Sunday 30 March 2008

WEIGHTY ISSUES


Spotted on the noticeboard of a local church...


MONTHLY ACTIVITIES


3rd Friday in Every Month:


WOMEN

of

ABUNDANCE


Must drop in one Friday...


Meanwhile...

PLEASE REMEMBER!



Clocks in the United Kingdom go on one hour at 01:00 am Sunday morning...

Don't forget or you'll be LATE!!


And now I'm off to give the week's Entertainment Review on BBC Radio 2's Sunday Supplement at 11.30...

Images: Beryl Cook (obviously!) and Walt Disney Productions

8 comments:

David Weeks said...

Benjamin Franklin first suggested Daylight Saving Time in 1784, but it was not until World War I, in 1916, when it was adopted by several counties in Europe that initially rejected the idea.

In France, business hours are generally 9am-6pm Monday to Friday. Lunch is consumed between noon and 2pm and dinner occurs around 8pm-9.30pm. The idea of putting the official time forward one hour during the summer was instituted in France for the first time in 1916. Like Britain, the city of Paris observed a “double summer time” during World War II. Daylight saving time was eliminated in France after World War II, and then reinstated in 1976, following the first oil crisis in 1973. It was justified as a means of economizing energy since the Government sought an annual savings equivalent to 300,000 tons of oil. The “time change" was re-established in France in 1976.

And Iceland? Well they don't change their clocks at all!

David Weeks said...

Turkey will turn its clocks forward by one hour at 3am on March 30, 2008. However, it is uncertain as to if the nation will remain on daylight saving time throughout the year. This uncertainty was sparked by Turkish Energy Minister Hilmi Guler, who announced in March 2008 that the government considered implementing daylight saving time all year round.

David Weeks said...

For Western Europe, including United Kingdom, clocks are moved from 1am to 2am. In Central Europe, including Germany, France, Spain and Italy, clocks are moved from 2am to 3am. Eastern Europe's clocks move from 3am to 4am. Daylight saving time applies to all European Union (EU) countries, including Denmark’s self-governing province of Greenland, as well as parts of Russia, including Moscow and St Petersburg.

David Weeks said...

In the United Kingdom local time during daylight saving time is known as British Summer Time (BST), in Ireland as Irish Summer Time (IST).

Prior to daylight saving time being re-introduced in Sweden on April 6, 1980, a major Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, published an April Fool's joke on April 1 that year. According to the joke, daylight saving time was already introduced almost in secret with nearly no public information, causing chaos with timing and transportation. In reality, this did not happen.

Brian Sibley said...

What an unrivalled source of information you are! You should start a web-site and call it Weeksipedia! :-)

Thank you for all this fascinating detail.

As a child I grew up in Chislehurst, Kent, near the former home of William Willett the man who first proposed Daylight Savings Time in 1907 in a pamphlet entitled The Waste of Daylight.

Although the scheme wasn't adopted until after his death (despite support from the young Winston Churchill) there is a memorial to Willett in nearby Petts Wood in the form of a sundial.

I've always had a soft spot for WW because I did a school project about him that won me a prize: my very first copy of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Thanks Will!


PS: I notice that no one has shown any interest in my local 'Women of Abundance', so it looks like I've got them all to myself!! ;-)

Brian Sibley said...

Fancy making something as serious as Time the subject of an April Fools Day hoax. Trust a Swede! You wouldn't get the British doing a silly. irresponsible thing like that!!

Then again......

On March 30, 1998 the Guinness brewery issued a press release announcing that it had reached an agreement with the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England to be the official beer sponsor of the Observatory's millennium celebration.

According to this agreement, Greenwich Mean Time would be renamed Guinness Mean Time until the end of 1999. In addition, the famous observatory would refer to seconds as "pint drips."

The Financial Times, not realizing that the release was a joke, broke the news in an article in which it discussed how some companies were exploiting the millennium excitement in order to promote their own brand names. It declared that Guinness, with its Greenwich tie-in, was setting a "brash tone for the millennium."

When The Financial Times learned that it had fallen for a joke, it printed a curt retraction, stating that the news it had disclosed "was apparently intended as part of an April 1 spoof."

Diva of Deception said...

Never mind the Daylight Saving...

I just love the Beryl Cook poster; not one I've seen before. I have a framed print in my kitchen/diner and look at it often as it's opposite the chair where I sit when I'm chatting on the phone.... someone bought it for me as she thought the two ladies looked like her and me! At the time I was a bit taken aback and indignant about this.....

Brian Sibley said...

DIVA - Yep, good old Beryl! What a gem! I wonder if she's done a companion piece with chaps in the shower... I bet she could draw a mean rugby-player, don't you? ;-)