As it's been fairly quiet here recently I thought I would mention that Lord Tanlaw, the UK peer who tried and failed to have the UK's legal time changed from GMT to UTC, has been in the news again. He has been complaining about the inaccuracy of the time signal broadcast by the BBC (the "pips") due to the delays introduced by various sorts of digital processing, either by digital radios or Internet streaming. These pips used to be called the Greenwich Time Signal as they were produced by the observatory, but responsibilty for them passed to the BBC some years ago. He was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme yesterday morning and he asked a question in the House of Lords later in the day. There was more about it on the Radio 4 PM programme in the evening, during which a BBC statement was read saying roughly `we know it's a problem and we will probably have to do something about it'. The statement made the interesting point that for DAB digital radios at least, the delay is no worse than that suffered by someone setting their watch by the chimes of Big Ben when standing on the other side of Parliament Square. Lord Tanlaw mentioned that he was a member of the British Horological Institute on the radio in the morning, and declared this interest before asking his question in the Lords. That's presumably why he tried for the change to UTC. Lord Tanlaw's question is in the Lords Hansard at <http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd/pdvn/ lds05/text/50622-02.htm#50622-02_star0>. If you have Real Player you can probably listen to the radio pieces by starting at <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/>. I don't, so I can't be more specific than that. Peter Ilieve peter@aldie.co.uk