THINGS THAT NIGGLE
ME
TIME
ZONES
Being an Englishman far from
home, I listen to the BBC World Service a lot and every day there are
'trailers' of programs that will soon be broadcast, giving the day and the
time. The broadcast comes from a BBC relay in Singapore with some
Singapore specific announcements during the day and that makes the given
time ambiguous. Whose time? London or Singapore?
I sneaked a complaint into one
of BBC's many blogs and although my complaint was never acknowledged,
London times are now announced as GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)
They haven't quite got it
right. When daylight saving is in use and England's clocks are GMT + 1, we
often get BST (British Summer Time) announced as GMT. Bit of a shock
sometimes if you are timing yourself for an important appointment but then
I'm English. We're rather good at muddling through.
Time is a mess on the Internet
too. "Log in at 10.00 PST" says the message. What's PST? How does it
relate to GMT and how does it relate to my time? Most of us know our
relationship to GMT. I'm GMT + 8 so if everyone quoted times in GMT it
would be simple - I would just add 8 hours in my head.
GMT was 'invented' to make things more
simple. Why not use it and make things easy for everyone?
Now someone wants to
adopt a new standard for International times. Back to your history
books folks and you'll learn why GMT is the world standard. The
people of that small group of islands on the left hand side of Europe (if
you've got the map the right way up) went out in rather fragile
wooden sailing ships, mapped the world and drew the North Pole to
South Pole line to pass through Greenwich (in South London) where one of
the world's first observatories is located.
THE MIDDLE
EAST
In 1948, Britain decided to give up the
Palestine mandate given by the pre-war League of Nations. Before
going, they settled the matter of Jews and Arabs in a manner similar to
their partitioning of India. It is no coincidence that both partitioned
lands have been points of friction and intermittent wars ever
since.
In Israel, the Jews really stirred things
up when they moved their Capital from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. They will
never give up Jerusalem as their ancestral home but neither will the Arabs
as their Grand Mosque now sits upon the original site of the Temple of
Solomon.
So what happens if an irresistible force
hits an immovable object? In the case of Jerusalem, the problem will never
be solved unless someone gives in. But who? Why not
have them both give it up?
Before WWII, Shanghai in KMT ruled China,
was an International City with major European powers having concessions.
Why not Jerusalem?
Judaism, Christianity and Islam all have
claim to an historical connection with Jerusalem so why not have them rule
it jointly? There could be equal numbers of City Fathers elected by the
three communities, a rotating chair, the chairman having an extra
(casting) vote.
Seems a good idea to me but then, I'm just
an ordinary level-headed guy and not a power hungry
politician.
Thank you
for your time and attention,
With kindest regards,
Peter Sidwell
FOUNDER
PSEUDOBLOG #7
