Medvedev gives a "timely" state of the nation address

With much pomp and circumstance, President Dmitry Medvedev gave his second annual state of the nation address Thursday.

For nearly two hours, he counted off the tasks that stand before the country — battling corruption, improving education and access to medicine, modernizing the economy, supporting the sciences, an easing of electoral laws.

But what really got to the hundreds of ministers and parliamentarians, religious leaders and regional governors gathered in the Kremlin’s grandest hall?

Time zones

Russia spans 11 time zones, if you include the European exclave of Kaliningrad. This, says Medvedev, is terribly inconvenient and so several of those times zones should be cut. As should daylight savings time. “I hope experts will give us objective answers to these questions,” he said.

The crowd, who had listened to his speech with polite applause and glassy eyes til then, was suddenly all abuzz. Even Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who spent most of the speech staring at the ceiling, seemed to take interest.

Time zone issues and daylight savings are not new subjects in Russia, but they’ve never gotten presidential attention before. As Russia switched to daylight savings this summer, a deputy from the nationalist LDPR party accused the move of being a Western plot to weaken Russia.

“A tragic day approaches — the day of the moving of time,” said Sergei Abeltsev (a man whose colorful words have graced this blog before). “They beguiled us with the idea of universal equality and brotherhood, then they promised us to build a society of equal opportunities, and now they’re playing with the most valuable thing a person has — his time,” he said.

Looks like Medvedev took notice. 

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/russia-and-its-neighbors/091112/medvedev-gives-timely-state-the-nation-address