Being mean about time - Telegraph As a punishment for the Mad Hatter "murdering the time" while singing, the Queen of Hearts decreed that it should always be tea time for him and the March Hare. A similar experience is available in a limited form for those who live at a border between time zones, such as that between Spain and Portugal. Anyone who wants a long lunch may eat in Spain first, then walk over the bridge to find it is still lunchtime in Portugal. When a devolved parliament for Scotland was established in 1999, control of time was reserved to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Tonight the clocks go back, but if Scotland were to vote for independence, then it might retain Greenwich Mean Time all the year round or, indeed, make it forever time for scones and home-made preserves. There is such as thing as the real time: noon is when the sun is highest in the sky. It is not a longitude problem, for time does not vary according to how far north you are. But it does vary as you travel from east to west. For every degree of the Earth's circumference, there are four minutes" difference in time. So, if you travel west from London, at Oxford, one and quarter degrees west of Greenwich, it is five minutes earlier. That is why Great Tom rings out the curfew at 9.05pm. But GMT must remain sacred. England's neighbours the Scots, and their cows, may choose to lie in for an hour, if they wish. We'll still know the real time.