Time out

The clocks went back last night in the UK, so perhaps I did get to sleep in just a little bit before the three year old stomped into our bedroom and threw himself into our bed, and said "Wakey, wakey". He twitched the curtains above our head to let in a smidgeon of damp, gray light.

Daylight savings have been controversial for a number of years and the rhetoric is ramping up. A growing lobby is urging that the UK should go to double summer time in the summer and GMT +1 in the winter. A permanent shift of an hour. Folks are even saying a change would combat global warming. (I'm unconvinced).

Euro-sceptics will have noticed this would put us on exactly the same time as Brussels. A conspiracy of closer alignment by fiat rather than treaty.

The Scottish contingency and farmers have been vociferously protesting against the double summer time idea. Let's dismiss the farmers first and out of hand, because farmers raise more complaints than heads of cattle or bushels of wheat.

But the Scots may have a point. It's darker up there in the winter and in the summer is stays light quite late enough already. A +1 shift would mean it would be dark til mid-morning in the winter. Which you don't need a policy review to know would suck.

Personally, I'm against the change. I hate, hate, hate getting up in the dark and this would mean more days of getting up in the dark. And since, I - you know - work. I still wouldn't get to take advantage of more daylight in the winter as I'd be - you know - working. But most people I know here in London are in favor of the change.

A modest proposal

If folks in London want to change so much, let 'em. Let northerly parts of the UK like Scotland or Northern Ireland or westerly bits like Wales stay on GMT or BST in the summer. You see, that would work. Devolution of the clock. An overthrow of the tyranny of time.

I grew up in a state with roughly 10-15% of the population of the UK. And we had two time zones - Eastern in East Tennessee and Central and Middle and West Tennessee. It didn't result in perpetual confusion. It was fine.

You know it makes sense.

And in other football news

And by other football, I mean soccer. This week Scotland beat France 1-0 in France in a Euro 2008 qualifying match. The Scots are ecstatic. As for me, I've been confused all week - should I be happy? (That France lost.) Should I be sad? (That the gloating Scots had some success).

Should I be desolee that they couldn't both lose?

See ya

Gordon Brown, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury Secretary) and heir-apparent to Tony Blair, will likely take the crown before the year is out. A dour Scot and prone to worry, this time he's going on about the dissolution of the Union.

Yes, well he should worry. A Scot and a Scottish MP who wishes to rule o'er England, too. The Union between the crowns of Scotland and England will this year be 300 years old, but nobody's celebrating. The Union is in peril and Gordo knows that as the Union goes - so goes his future.

I know I'm not a citizen of this country and even if I were I could never be English, but I have to say "Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, hey goooood-bye." See ya, Scots. I, for one, have had enough of your English-bashing, your whinging and your scrounging. Take your bloody depleting North Sea oil and go. See how long you can keep your high-spending, low-producing Socialism without English subsidy. I'm tired of being bossed around by people who are even pastier than the English.

I've always regretted the prohibition of the possibility of secession in US Constitution. It seemed to lack a certain openness to the potentiality of irreconcilable differences. I hope the Scots seize their opportunity for rerendum for independence - and that they don't dally.