Our straight talking Lancashire lass takes a sideways look at the daily news.
Is too much change a good thing?
By
No comments
The coalition government is fast becoming deeply unpopular. Cutbacks, redundancies and hikes in the general cost of living are hitting us hard, and we’re not a nation of happy bunnies right now.
It’s a safe assumption that the coalition will be out on its arse come the 2015 elections. And it seems that they’re hell bent on making as many changes as humanly possible in the time they’ve (probably) got left.
First on the cards were (amongst others) structural changes to the NHS and to our universities with the introduction of sky-high tuition fees. Now they want to re-shuffle our Bank Holidays.
MPs are keen on scrapping May Day in favour of St George’s Day for England and St David’s Day for Wales. Talks of a ‘National Day’ in October to celebrate various British battles are also being held.
The latter makes me quite uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, I’m patriotic, I love Britain and I’m a very proud Northerner. But celebrating the past military exploits of the British Empire smacks of nationalism. I can imagine the types who would relish such a holiday, and I bet they’re closet fans of Nick Griffin.
I also wonder whether these changes are being pushed for ideological reasons. After all, May Day is associated with Labour-Day, past significant political demonstrations and celebrations from organizations on the left of the political spectrum. I guess that Cameron and his millionaire chums don’t like the idea of that so much. But I digress…
So, not content with changing our well-established and beloved Bank Holidays, the coalition also wanted to change time itself.
A recent campaign to introduce ‘Berlin time’ to save daylight hours has been proposed. The idea is to move clocks forward +1 hour in winter and +2 hours in summer.
This is good for people in London and the South. However, the further North you go the darker it will become, until you reach Scotland where you will be able to bask in their permanent state of nightfall. Well, it wouldn’t be as bad as that, but in winter the Scottish sun wouldn’t rise until 10.00am. The alternative is having two time zones in the UK, which frankly is preposterous.
Thankfully this idea has stalled and stopped, for now. However, when the Daylight Saving Private Members Bill is passed in Westminster the government is legally required to look at the advantages of converting to European time. Eek!
In other non-coalition-craziness-related news, the future of printing is set to change forever.
“Big deal,” I hear you say. Well would you be interested if I told you that researchers have developed a way to print body organs using 3D printers?
This isn’t the stuff of science fiction, it’s totally 100% true.
Gosh, changes to UK time, bank holidays and now futuristic 3D printers? Beam me up Scotty, I need a drink!
