I agree with @Fire and @Dovefromabove that "normal time" is winter time. Which for the British people is GMT and for French people is GMT+1.
As things are now, in France, summer time means GMT+2. That means that in the summer when our clocks say it's midday it's actually only 10 am by the sun.
This is particularly irritating to the French living in the West of France. Like most parts of Brittany, I am actually located West of the Greenwich meridian. In Brittany we should be aligned with the UK and Portugal for our time. Well, of course, I am not seriously advocating the use of 2 different official times for my country. But, on the other hand, having the same official time from Brest (4°28′59″ West) to Warsaw, Poland (21°00' East), 1848 kilometres distant is plain ridiculous.
Apparently the EU has been suggesting they stop Daylight Saving but have had to postpone Junker's plans to do that next year. One problem is that Eire would be in a different time zone from Northern Ireland as the Brits have no plans to abandon BST. Like Papi Jo, our summer sun hits its zenith just after 2pm.
Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
"The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
I am late to this discussion but that is because I have been trying to make the most of these bright days since the clocks changed! The time change used not to affect me but as I get older I find it does affect me more. It is said that you need to get out into the bright light to re-set your body clock, well I have been outside most of the day all this week, but I am currently still waking up at 6am rather than 7. We have a daylight simulation alarm clock which is a more gentle way of waking rather than a blaring alarm when it is still pitch black. My OH is retiring next year, can't wait to not need the clock anymore!
"What we can't do is to alter the seasons so that we have more daylight
hours in the winter ... some people I've come across (present company on
the forum excepted) fail to understand this ... some folk seem to think
that they're actually being wilfully deprived of daylight ."
Exactly. It's the injured tone that gets me. "Bloody government/foreigners/orbiting planet stealing our daylight." As Dove says, time is a construct. You can't (and don't) create more protons by moving ideational hours around.
My personal theory is that since the era of globally cheaper/accessible travel (since the 60s) many more British people have experienced places that have year round sunshine, white, sandy beaches and guaranteed nice weather. So they (my aunt, for example) have decided the UK isn't doing it right. Grumble, grumble. They have begun to be more deeply dissatisfied that they can't demand that summer stay, order more sunshine hours on Ebay and fix things at 34oC. "But we live in Britain" I say "we're not supposed to have 34oC weather." But they want the UK to be Tenerife and the powers that be are conspiring to keep us stuck off the coast of Norway and it's not right. "Why don't they let us decide? Bloody elites, telling us what to do. It's alright for them, jetting off to Forn Parts every week. And us left to freeze...."
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