the reply from the guy who set it up is tis Brion:
addendum:
After some detective work, I think I'm on the trail. In function date() in languages/Language.php, there's a call "$ts = wfTimestamp(TS_MW,$ts);", which adjusts the time stamp for some reason, and which wasn't in version 1.3.1. When I remove that, the dates reported in the recent changes list look more sensible. That wfTimestamp function is used all over the place, so I'll have to see what it's supposed to be doing.
does this make sense to anyone? TIA, again.