It is probably the best to calculate back to UTC. Assume "2005-06-07 15:07:12" the local time, then convert it as follows to UTC. Use the UTC time to store/manipulate/whatever you want to do.
import time t = time.mktime(time.strptime("2005-06-07 15:07:12", "%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")) print time.ctime(t) offset = time.timezone if time.daylight: offset = time.altzone t += offset print time.ctime(t) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list