[LEAPSECS] Common Calendar Time (CCT) -Brooks Harris

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

I think it is cute you lay all these plans, but how are you going to
sell your new timescale ?

How will you get EU to change UTC to $whatever in all their regulations ?

If you can honestly tell them "It's just a renaming, there is no semantic
difference", you *might* be able to persuade them to do it under an
administrative ruling by the uanimous commisioners.

I belive there have been several hundred attempts at these and only
a handfull of successes during the lifetime of EU.

But as far as I can see, your proposed timescale will not even
allow you contemplate that route.

Since there are semantic changes for the past, it will not apply
to the past in existing regulation under any circumstances ("no
post hoc legislation") so bothering about the definition for the
past is mostly a waste of your time.

For the future, a directive originating in the Commission and
approved in the European Parliament would be able to say:

   "Starting YYYY-MM-DD, in all EU documents for 'UTC' read 'CCT'"

Only taking many, many more words to do so.

The task will be slightly complicated by the fact that EU uses
a number of different words for "UTC" already, amongst these
"GMT", "Weltzeit" and so on.

The directive once approved, would then go to national legislatures
for implementation, where somebody will have to go through all laws
and come up with the necessary ammendments for parlimentary approval.

It's not an impossible process to push through, we do it all the
time, but there needs to a reason for people to spend the effort.

Ohh, and do mind the political minefields.

For instance I doubt you'll find any UK politician willing to push
a s/GMT/$whatever/ legislation since that will just feed the UKIP
trolls and become a factor in the Scottish independence referendum.

So exactly how do you propose to sell this idea ?

Remember, the your "competition", changing the definition of UTC
without retaining the name does not require any laws to be changed.

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