TIME, Gentlemen, Please

 Hi Everyone, from Cadiz,

REVISED  December  5,  2008

NEW Detail about  "The Oracle News" (" Cadiz, Seville and Eastern Algarve")

(The newspaper has apparently been around for some time, but now is under new management)

The new managers have introduced some news onto the website - but there is no longer a forum. The circulation area is as yet not certain - not seen in Cadiz City!

I just want to bring your attention to an article in “The Oracle” English language newspaper, specifically for Costa de la Luz, said to be particularly for Cadiz & Seville, Issue 3, 6 May 2008.

Page 11 has an article on “Andalucian Kids amongst Fattest” - and that could mean your young kids as well, folks!

I have been campaigning in the Cadiz area for about a year (mostly telling the authorities about the strange effects of the clocktime in Spain on various, serious aspects of life here – including the REAL reason for pre-school children getting very overweight – not to say their parents – but no offence is intended there, because this forum is hardly television!).

I have quoted a translation of the article in the old TheOracleNews in "pseudo-Spanish" from a computer into the available blog "FORO" selected at the foot of the last page (4) of the website for the very recent Congress on Normalising the Leisure and Work Hours in SPAIN : www.horariosenespana.es  - plus a listing of phrases in English which deplore the Time situation on the clocks (in a blog entitled "Extranjeros . . . ").

 The quoted Professor Berthold Koletzko is understandably led up the garden path by the shyness of the authorities who never explain that the clocks in Spain have never told the time in “realtime” for about a hundred years – neither in Winter, nor in Summer!

Firstly, articles appeared in the Cadiz newspapers claiming that Cadiz Province and City children are the fattest in the land in terms of numbers and degrees of overweight! They could not seem to find a real answer to the problem – a dietician expert even thought that a “nutritional deficiency” might be the factor to increase weight!                                                                                            Strangely, this article, which almost implied something wrong in the upbringing by parents particularly in Cadiz, produced no letters from readers (??).

Secondly, I did take a copy of the article on a Friday directly into the newspaper office with a brief, polite comment to explain the reason for the rotundities – but nothing appeared in the paper over the weekend (including a Sunday edition), nor on the Monday! That made me see red, so I penned the following to the newspaper.

                  THE PHÄRAOH`S NOT FOR SKIMPING !

                       There wás a thin Pháraoh, AKH-NÄTON

                       Whose pólicy t´wás - to put fát on.

                      He´d push lúnch to th´fóre,

                      Eat more dóughnuts at fóur -

                      T´consíderable gáins for Akh-náton (?)

(As expected, not a word further in the papers – except for an article somewhat later which seemed to suggest that compulsive eating was the reason!)

 The basic problem in Spain, influencing a number of factors to complain about, is that the clocks in Summer always show a time throughout the 24-hour day which is effectively faster than two hours ahead of the Sun!

The situation is that B, C and I (Business, Commerce and Industry) in Spain are just not aware of the true status of the time which has been on their clocks for 90 years (as far as Summer is concerned) and more for winter (around 100 yrs).

The fact of most concern here is that true midday on the East Coast of Spain (on the “Greenwich Meridian”) is legally set at 2:00 pm during Summer (1:00 pm in Winter) – and since the Sun takes another ½ an hour to “reach the Portuguese border” in the West, it means 2:30 pm in the Westof Spain! The Spanish population took the virtually unprecedented step in 1918 (probably by apathy) of having lunch and Siesta moved to those later times on the new clockwork – when, previously over the millennia, that used to be at 12:00 o´clock!

BUT, what are B, C and I having their employees (and their pre-school children) do? – Why not have lunch at about 12:30 on the clocks, matching business times in BERLIN?                                                                                                   

You can subtract 2 to 2 and ½ hours (east to west) from that time to see what the time is in realtime for lunch!

So, why are the parents and their pre-school children so hungry at about 5:00 pm on the clock? Pretty clear it is the longer wait than that for schoolchildren!

So, watch those doughnuts at teatime!

Cheers.