UK sleep experts say it's time to kill daylight saving for good

The streets of Soho aren't alive with disco or bellbottoms anymore, so maybe it's time to ditch another '70s icon we should have outgrown by now, says the British Sleep Society (BSS). A group of researchers in the UK affiliated with the BSS published a paper this week calling for the permanent abolition of Daylight Saving Time …

[katrinab]

The EU were supposed to be getting rid of summer-time. They should get a move on and implement it, and when they do, we should make the change on the same day.

The reasoning being: Northern Ireland should be on the same timezone as the rest of the UK. Northern Ireland should also be on the same timezone as Ireland. Ireland is in the EU and therefore has to follow EU rules.

Also, at work, I have a lot of contact with people in Italy. Knowing there is always a 1 hour time difference makes scheduling meetings a lot easier.

[Neil Barnes]

Well, not to be picky, but as CET always follows UK time - it changes on the same weekends - it's _always_ an hour time difference to most of the EU.

Though Portugal runs on UK times.

[MiguelC]

Looking at the time zones map, it's pretty clear why Portugal follows the same hour as the UK and not CET. It's not very understandable why the UK is on that time zone, though :)

[Brewster's Angle Grinder]

"GMT" is the natural solar time of the UK; i.e. the sun is roughly directly overhead at midday. (Although it varies according to how far you are from the Greenwich meridian and over the course of the year.)

[An ominous cow herd]

So it's like mom's recount of the military parade, "they were all out of step but my son"?

[Dinanziame]

Though GMT is the "natural" solar time, it is quite obvious that people naturally choose not to follow it. Very few people wake up before 6AM, yet almost everybody goes to bed after 6pm. The average mid-waking time of most people is at 2pm.

[Piro]

my alarm goes off at 5:30

Still, I get more evening after work, so that's something.

[Patrick R]

people naturally choose not to follow it

Following the natural solar time doesn't automatically mean having your day symetrically set on the sun's journey.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

>it's pretty clear why Portugal follows the same hour as the UK and not CET.

For some reason all the other countries in Europe switched to Berlin time during the early 1940s. Portugal opted out

[Bebu]

Ministry of Funny Walks?

For some reason all the other countries in Europe switched to Berlin time during the early 1940s. Portugal opted out

The portuguese were rubbish at that decade's funny march styles so I guess they weren't invited to the party.

[F. Frederick Skitty]

Re: Ministry of Funny Walks?

Arguably the Portuguese were very good at being fascists, since the Salazar regime survived for forty years (1933-74). Like Franco, Salazar was able to avoid major entanglement in World War II and even aided the Allies when it seemed likely they'd win.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ministry of Funny Walks?

The headaches Portugal could have created for the Atlantic convoys (and air-bridge) would have been significant, what with the Azores being an important staging post for both.

In a similar vein, considerable concessions were offered to the Republic of Ireland for use of bases for ASW operations that weren't accepted. This became less critical as the likes of the Liberator became available for very long range patrol work; though in 1940/41 would have been invaluable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ministry of Funny Walks?

or is it because they were invaded by the Red Coats somewhen around 1800?

[nobody who matters]

The UK used to change the clocks a week before the rest of Europe (ie. the weekend closest to the equinox), and it was the UK that re-aligned the change date to harmonise with the rest of the EU in 2002.

[John Brown (no body)]

Yes, I remember going on a school exchange visit and when we went over, there was no time change, but we had to change our watches on the way back :-)

[Phil O'Sophical]

The EU were supposed to be getting rid of summer-time. They should get a move on and implement it

The problem the EU has is that although it can specify when the member countries change to/from summer time, it does not have the power to decide which timezone individual members use. The EU could abolish it, and then find that France chooses to stay on GMT+1 'winter' time, but Spain opts for GMT+2 'summer' time all year round. It's so concerned about the possible chaos that it's easier to do nothing.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

The Eu could simply solve this by having members countries switch between French and Belgian time as the parliament moves between Strasburg and Brussels

[Charlie Clark]

Nonsense, it's actually all down to the member states. There was a "consultation" in 2019 with an overwhelming response to drop the change, though turnout was miniscule, and the Commission handed it over to member states who have since studiously avoided the issue.

Getting rid of it would now impose no technical restraints and it would be a good opportunity to adjust the odd time zone: Spain should definitely move to GMT and it's arguable that Poland should be +0200.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Which bit is nonsense? You can read the EU's statement here: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/seasonal-time-changes/ The parliament adopted the position in 2021, the Council has not yet come to a decision, nor even a timeline. The directive to fix the date of the change entered into force in 2001, but "Member states are free to decide which time zone they want to be in", so that cannot be imposed on them.

[Shalghar]

Well the dictatorship of the council has more important things to do than commit to one of the few things that seemed to be a bit democratic. Cant have the serfs getting ideas above their stations, can we ?

