City buildings stuck in time warp

This clock opposite a Belfast station has stopped

Belfast is not ticking along nicely if you are relying on the city's many clocks to keep you up to the minute.

For a second, you might think it is the city that time forgot, with several clocks either stopped or telling the wrong time.

And the situation has led to just a little frustration among the public.

However, a clock expert from County Down thinks he has the answer to the time dilemma.

David Dunlop from Time and Tide Antiques, who has 90 clocks in his shop and home in Portaferry, said the annual change of time was the main cause of the problem.

"When the clocks go back and forwards in the summer time and autumn time a lot of these public clocks are not set for that," he said.

Time stands still at Chichester Street in the city centre

"The modern clock can be controlled from an atomic clock in Rugby, England, which can set the time from there and it jumps back and forward by itself."

One jeweller in the city, who did not want to be named, said the problem with their public clock, which is running an hour slow, was down to satellite technology.

Mr Dunlop believes that the solution to the problem is simple.

"If these electric public clocks were radio controlled, it would make things a lot easier," he said.

"The analogue dial with the normal 12 hours and two hands is far easier to read but the problem with those, which revolve mechanically, is that there has to be a connection with the quartz movement to drive them.

The clock at the Gasworks on the Ormeau Road is another offender

"The digital ones are totally quartz, totally electronic, but the other ones have to be half one and half the other system and the connection between the two isn't very satisfactory."

Marie Rooney from Clonard, in the west of the city, said the council should do something to correct the clocks.

"I would notice it especially when the time changes in the summer and in the winter," she said.

"Maybe there is a problem changing the time on the clocks, maybe it is because they are up so high.

"It doesn't really bother me but then, my watch has to be dead on, my son keeps it spot on because they call me GMT - Greenwich Mean Time - because I always have to have the correct, precise time."