[LEAPSECS] ITU-R SG7 to consider UTC on October 4

[Zefram]

Steve Allen wrote:

>Listen to the BBC.  Many of the readers will announce that it's

>"X o'clock GMT" when that means "X o'clock British Summer Time".


BBC World Service announces "X o'clock Greenwich Mean Time" and really
means GMT.  (The immediately preceding pips are synchronised to UTC,
not GMT, but the voice announcement doesn't have sub-second precision.)
BBC services aimed at the UK tend to say "X o'clock", not stating a
timezone, and mean UK civil time.  Do you have a specific citation for
an instance where they got it wrong?

Something that *does* say "GMT" and mean "UK civil time" is Microsoft's
timezone software.  The listing "GMT London, Dublin" refers to UK/Irish
civil time (UT+0h/UT+1h).  "GMT Casablanca" refers to Morocco civil
time, which from 1979 to 2007 conveniently happened to be UT+0h all year
round: in the late 1990s I used this as the only way to get a Windows
desktop machine to stick to UT.  From 2008 Morocco has switched back
to a UT+0h/UT+1h arrangement, but of course with different transition
dates from the UK.  Zoneinfo suggests that Moroccans have never actually
called their UT+0h offset "GMT".

-zefram