[NeoTar]

Putting Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland (AKA Ireland) on different timezones strikes me as political suicide for anyone proposing it.

But otherwise I am warm to the proposal. Some tweaks would make it more practical/politically acceptable (keep Portugal and Ireland on the Western Time Zone, don't split up Greece from the islands).

[closewith]

Yes, that's completely absurd. Ireland is more likely to leave the EU than accept timezone partition.

[switch007]

Nonsense. Ireland will never leave the EU. They more likely to accept a time zone difference than leave the EU. They wanted membership desperately in the early 60s but had to wait a decade partly because de Galle hated the Brits. They couldn’t join quick enough.

[closewith]

Are you aware of the accession path Ireland took and why it was linked to UK accession?

Ireland has the highest level of pro-EU sentiment in the bloc and it is still more likely that we will leave than accept a timezone partition with the North. It's not in question. Failure to understand this is a complete failure to understand the country.

[switch007]

I am. What’s your point ?

I know Ireland likes the riches that come with EU membership. They don’t want to return to being a poor country.

It would be a time zone difference, not a partition. Let’s not used such loaded language.

Edit: is the USA “partitioned” or any less united because of multiple timezones?

[closewith]

> I am. What’s your point ?

Then you know that Northern Ireland was a more important issue than EU membership and that remains true. Hence all the hoops jumped through for the Northern Irish Agreement after Brexit.

> I know Ireland likes the riches that come with EU membership. They don’t want to return to being a poor country.

What you're suggesting is risking descent into civil war.

> It would be a time zone difference, not a partition. Let’s not used such loaded language.

If you don't know why I'm using the term partition and why it would be the term immediately applied to this idea, you don't know enough to how know how little you understand this issue.

[switch007]

You condescension is off the scales.

Anyway, in this wild hypothetical, if you left the EU over a time zone difference, it would be funny to watch from just over the other side of the British Isles. It would be almost as ridiculous as Brexit

[adw]

Loaded language is _entirely_ appropriate when you're talking about a frozen war (which, let's be clear, is what we are talking about here).

[dudul]

The US would definitely be more efficient with fewer timezones. Really we should find a way to remove at least one between the 2 coasts. United, no, but the US is not the EU. America is united by default, Europe divided.

[ghaff]

The number of timezones is pretty irrelevant. It's that there is a 3 hour time difference between the East Coast and the West Coast. (And an 8-9 hour time difference between the West Coast and Europe.) But the only real way to deal with that is to shift Pacific Time to Mountain Time.

[dist-epoch]

Not even one of the signatory experts is from UK/Ireland.

They could be completely clueless of what dynamite they are playing with.

[dfawcus]

Yeah, but given they seem to be proposing that the UK change from its current natural position, to what would be permanent BST, it seems daft. (It would help if they'd included the UTC offsets with their diagram)

I'd suggest that ain't going to happen, especially as the UK is no longer a member of the EU, and so this will be ignored.

As I recall part of the issue with the previous time this was proposed was that the UK intended to continuing observing Summer Time in the summer, and hence it would cause issues for Ireland if it had to stop switching.

I guess we can only wait and see...

[M2Ys4U]

>Yeah, but given they seem to be proposing that the UK change from its current natural position, to what would be permanent BST, it seems daft.

They're not, though? The UK would be on UTC/GMT rather than BST.

[dudul]

Same with corsica an hour ahead of continental France. This is idiotic.