Date Line to be moved to the Atlantic?

The United Nations' Geographic Sciences Council (UN-GSC) has announced the location and date of its upcoming forum on the International Date Line. The council will meet in Lisbon, Portugal, from Monday, the 14th, to Friday, the 18th of June 2010, to discuss proposals to relocate the Date Line from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean.

The International Date Line was first laid down by cartographers in 1830 near the 180th meridian and its alignment was adjusted several times by treaty during the nineteenth century. In the last fifty years, however, trade between North America and Asia has grown so rapidly that businesses on both continents have been strained by their workweeks that only fully overlap on three days out of seven. Experts say that moving the Date Line to the Atlantic Ocean has the potential to bring about a doubling of pan-Pacific trade.

Opponents dismissed the economic rationale for the move citing the disruption that would occur between Europe and the two American continents.

What do you think?

 

Doesn't really matter where the date line is. The whole world is 24/7. You work on the night shift or the day shift. If you want to make the money you work. Doesn't matter whether it's "day" or "night". But it does to me

 

That's not strictly true about "24/7"...... as far as banks are concerned.
Checking my account on-line tonight I noticed that a few of my direct debits which were due on 4th January, were debited to my account already and any credits due 1st of January were yet uncredited.
This is of course because their computers "will all have gone home early on Thursday night and will be having a long week-end."

 

I think it would be a really good idea to move the dateline to the North Sea, then through The Channel and down through the Bay of Biscay.

That way we could really be out of step with the rest of Europe, and perhaps sort a few things out for ourselves.