[LEAPSECS] Ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte ?

[Rob Seaman]

Tony Finch wrote:


> if the people in a country or region don't like the alignment between their clocks and the sun, they can use their political processes to change their timezone offset and/or DST rules.



But Jacob Rees-Mogg's suggestion that:


> "Somerset should have its own time zone, with its clocks running up to 15 minutes behind the rest of the UK."


Was met here with reactions ranging from gentle bemusement to outright sarcastic rejection.  Meanwhile, Ian Batten replied to a rhetorical gedanken:


> I see no particular reason why a zonetime shift every year would be be an insurmountable problem.  They'd all be in the same direction, so all you need is to drop one of the DST changeover dates


(Note that only 10-15% of the world observes DST.)  Ian continued:


> Introduced at no notice there might be some fun and games, but I don't see anything that wouldn't sort itself out after a day.


This echoes Ben Franklin's satirical essay (http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/franklin3.html):


> All the difficulty will be in the first two or three days; after which the reformation will be as natural and easy as the present irregularity; for, ce n'est que le premier pas qui coûte.  [it is only the first step that costs]


(Correction of the translation welcome.)

But Michael Deckers notes a problem:


> Nobody would use the Gregorian calendar if the IERS determined the leap years only a year in advance.


I submit that replacing our common worldwide civil timekeeping infrastructure with a hodgepodge of local governance through willy-nilly timezone roulette would be 1) a bad idea, and 2) never enacted, and is 3) not mentioned in the work products of ITU-R Study Group 7.

Rob