converting MySQL sysdate to local timezone

Problem
You are hosting your MySQL server in a shared host which is in a different country from your application’s local timezone, and you cannot change the MySQL system timezone, but you would like to use sysdate for date comparisons.

Solution
In your SQL query that you use for comparing with the system date/time, use the convert_tz function in MySQL, using the appropriate local time zone (ie Europe/London):
convert_tz(sysdate(),'SYSTEM','Europe/London')