And please dont give that propaganda that the EU lets members decide for themselves, just take a look at the multitude of sanctions that are conjured whenever some member dares to step a nanometer out of line.

Its a major pass the buck. Want to do something your voters really dislike ? Give a call to your accomplices in brussels and see it coming back "from the EU, sorry no can do".

[Anonymous Coward]

If Poland were to be +0200 and say Germany +0100, aside from that being a pain for the considerable cross-border trade, what should countries like Austria and Czechia do, laterally spanning both Germany and Poland?

[John Brown (no body)]

Clearly it just needs a strong leader to enforce the time-zones and re-draw the various nations borders into nice vertical lines aligning with the UK defined time-zones.

[Disgusted of Cheltenham]

Technically the Irish are good Europeans and have GMT+1 as standard, but go back an hour in winter (IWT Irish winter time), thus keeping in time with the UK all year.

[naive]

I hate to break the news, but the times that the Sun never sets in the British empire are over for quite some time.

You guys drive at the wrong side of the road, and fail to comply to European time standards.

Just stay in your Island that the Romans already despised and leave us Europeans in peace.

Daylight saving time is great, leaves one some daylight in summer for outdoors activities after work.

[aks]

Simply get up earlier. Solves your problem without affecting the rest of us.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're asking the French, Spanish and Italians to get up earlier? Good luck with that!

[Greybearded old scrote]

I hate to break the news, but the times that the Sun never sets in the British empire are over for quite some time.

Actually not. Yet.

[SundogUK]

Seriously? "...leave us Europeans in peace"?

How often have we had to come over and sort your shit out for you? Napoleon? WW1? WW2?

[Strahd Ivarius]

without these pesky British youngsters meddling in European matters, we would have got far earlier an unified Europe under Napoleon's rule!

[Anonymous Coward]

"How often have we had to come over and sort your shit out for you?"

Down boy. You never did any of that.

[F. Frederick Skitty]

"You guys drive at the wrong side of the road".

75 countries would disagree with you.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also those 75 drive on the right side.

[DoctorPaul]

And that 1 hour difference means that inter-business communication isn't available for 4 hours every day. There's an hour in the morning where just one group is at work, then the equivalent hour at the end of the working day, plus the lunch hours don't overlap losing another 2 hours.

[may_i]

Get rid of DST now!

Here in the soon to be frozen wastelands of Sweden, I'd really appreciate not having to get up when it is dark for a few months longer.

[The Dogs Meevonks]

Re: Get rid of DST now!

Even when I used to work 9-5 Monday to Friday... I went to work in the dark and I went home in the dark. If not for the occasional glimpse out of a window, I only ever saw the sun on weekends... and as this is the UK, barely saw it then either due to the low hanging grey clouds that populate the skies for the majority of Oct-Mar

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Get rid of DST now!

I seem to remember that Scandinavian countries are most even of moving the clocks.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

I disagree

I want double daylight savings. Two hours of sunlight before most people have even left the house in the morning is a waste.

[LenG]

Re: I disagree

You don't need to change the clocks twice a year to get that but the change itself is bad for health and I suspect the longer double change would be even worse

[John Robson]

Re: I disagree

DDST isn't a double change, it's just changing between +1 to +2

Sleep experts all seem to ignore the fact that some people just function better later in the day (or even deep into the night)

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: I disagree

Sleep experts all seem to ignore the fact that some people just function better later in the day (or even deep into the night)

Which surely has nothing to do with which numbers show up on a clock face?

[John Robson]

Re: I disagree

Correct - nothing to do with the numbers on the clock face. But saying that "additional light in the early morning" is more important than light later in the day seems to be predicated on everyone being "best" up and about early, which isn't the case.

There is no point in it already being light when someone gets up in the morning.

There is no point in it still being light after bedtime either.

But people aren't uniform, so there isn't a single bedtime or waking up time - but there was a YouGov study a couple of years ago...

But more Britons report being night owls than morning larks (44% to 33%).

About half of us go to bed between 10 and 11, a quarter between 11:30 and 12:30, and ten percent even later.

That's only 12% of people going to bed before 10...

Annoyingly that study didn't seem to ask when people got up... but I think it's probably safe to say that before 7am (sunrise) doesn't cover the whole population, whereas practically the entire population is still up at quarter to five (sunset) - so pushing the clocks around to make it light into the evening is going to benefit more people than those who benefit from the extra time in the morning sun.

Personally I'd rather scrap DST entirely and have offices/schools/shops etc shift their timetables - if you really want to move times that you do things, then just move the times that you do things.

You might even get them moving times around slightly differently and spreading peak loads on national infrastructure.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I disagree

DDST was a wartime invention, for when the factories could not operate at night for fear of lights being a target for navigation and/or bomb aiming.

The weak excuse today is that it relates to sheep farmers needs in the Highlands are tosh - you get up when you need to to tend to the sheep. Not worry about whether the clock face reads 6, 7 or 8.

