Confused About Time

Every few years (it seems like five to eight years) the incumbent government of the UK proposes to study the possibility of changing the British time zone to that of continental Europe, i.e. one hour ahead. This week the current government has done exactly that. Whenever this happens, the people of Scotland, especially farmers, protest that it would be bad for them.

Right now Britain has Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) from the last Sunday in October ‘til the last Sunday in March. The rest of the year we have British Summer Time (BST), which is one hour later. Ireland and Portugal are the only other European countries in this time zone. The rest of Western Europe, up to a north-south line running from Finland to Greece, is one hour ahead of British time all year round.

The Scottish augment rests on the fact that they are very far north, and so their days are shorter than English and Welsh days. They complain that the farmers in Scotland would have to milk their cows in the dark; kids would have to walk to school in the dark and would therefore get run over by cars more often; and there would be a lot more traffic accidents. I guess that the Scots have a pretty low opinion of their own ability at night driving or maybe they believe that English drivers, not used to driving after dark, would be knocking off the Scottish kids walking to school. (Someone should do a study the ratio of child-on-the-way-to-school accidents in Norway and Italy.)

All this time business has always confused me. I’ve never really understood why the time has to change from winter to summer anyway. It would work just as well if schools, government offices, businesses and shops just opened and closed at different times to give people extra time for their summer evening barbeques. This concept applies even more dramatically to farmers! Before times were standardized in the nineteenth century, farmers must have milked cows when it was convenient or when the cows needed to be milked. These farmers didn’t need some official time to get their work done. It’s beyond me why present-day Scottish farmers aren’t able to organize their work in the traditional way. But no; if the government in London says that it’s seven or eight in the morning, then that’s when you have to milk your cows, dark or not.

There’s another angle on this: why does Scotland have to be in the same time zone as England? If the two ends of the Channel tunnel can exist quite comfortably being an hour apart on the clock, why can’t Scotland and England also be an hour apart. Nobody in The British government or the Scottish complainer ever brings this up.

Or here’s yet another idea: if the whole world was just one time zone, then people in different places, north or south east or west, would pretty soon arrange things in the most convenient way. Some farmers would milk their cows at midnight on the clock and others would milk at noon.

These are a few of the reasons why I’m confused about time.