That doesn't look correct. The clock shall always be UTC, you just have to provide the correct local timezone for your area. In other words, 'date -u' should show UTC time, wherever you are, and just 'date' should show local time.

Timezone: Check what 'ls -l /etc/localtime' shows. On my system (standard OS2007, not Mer, but it's like this on my desktop system too) it's a symlink to /usr/share/zoneinfo/<my timezone>