No 493
Monday, 28thOctober, 2013
Tel: 96 673 0057
SUN RISES AGAIN ON DAYLIGHT SAVING DEBATE
As we once again moved our clocks back one hour on Sunday morning the arguments about the benefits of such a change continue to rumble on. This practice has been a controversial topic debated for many years by the general public and by politicians alike. From late March to late October, clocks in the United Kingdom are put forward by one hour for British Summer Time (BST) but in 1968 there was a three-year experiment called British Standard Time, when the UK and Ireland experimentally employed British Summer Time (GMT+1) all year round; clocks were put forward in March 1968 and not put back until October 1971. This provided an opportunity to evaluate the impact on a number of issues, however the conclusions were not clear cut. A review by the UK Parliament found it was impossible to quantify the
most important advantages and disadvantages and the experiment was abandoned. World time is actually based on Universal Coordinated Time (UTC) which roughly corresponds to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). As such, since 1997, most of the countries in the European Union have aligned with the British standards for British Summer Time. Central European Time is therefore always one hour ahead of British time. But during these austere times, as many people in the UK continues to struggle, business quite sensibly continues to push for the adoption of Central European Time. In one fell swoop such a change would allow British business to gain 2 extra trading hours a day with it’s European counterparts, one at the beginning of the day and one at the end, where they would once again be synchronised with their European business colleagues. But as one Member of The UK Parliament pushed for the change Rebecca Harris' Daylight Saving Bill ran out of parliamentary time. Continued on Page 2