The British were involved in the two systems that represent the links between astronomy and timekeeping but unfortunately adopted a cake-and-eat-it approach just as their political system is in shambles with incompatible convictions. The difference is that the so-called brexit is a minor issue compared to the astronomical equivalent.

The British have set up an untenable competition between the RA/Dec and Lat/Long systems in tandem with the calendar system and the 24 hour clock system for what constitutes the basic fact for one rotation with cause and effect being the casualty in the mess.

The Lat/Long system itself is an outrigger of the calendar framework but retains the latitudinal speeds in tandem with the 24 hour system while RA/Dec has no such correlation between planetary geometry nor rotation.

If the brexit situation has taught people anything, it is the virulent defense of untenable ideas that foster division and confusion in a society but due to severely limited reasoning. A more expansive approach would permit more reasonable voices to surface but with the academic version so ingrained after centuries of following a careless mistake, few can ascend to the higher reasoning needed to deal with this urgent matter.

The British here and their hapless colonists are lost to old world politics in order to preserve their identities that astronomers are first and foremost mathematical theorists but this is an accident of the twists and turns of European history.