At the first stroke we’ll be on atomic time...

THE FRIDAY THING
THIS New Year’s Eve there was more than usual resonance to the passage of time at least as far as we in the UK are concerned. Greenwich Mean Time (the much loved GMT) may soon be no more.

Inevitably the French and the Germans want to see the back of GMT and have joined the Americans in trying to replace it with time defined by a linked collection of 400 atomic clocks.

And no, I don’t know why 400 clocks are needed; one has always been enough for me. Heaven knows what Professor Stephen Hawking would make of all this messing about with GMT and a switch to International Atomic Time (will we still have the pips on Radio 4, I wonder?) and will it alter his view that time is not a single railway line going in one direction but a dual-line railway that can be taken both ways.

I think it means that as well as going backwards in time we can travel forward in time which will be handy when you are ready for your dinner at 10 in the morning.

Apparently unbeknown to me and probably you, too, the guardians of global time (I have enough trouble setting my new digital alarm clock) have been using “leap seconds” to synchronise time though whether that enables her indoors to get ready to go out any quicker is an issue that Prof Hawking might like to address.

It’s for travelling that China is keen to change to the new atomic clocks (and it doesn’t mean the timetable of the Uppermill-Huddersfield bus) but to make it easier for a planned moon landing and for China to circle the planet with satellites, all of which sounds pretty scary to me.

But it looks as though China will get its way and time will be changed so we have to hope we don’t end up like the Samoans who chose to miss an entire day to keep the country aligned.

So now you know. Save up your leap seconds if ever there’s a day you want to avoid.



IF you were unlucky enough to have the presents stolen from underneath the Christmas tree this year or to have the metal taken off your church roof, do not despair; you are in good company.

Apparently the police themselves were among the biggest victims of crime last year with 8,000 thefts, including police cars, uniforms and even handcuffs being, as it were, nicked from the nick.

In fact new figures show that a crime takes place every hour in Britain’s police stations and while the theft of handcuffs and uniforms night be justified in terms of spicing up a jaded love life, stealing chairs, golf clubs and flowers is more mundane.

In Derbyshire, police hats are apparently regularly stolen from the heads of officers in the street.

Maybe that passes for entertainment in Derbyshire.

I suppose all that can be said is what chance do the rest of us have of protecting ourselves from thieves and villains if those charged with protecting us are victims of crime on such a grand scale themselves.



FINAL WORD: There used to be a time when birthday and New Year honours went exclusively to solid local folk who had done good deeds for their local community.

If that was still true today, Oldham would be awash with holders of OBEs. MBEs and CBEs and the rest instead of the paltry numbers we see today.

It seems that the rules or the criteria have changed and these days, you have to effectively buy your award, not with tireless efforts on behalf of your neighbours but with hard cash for the Tory party. I can see nothing honourable in that.