On Sat, Jun 5, 2010 at 1:24 PM, anatoly techtonik
<report@bugs.python.org> wrote:
..
> As for offtopic UTC vs GMT - I doubt there is a way to clearly express that the offset sign of the
> returned values is negated in comparison with real "UTC offsets" without resorting to some
> king of alternative east/west scale.

Sure there is.  Here is how RFC 3339 handles this:

"""
   Numeric offsets are calculated as "local time minus UTC".  So the
   equivalent time in UTC can be determined by subtracting the offset
   from the local time.
"""

and here is a quote from MacOS man page for tzset:

"""
           offset       Indicates the value one must add to the local
time to arrive at Coor-
                        dinated Universal Time.
"""

No geographic reference needed.  (And the issue is not UTC vs. GMT:
both UTC and GMT are timescales, sometimes even considered the same.
The off-topic issue is UTC vs. Prime Meridian.)