Wednesday 23 March 2011

into the daylight



This Sunday (27th March) Russia puts its clocks forward one hour to Daylight Saving Time (DST) - or what the English tend to call Summertime - so its going to stay lighter later. This matches most of the rest of Europe and keeps the time difference between Moscow and the UK at 3 hours. But then that's it, no more going back. Legislation has just been passed by the Duma to keep to GMT+4, for Moscow forever (and meanwhile time zones across the Russian Federation have also been reduced from 11 to 9).  President Dmitry Medvedev was quoted as saying: "It really disturbs the human biorhythm. It's just irritating. People either oversleep or wake up early and don't know what to do with the hour." According to recent studies by the Academy of Medical Sciences "on the first day after the transition to DST, one in five people are late for work or their morning commute."
Well of course that is a huge surprise. Given that Muscovites are always late. For everything. So I am looking forward to increased punctuality, it not by the end of March at least in Autumn when the clocks would otherwise be changing back.

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