Signage improvements: Turn signs for One Way and Dual Carriageways revisited

Following the feedback and comments I have received on a previous article, "Signage improvements for mandatory direction and turn signs", and having thought about this some more, I have had some more thoughts and alternative ideas for the turn signs, one way roads, and dual carriageways.

Motorroads / Expressroads / Expressways and making Dual carriageway ahead symbolic

Following feedback received for "Improvements for UK speed related signs", especially for the Motorroad / Expressroad part, and having had more thoughts about this topic, I decided to revisit Motorroads / Expressroads. And on a loosely related note, I also believe that all of the wordy "Dual carriageway ahead" signs should be replaced with symbolic equivalents, whether or not the dual carriageway in question is a motorroad / expressroad.

Poll Result: Should the UK change to a different time zone?

poll by twiigs.com

If the UK joins Schengen

Ever travelled from France to Germany, from Switzerland to Norway, or from Spain to Italy? Those of you who have, will have noticed that there are no border controls and no waiting at passport control, whether one travels by air, road, rail or sea. This is because these countries and several other countries (to be precise 22 EU countries, plus Norway, Iceland, and Switzerland) have implemented the Schengen Agreement fully, which includes the abolition of passport controls, although one still needs to bring identification when travelling. Contrary to popular myth, states do not need to have ID cards to implement the Schengen Agreement, passports can still be used as ID, and photo-card driving licenses ought to be accepted as ID too.

The UK on CET debate

I had hoped to post this article when the news was current, but was unfortunately extremely busy, and had little to no time recently. Nonetheless, in this article, I give my take on the debate regarding moving Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT) and British Summer Time (BST) an hour forward respectively, so that the UK would in effect use Central European Time (CET) in winter, and Central European Summer Time (CEST) in summer.

GMT (also known as Western European Time or WET) and UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) are identical for practical purposes, the difference is negligible (only a fraction of a second), and the same applies for BST (also known as Western European Summer Time or WEST) and GMT+1. Similarly, CET can be regarded as equivalent to UTC+1, and CEST as equivalent to UTC+2 for practical purposes.

Throughout this article, I will be referring to UTC only to avoid ambiguity, and because UTC (not GMT) has been the main reference for time worldwide since 1972.  Having said that, one can still use GMT as a synonym for UTC, BST as a synonym for UTC+1, etc.