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Government United Kingdom IT

UK Government Wants to Spring Ahead Two Hours 554

Anonymous Coward writes "In England it has been proposed that the clocks move forward by 2 hours this summer to give us more daylight time in the day, and hopefully in turn stimulate the economy. My question is what impact will this hold for computers that automatically adjust the time to British Summer Time? Could this cause another 'millennium Bug' fiasco?"
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UK Government Wants to Spring Ahead Two Hours

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  • *Ka-Ching* Mate! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Monday February 21, 2011 @06:18AM (#35265998)

    I think the only economy this would stimulate would be the one involving IT Consultants.

    Not that there's anything wrong with that...

  • Not going to happen (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21, 2011 @06:33AM (#35266074)

    Man, this again? We get this from the english MPs every other week. This is the same ol' same ol' with a slight variation of +2 in the summer and +$unknown in the winter.
    For the Nth time, this is not going to happen, the rest of the UK wont agree to it. Scotland is much further north than its mild weather would suggest, and when this was tried shortly after the second world war it was an unmitigated disaster. It was dark till lunchtime in the winter in the Shetland Isles, for little gain in the evening in the summer. And remember we almost have 24 hour daylight in Scotland in the summer, we dont need an extra hours daylight at 3am. And neither we, the Northern Irish, nor the Welsh care if it's dark in England 24 hours-a-day all year round ;-)
    Every time the government changes and the Conservatives get in they start going on about this. The 'Tories' are an english party, and in England it gets dark at 10pm in the summer. Boo-hoo. It gets dark in Spain at 9pm in the summer, but they are out having beers till 3am. In England everyone is in their beds at 10pm, what do you want an extra hour of light for? Why do you want it to be light while you are asleep or in your house watching cricket and drinking warm beer or whatever it is you guys do? Especially if it's raining. I may be scottish but I've never seen so much rain as I have in Oxfordshire. No wonder you like your boats, you need them.
    It's not your timezone you want to change, it's your culture. You want to enjoy your evenings more? Get out more, talk to people in bars without waiting for a formal introduction. It doesnt have to be light outside to have a good time.

    Fecking sassenachs. The next time you bring this up we're cutting your power and water.

      I may be scottish and as such slighty biased

  • Re:Darker mornings (Score:4, Interesting)

    by asdf7890 ( 1518587 ) on Monday February 21, 2011 @06:35AM (#35266094)
    No, but it is nice to occasionally leave the office with some daylight, and so feel like there is some of the day left for yourself after work has taken its pound of flesh.
  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 21, 2011 @06:36AM (#35266096)

    To be fair, the Scots are reportedly opposed to the proposals because of how dark it'll make their mornings...it does seem fairly England-led. (Some of England, at least - I'm not at all in favour.)

  • by beelsebob ( 529313 ) on Monday February 21, 2011 @06:40AM (#35266124)

    I can predict a worse outcome for the economy than people simply not being at work early. We currently get 3 hours of overlap with the (east coast) americans in a work day – they don't really want to have meetings absolute first thing, and we don't really want to have one last thing... This would give us only 2 hours overlap and compound the cross-atlantic communication problem.

  • Not just you scots (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Monday February 21, 2011 @06:57AM (#35266180) Homepage

    Its not just you scots who don't want it, plenty of us english arn't too happy either!

    I don't much care if its dark when I drive home from work , I'm already awake and have lots of coffee inside me. What I DONT want is it pitch black first thing in the morning when I'm half asleep trying to drive down dark roads with kids trying to get to school crossing said dark roads.

    Why the fuck our politicians want this I have no idea. We're more north west than all of the rest of western europe bar ireland which means the time our sun rises and sets bares little resemblence to what happens in germany 500 miles east or france 200 miles south.

    Also , can someone explain whats the point of a clock if it doesn't give at least a rough approximation of the real time?

  • Re:meh (Score:4, Interesting)

    by FTWinston ( 1332785 ) on Monday February 21, 2011 @07:36AM (#35266348) Homepage
    Just, you know, some of us don't want to go to work in the dark. All the bloody time. I fail to see how moving to CET could possibly bring in extra billions to the economy. Dubious economics aside, however, what on Earth is wrong with living in a time zone that reflects your physical location on the globe? I mean, moving Grenwich off of Grenwich mean time permanently is enough of a misnomer to put me off the idea, but WHY would anyone want to mandate that we all get out of bed an hour earlier in the morning? I find the shift to/from BST bad enough as it is - if this became twice as large a shift, it'd be twice as bad, and if it were an "all year-round" change, most of Scotland would see no light til 11am in the winter. How that's a good idea I don't know... people seem to forget that the "extra" hour is just being stolen from the other end of the day!

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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