This seems to apply to big things and small. (I have not yet written about President Putin cheerfully or as cheerfully as he can with that eerily smooth face admitting that yes, of course, he had planned to have a war with Georgia for a while before it actually happened and yes, of course, the main strategic object was to discredit Medevedev but I shall. Let me just say that neither of those statements exactly astonished me.)
What did make me smile is
this story about clocks and time zones. Those of us who have to deal with Russia or Russian news stories did note that not so long ago, the government decided to abolish daylight saving and kept the clocks unchanged, winter and summer. Apparently, President Medvedev had decided on this because
he was not allowed to pass any other legislation he wanted to reduce stress in the population. Why it would be stressful to change clocks was not really explained. I have found many characteristics in Russians over the years I have known many of them and that is all my life but I have never found that many of them are easily stressed by having to change clocks twice a year.
In fact, it seems that they are rather unhappy with the situation as it is because they see even less daylight than they would have done otherwise. President Putin has already made it clear that there will be some rethinking on this as "something might not have been thought through".
President Medvedev's other innovation, the abolition of two time-zones, reducing their number to nine across Russia also seems unpopular and is about to be reversed.
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