CLOCKS 'SPRING' FORWARD...

In SPRING the clocks 'spring forward' (and in AUTUMN they 'Fall' back) so today 1 am becomes 2 am. 

In the UK the clocks go forward 1 hour at 1am on the last Sunday in March, and back 1 hour at 2am on the last Sunday in October.  (This is our educational slot, by the way!)

Although GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) and UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) share the same current time in practice, there is a basic difference between the two:

GMT is a time zone officially used in some European and African countries. The time can be displayed using both the 24-hour format (0 - 24) or the 12-hour format (1 - 12 am/pm).

UTC is not a time zone, but a time standard that is the basis for civil time and time zones worldwide. This means that no country or territory officially uses UTC as a local time.

UTC, GMT and Daylight Saving Time...

Neither UTC nor GMT ever change for Daylight Saving Time (DST). However, some of the countries that use GMT switch to different time zones during their DST period.

For example, the United Kingdom has British Summer Time (BST), which is one hour ahead of GMT, during the summer months.

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In Spring of 2019 MEPs voted to approve plans for European Union member states to abolish clock changes if they want.

Countries are expected to choose to either remain permanently on summer or winter time, although Portugal and Greece are among those which have previously indicated they would rather retain the present system.

It is more than a 100 years since the changing the clocks was first established in the UK under the Summer Time Act 1916. Despite the results of the EU survey suggesting that 82% of British respondents wanted to abolish DST, there does not seem to be any great political will to do so. Which means we can still all look forward to gaining an hour’s sleep when the clocks go back again on Sunday 27 October.

Source: The Guardian website here...