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.

US-style mega-dairy plans are withdrawn

On the 16th Februrary 2010 there was some great and welcome news, plans for the US-style megadairy in Nocton, 10 km south of Lincoln in Lincolnshire, had been withdrawn.  The animal rights and environmental campaign groups have done a great job, and so has everyone who supported the campaign against this mega-dairy.  However, I believe it is not over yet, as the corporation behind the proposed factory farm still owns the land.  The root cause of the problems facing UK dairy farmers, especially small and family farmers not paid a fair price at the farm gate, also needs to be addressed.

Signage improvements: Diversion and advisory routes

This article suggests changes (and new signage) to modify and improve diversion and advisory route signage, by making them wholly symbolic and language independent as well as metric, which can benefit safety by making the signs easier to read at a glance.  Of course the bare minimum is to leave the designs as is and just metricate. 

I believe however that we can do better, and make the signage more symbolic at the same time, where applicable.  As with all the previous articles in the "Signage improvements" series, examples are given in this article as well. Also stated in this article is where changes are not required, for example recommended lorry routes, many diversion signs, and many signs showing routes avoiding restrictions (such as no left turn), do not require change.