Dark and Light

There's several things that I don't understand about the UK, but the one that plagues me the most is why they insist on being in a different zone than most of the rest of Europe. Right now it's 4:30pm here and with the rain, it's horribly, horribly dark and depressing. If it was 5:30pm, like it is in France and Spain, due south of here, it might be almost tolerable. But no, being an hour later means the sun sets an hour earlier.

Actually, it's in summer that this bothers me the most. On June 21st, the longest day of the year, the sun rises in Dover at the excruciatingly early hour of 4:36am. In Calais, a mere 34 km to the south-east and for the purposes of my rant, close enough in longitude and latitude to be the same, it rises at 5:35. Does this seem fair? Birds and small children don't understand clocks, they understand the sun is up and therefore you (that is, ME) should be up as well. Nearly all of Great Britain is in longitude line with France and Spain, which both use Central European time. Why doesn't Great Britain? WHY? Why make such extraordinarily early sunrises in summer and early sunsets in the winter? It's hardly like this country gets moving at the crack of dawn.