Why don’t the British join the rest of western Europe in their time zone, How long have they been an hour apart ?
Perhaps this will help:
It’s not us that’s ‘apart’ - it’s everybody else.
Quite. Have you not heard of Greenwich Meantime?
Because we’re British and the rest of them are Europe. We’re not them, we’re us!
Famous newspaper headline: “Fog in Channel. Europe cut off.”
Not to mention that the little finger that sticks out into the Atlantic is Land’s End.
Or
“When it is spoken slowly and distinctly I don’t see why English can’t be understood by everyone.”
A few years ago Portugal changed to the same time zone as the UK. So when you cross the border between Portugal and Spain you have to change you watch. One part of Spain (the Canary Islands) also has the same time-zone as the UK.
At least that’s not unique to Britain - there’s a Spanish cape named Finisterre and a French département named Finistère, both coming from Latin “finis terrae” - land’s end.
Btw - it’s actually true that France and Spain, which are on Central European Time, ought to have the same time zone as Britain, if judged purely geographically - it’s sufficiently far to the west of Central Europe. For political and historical reasons, these countries prefer to stick to CET.
The real question might be why so few European countries use the same time zone as the UK. The French did so after 1911, having accepted that Paris Mean Time was a lost cause, and the Belgians had already been doing so since 1892. It was only because of World War II that they went over to Central European Time.