The " Daylight Saving " Obstacle !

The negotiations to allow Britain to disentangle itself from the EU seem to verge from matters of weighty substance - to the ridiculous.  The latest stumbling block to arise is the fate of Daylight Saving across the time zones of Europe.

It seems that an EU consultation on daylight saving earlier this year revealed that 4.6 million European responders showed that seventy-six percent disliked changing their clocks twice a year and wished for daylight saving to be abolished.   As a result, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission was putting forward  a bill to abolish daylight saving.

This throws the spotlight on that all important obstacle to an orderly British departure, the need for an open border between Northern Ireland and Ireland..  If Ireland adheres to the cessation of daylight saving along with the rest of Europe there will be a time difference of one hour between Belfast and London and that could be crucial to trade between the two segments of Ireland.

To further complicate the matter, in 2012 there was a move in Britain to extend daylight saving onto an all year basis to lower road deaths, save energy and boost jobs and tourism.   This was scuppered by the vote of Scottish parliamentarians and supporters noted that the EU consultation which delivered a vote against daylight saving was responded by just 13,200 Britons and 8,000 Irish south of the border.

The accord which brought peace in Ireland is already under threat from political differences and so far only theoretical solutions to the border impasse have been forthcoming.  It would be very easy for Ireland to slip back into the open warfare that roiled both sides of the border for many decades as the issue of sovereignty runs deep.

Initially, the issue that divided Ireland was one of religion.  Northern Ireland was a Protestant bastion and the rest of Ireland was devoutly Roman Catholic.  The laws of the church were the laws of Ireland and as a consequence contraception was prohibited and abortion was illegal in all and any circumstances.

Today, that situation has vastly changed.  Contraceptives are freely and legally available to all and Ireland has voted to allow same sex marriages, but the bogey of religion still runs too deep to permit the thought of Ireland becoming a united country to become a reality.   It would be the obvious answer to the Brexit problem but that solution is probably still a century into the future.

Perhaps in the interests of European uniformity Britain needs to give ground on that daylight saving issue.  There is no doubt that different time zones will play havoc with commercial practice and a degree of central uniformity would have advantages.  That could become part of the trading of principles that are part of the disassociation process.   Reality needs to play a part in achieving a working solution.