UK Government Wants to Spring Ahead Two Hours

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?"

Comments

Wow, who wrote this summary?

[intellitech]

Could this cause another 'millennium Bug' fiasco?

Y2K was a much different situation, one which had absolutely nothing to do with such concepts as "daylight savings," "summer time," and the like. Y2K was caused by silly computer abbreviation of dates, and while DST can cause timekeeping bugs, it's unlikely to cause a worldwide meltdown.

I would also like to point out that these things are much more likely to break down the more frequently you change them..

Re:Wow, who wrote this summary?

[Antony.S]

I doubt it, since they would find themselves fired within 6 months.

England != UK.

[Anonymous Coward]

England != UK. Can you lot in the United States of Florida PLEASE try to learn this.

Re:It might cause an alarm clock fiasco

[Anonymous Coward]

And the extra sunlight fades my curtains faster...

Not going to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Screws up transatlantic business

[mouthbeef]

I'm a UK taxpayer and I conduct a lot of business with the US west coast. Presently, we're 8 hours apart for most of the year, and that means that I can *just barely* squeeze in a conference call with Californian colleagues (I'm co-owner of boingboing.net and all my partners are in LA and San Francisco) and still get out of the office in time to get my daughter from day-care and get home for dinner.

If the timezone difference goes to 9 hours, I'm buggered. The additional hour will have a direct, negative impact on my net income, as it will either require me to participate less in these transatlantic ventures (for example, it would probably mean no more freelance assignments for US editors, all of which generate UK taxes) or hire expensive babysitters to fetch the kid from day-care (something I also would rather not do for sentimental reasons having nothing to do with the economy).

Re:BAU

[dkf]

There's usually somewhere in the rest of the world changes their DST policies on a yearly basis

That place usually seems to be somewhere in Argentina. For some reason, messing with exact timezone rules seems to be a national pastime there.