[LEAPSECS] ITU-R SG7 to consider UTC on October 4

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <20100809104622.GC32896 at davros.org>, "Clive D.W. Feather" writes:

>Poul-Henning Kamp said:



>> and we have a constitution for Denmark that has

>> relevant wording in it.

>

>Pardon me for being confused, [...]


In Denmark the parliament reigns supreme, (Note to constitutional
writers:  This is a _really_ bad idea for a one-chamber setup!)
and if they say that the law meant to say "UTC+1h" that's what
the law means, even if they do not put it directly in a law.

The courts will defer such questions to the legislature unless there
are other controlling documents (human rights, EU treaties etc).


>That was a separate point. You said that the EU directive redefines the

>basis of legal time in Denmark (this was in the context of UT v UTC).


It does.

They ratified the EU directive in a Danish law, most recently
(http://retsinformation.w0.dk/print.aspx?id=22064) which defines
that DST ("sommertid") starts 02:00 (local time) (etc).

So now we have:
	
A) The law about "determination of the time" says solar time at -15long.

B) EU directive says DST starts at 01:00Z

C) directive ratifying law says that is 02:00 local time.

Ta-dah!

Thanks to the wonder of sloppy legislating and a lack of a constitutioal
court in Denmark,  Denmark is now aligned to UTC while still having
a valid, in force, law on the books that says something different.

But it is the directive that links to UTC, not the law:  You only find
the link if you read the underlying EU directive.

Poul-Henning

-- 
Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG         | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer       | BSD since 4.3-tahoe    
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.