want the West to give it up - though they quadrupled their population in 60 years.

China will buy it via markets competitively, & are resourcing globally as we speak.

As China & India become richer, & their tastes become more expensive, supply will fail to meet demand, & prices escalate.

If you add to this the shortage, & rising price of animal feed, because of the fad for organic fuel, let alone topsoil erosion, & the fact that most land that can be irrigated for farmland globally, & the water to supply it, is already nearing its optimum - I'm bloody certain. (massive wars, & disease related deaths excepted:cool:)

:biglaugh:ROFL:biglaugh:

My guess is Cameron won't see this as a big enough issue to be worthwhile taking on the Scottish parliament. He wants his revised constituency boundaries through, which will lower the number of MPs from Scotland and NI.

Whatever happened to William Hague's English only Parliament for domestic affairs? I feel cheated.
 

Jason

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Whatever happened to William Hague's English only Parliament for domestic affairs? I feel cheated.

The "British" solution is that we live with the West Lothian Question. It is easy to conceive of a time when it would be an issue - a small Labour majority for the whole UK, within which is a Labour minority for England - but it this were going to happen it would have been at the last election.

Assuming that the constituency boundary changes go through there will be a big reduction in the number of Scottish seats - and an increase in the number of English seats. This takes some of the heat out. And then the Liberal-Conservative party that I hope will come into existence should do reasonably well in Scotland. My take on it is that we don't need an English Parliament.
 

dandelion

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i see it has been suggested we should have separate time zones for scotland and the rest of the UK, wih the southern part moving forward one hour. i see proponents of change claim 100 fewer road deaths per year, £200m saving for the nhs, £3.5 bn boost to tourism, 235 hours extra daylight outside working hours and lower energy consumption. The bbc says this change was imposed in ww2 to improve efficency in factories and abandoned after the trial in 1968 because of objections from scotland. so clearly, let the scots do their own thing.
 

D_Abraham Slinkin

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Let's just float this out there.

Germany, Austria, Poland, & all the Nordic, & Baltic states share very similar sunrise/sunset times to London, & the rest of the UK - i.e, the sun has generally set by 4pm in the month of December.

However, the UK is the only country which is considering moving its time forward by an hour.

Almost all the blurb that accompanies this move highlights lives being saved as children go home, when it's pretty clear that they're probably just trying to harmonise to a European standard time.

They also claim it will give us longer sunnier (hahaha - it's the UK) nights.

The key criticisms I have are:

1/ More people will die, especially children, in the pitch black rush hour in winter (the sun won't rise till about 9am - nearly 10am in Scotland). All schools finish at least an hour before the evening rush hour anyway. Couldn't they change the start, & end of the school day, or even the school year?

2/ Employees will now be travelling to & from work in the dark (sunrise 9am, sunset 5pm), & ay not see any daylight.

3/ This itself will cause health problems through vitamin D deficiency, & an increase of SAD, & therefore more people topping themselves.

4/ Have you ever tried getting kids to bed when it's sunny outside?

5/ Why aren't Germany, & all the rest, hell even Hungary, changing their times too, if it's all about saving lives, & the wonders of a summer night in a country where most people are in bed before 11?

6/ Sunrise & sunset are geographically fixed. Noon is on average at 12pm - it can't be helped. If they move time forward an hour, it will somedays be at around 2.30pm - which will be the new time for the midday sun in summer.

7/ All times zones are based from GMT - it's a bit of a loss of face, & a slap in the chin for science.

8/ Guess what - they'll still jump another hour for summer, despite there being absolutely no need to, to save all the extra deaths they allege occur in winter. So the UK would be on GMT +2!

9/ More youth crime & binge drinking, & fooling around,& all the social issues that go with this, in these hazy, lazy summer daytime extensions till 11.10pm in some parts of the UK.

10/ It's just a barely concealed pro-Europe measure, designed to put us on the same time as most, but not all of the other countries in Europe, hatched & conceived by some lazy bastards who don't like getting out of bed early enough to catch a business flight to the continent, or arrange early morning childcare for their brats!:smile:

1 - Bollocks. A lot of schools/colleges dont finish until 4.30/5 as it is, add on after school clubs, detentions, sports meetings and going round their mates / into town afterwards about half of school kids walk home in the dark in winter anyway.

2- Once again, bollocks. How many people dyou know who leave their house for work at 9am? The rush hour is 7 - 9, it winter at the moment it doesnt get light until around 8.30 so people are already commuting to work in the dark - if anything this means people might get a journey home in the light (evening rush hour 4-6)

3 - Perhaps your craziest argument of all. The whole point of this is to expose more people to the daylight. When are people outside? After school and work. How many people are outside and active at 8am? Walk the dog at this time? Take the kids the park at this time? And as for Vitamin D, the sun is so in Winter in the UK, let alone the constant cloud cover, the amount of Vitamin D we get really isn't worth anything.

4 - Yes, it's called JUNE. In June it doesnt get dark until 10.30, and school is still going on. it isn't a problem, it's called black out blinds. If we manage at the moment, we'll manage when there's a longer period of light nights.

5- Germany is already ahead of itself. Poland is way further East and still uses +1. But that's a matter for the Polish Government isn't it, not really relevant.

6 - Wtf has the natural midday got to do with anything?! The average person wakes up at 7/8am and goes to bed at 11/12pm. That means the actual 'midday' is 3/4pm. What an irrational point, you made yourself look silly.

7 - Based on that argument then you should eliminate Summer Time. How are all time zones based on GMT? If that were the case time zones would run EXACTLY the set number of degrees away from GMT, which would mean Half of Belgium would use GMT, and the west coast of Ireland would need GMT -1.
Once again, redundant point.

8 - This is perhaps your only logical point. Perhaps it would be better just to stay on GMT+1 all year round, without DST, so we are still an hour behind France/Germany in the Summer. This sort of arrangement works fine for Iceland and Saskatchewan in Canada.

9 - Are you being serious? This will do the opposite. More crime happens at night time, under the cover of darkness the chavs, gangs and lowlifes do their bidding. This will massively reduce muggings, assaults, rapes etc, which alone is a good enough reason to do this. These kinds of people typically aren't awake at 8am, so the dark mornings won't have this problem.

10 - Once again, Bollocks. Europe will still have 3 time zones, (Portugal, Ireland, Iceland, Canary Islands = GMT) Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece + Cyrpus = GMT +2)


I can only see positives from this. But I do think that it would be better to just keep GMT+1 all year round, so we don't put the clocks back/forward, as we don't really need another hour of sunlight on long summer nights.