Clockmakers express delight at EU plan to decimalise time

Eurocrats last night announced ambitious plans to decimalise the 24-hour clock in all 12 member states of the European Union by the end of this year, to a chorus of incredulous protest from Eurosceptics and business leaders.

The implementation of the scheme does not require the consent of the British government (as it was unanimously voted for by an eight-member EU committee linked to the crisis-hit continental clock-manufacturing industry), and will become the only legal time in the UK from next January.

Eurobosses have decided to base the new clock on the metric system. So, instead of the 24 hours in a day as at present, the new clock with have just ten new "Eurohours", each equivalent to two hours and twenty-four minutes of old time. In another break from the past, each Eurohour will no longer contain sixty minutes but 100, and each minute will be made up of 100 seconds. It has yet to be determined exactly how long the new second is equivalent to, although several large computers had been working on it since last Friday, according to EU Project Time supremo Paddy O'Flannels yesterday.

Mr O'Flannels assured shell-shocked journalists that as soon as exact old-for-new matches had been determined, conversion charts would be issued, possibly as early as mid-December. Replacing all of Europe's 720 billion clocks in time for "T Day" on January 1st will be a tall order, he admitted, but he was sure things would be "just great" in the end.

Asked how this might affect computers installed at nuclear facilities, airports and — crucially — the clocks in video recorders, Mr O'Flannels recalled the "misplaced hysteria" that surrounded the predicted impact of the Millennium Bug two years ago. "We won't bother spending that amount of money again," he assured his concerned audience.

Mr O'Flannels angrily rejected any suggestion that pis*sing about with a system that dates back thousands of years was a waste of time and money. He claimed that millions of businesses across Euro-land had been clamouring for a reform of time for some time, with many seeing it as archaic, illogical and a fundamental barrier to economic progress and social change.

Indeed, in the words of one Belgian clockmaker at the press conference, the current clock is "confusing to those unfamiliar with our system of counting" and any system which reduces everything to multiples of ten "will really help the average Belgian". The immediate scrapping of all the clocks and watches ever owned in Belgium will create dozens of new jobs among the disadvantaged Waloon population, he argued.

Eurosceptics have predictably savaged the plans, while the CBI condemned "the unnecessary burden this ludicrous and fascist new scheme will place on businesses, especially those with a lot of clocks".

In what is widely predicted to become one of the bitterest battlegrounds between Brussels and our Free Press™ in the lead-up to "T Day", even Big Ben will require a major facelift to avoid being torn down. Our artist's impression shows how it might look next year, with just ten hours. European law will also forbid the use of Roman numerals (except for BBC programme credits), so big fat numbers will also appear on the clock face for the first time. The time shown in our picture is 5.31 Eurotime.

The row has threatened to split Britain, resulting in some high-profile bust-ups. Yesterday, Carol Vorderman and Richard Whiteley publicly clashed during the filming of an episode of Countdown. Carol even broke her long-standing vow of political neutrality to come out in favour of the plans (though she later admitted that it took her at least ten minutes to work out how long the 30-second Countdown jingle should now be). True Brit that he is, Whiteley leapt to the defence of Queen and Country in an incoherent and slightly chauvinistic ramble which attracted enthusiastic support from besweatered guest Giles Brandreth.

In the interests of balanced reporting, The Rockall Times today assembled 17 white van men, two Tory pensioner activists with strong family links to the BNP, and a direct descendent of St George in Bradford to discuss the impact of the Eurohour. In between explaining how burning down kebab shops and opposition to further European integration could easily form part of the same political outlook, our panel of experts also managed to string together a few large words like "Brussells", "Enoch Powell" and "Rivers of blood".