Ben Gummer’s eulogy for our friend Russell

Funeral service for Cllr Russell Harsant: 7th February 2012

This will be meeting at 5.30 at Grafton House.  I know that this is a work unfriendly time but if you want to kill off local democracy like David Ellesmere does, you’d want to hold all four committee meetings in two evenings.  That way you’d get the unpleasant business of local representation over with as soon as possible.

Being Recognized – sort of…

It’s the first time this has happened to me.  At a carol service in St Matthew’s church on Sunday a lady came up to me and said “has anyone ever told you you look like Ben Gummer”?  For once, I was completely lost for words.

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Does that make you feel (a) youger or (b) older?

But I will.

"I'm a bit like a sort of cab for hire," Stephen Byers

You can find a map here.

So the inner nerd awakes.

Central European Time is centered around Berlin. When Germany unified it was under different time zones as Cologne was considerably to the West of Konigsberg. It started with the railways in 1874 when the train timetables in North Germany went on to what was known then as “Berlin Time”.  In 1893 the German Empire made one of their many unifying gestures (like the Kulturkampf) and by law put all of Germany from occupied Alsace to the Polish districts to the east under the same time. Naturally this would be Central European Time (one hour from GMT) which was only a few minutes off Berlin’s “natural” time.

The only reason that Paris is on Berlin time is that in 1940 it changed its time to the same time as Berlin.  I’m not sure whether that was a war time measure from the dying government of France or an act of unification from the German occupation authorities and the Euro-Federalist Petainist government.  Whatever it was it did not go back to its natural time.  The Low Countries also chanmged their clocks to Berlin Time in 1940. 

So it’s not Paris time. Paris and London are in the same natural time zone (ie when chronological and natural times are in tune). Berlin is in the next time zone along.

An interesting fact, when Luxembourg still considered itself a German state it changed its time to Central European Time in 1904.  After the defeat of Germany, and not co-incidentally the withdrawal of the German wartime occupation in 1918, Luxembourg went back to a more natural time.

To find out more please contact Shelley on 07887 684 577.

But we should not worry in Liverpool as in Liverpool the Labour party was a cosy and complacent party machine that got a shock when it lost power a few years ago.  While in Ipswich…  Oh dear, now I see the problem.