I had not heard the proposal mentioned by Gromit concerning European Standard Time. Another example of proposed (or more likely already agreed) legislation by the EU about which little is heard and no debate has taken place.
The EU covers about 40 degrees of longitude from the Black Sea coast of Romania to the west coast of Ireland. This represents a difference in sunrise/sunset times of about two and a half hours. By contrast the mainland of the USA covers about 55 degrees but they see fit to divide their country into four time zones (roughly fifteen degrees each, covering one hour of sunrise/sunset time).
Just what is it about the EU that it sees the necessity to standardise time across such a distance? It gets dark in Romania two and a half hours before it does so in Kerry, yet under this proposal clocks in both locations will show the same time.
People in the UK manage to do business with those in the US, although the time difference may be between five and nine hours. Those in the east of the US manage to talk to those on the western seaboard even though they are four hours adrift. Yet people in Europe cannot cope with time differences of one or two hours.
I imagine we will still change our clocks in Spring and Autumn (thus making the UK one hour ahead of GMT in the winter, two in the summer). This means it will stay light until 11pm in June and dark until 9am in December. Is that really what everybody wants?