Services like banking, etc. are (almost) all digital now outside of handling cash, and so, the rigid 9-5 isn't needed any more.

Then again, you get some really dumb decisions like schools insisting that ALL kids be dropped off at 8.45+- 15 minutes, maximum. The consequences of this for employees are obvious and self explanatory. Some manager on their high horse insisting on rigid 9AM isn't going to win over their employees with kids that way.

[John Robson]

Re: I disagree

"The weak excuse today is that it relates to sheep farmers needs in the Highlands are tosh - you get up when you need to to tend to the sheep. Not worry about whether the clock face reads 6, 7 or 8."

Particularly nowadays when you aren't milking the cows in order to get milk to market before it opens.

With modern refrigeration and abuse (pasteurisation) of the milk it lasts well over a week, so it getting to the processing centres later on the clock isn't important.

[collinsl]

Re: I disagree

No, however you still need to milk the cows when they're ready to be milked, otherwise they get sore udders and mastitis and lots of other uncomfortable and painful problems.

Generally they need milking twice a day, once in the morning and once in the afternoon.

[John Robson]

Re: I disagree

Of course you need to milk them twice a day, but the actual clock time isn't relevant - since you don't need to get the milk to market before the rest of the world wakes up so that people can have fresh milk that day.

What a time shift does, *if* a farmer milks at a given time, is make one milking an hour late, and one an hour early - surely less favourable for the cows than gradually shifting milking times (i.e. following the sun, or just gradually moving the time).

But if you're going to gradually move the time anyway, the DST nonsense doesn't help.

[nobody who matters]

Re: I disagree

We never did need to worry about the clock time, the cows are ready for milking at about the same time regardless of the clock time, but the actual time that they feel the need to be milked is determined by the interval between milkings set by the individual farm - there are some that milk three times a day. All changing the clocks does is make it annoying for the dairymen, and always did, but in practise an hour makes only a little difference to the cows.

Since the dairy processing industry decided to stop collecting milk from each farm every day (some years ago now), and therefore some of the milk has to be stored on farm for 48+ hours, it has often started to deteriorate before reaching the dairy and does not necessarily keep for as long as a week without beginning to taste 'off'.

[John Robson]

Re: I disagree

"Since the dairy processing industry decided to stop collecting milk from each farm every day"

So there is no longer any tie between the milking and the delivery times, so milking times are completely irrelevant as far as DST is concerned (despite being regularly touted as important).

I recall the milk being immediately refrigerated, but don't recall when it was collected - though that particular farm wasn't supplying the major supermarkets, so that recollection wasn't going to be useful anyway.

[nobody who matters]

Re: I disagree

John clearly has no knowledge of the subject!

[John Robson]

Re: I disagree

My dairy farm work never crossed a clock change (because it was seasonal, and I was usually at school/uni at clock change dates), but I've done more than my share of milking. Though that's not a high bar, I dislike milk unless it's basically straight from the cow - completely different drink!

[DoctorPaul]

Re: I disagree

It's a known syndrome (yes I've been watching QI again) where some people just don't do mornings. Think it was Descartes or another philosopher who didn't get up until midday. According to QI one in 500 have the syndrome, that's a lot of people! Me, I'm never up before 10 in the morning - I'm 72 now and been like it all my life.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: I disagree

Double daylight is a two-hour change, what you seem to be suggesting is a change of timezone.

Sleep experts all seem to ignore the fact that some people just function better later in the day (or even deep into the night)

If they ignore facts, they wouldn't really be experts, would they? Most sleep experts I've heard, including Richard Wiseman, are perfectly aware that people have varying sleep patterns and the advice is usually to go to bed when you feel tired, though regular hours are generally a good thing. There was a good discussion on the matter on The Infinite Monkey Cage a couple of years ago.

My own experience is that, when I'm away from cities, it's much easier to follow the sun and go to bed earlier than I would otherwise.

[b0llchit]

Re: I disagree

We should be able to enjoy 24 hours of daylight savings.

Lets all board a vessel and start moving at minus synchronous orbit speed (about 1071 km/h westwards^(*)). Then we will always be facing the rays of our beloved ball of fusion fire in the sky.

^{(*) _{That is the speed for 50 deg north going west. At the equator you'd have to go faster to somewhere about 1665 km/h.}}

[Neil Barnes]

Re: I disagree

Hmm. Breakfast in London, breakfast in New York?

(And your luggage unfortunately in Honolulu.)

[LybsterRoy]

Re: I disagree

Since you mention orbit speed I presume you're talking a space vessel in which case just move a bit out of Earth orbit and you can stay still and get permanent sunshine. Not sure how you get Deliveroo out though.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: I disagree

"Not sure how you get Deliveroo out though."

Bezos is sorting that :-)

[Roj Blake]

Re: I disagree

So basically the opposite of the TV show Into the Night?

[jospanner]

Re: I disagree

well the researchers say no

[VicMortimer]

Re: I disagree

These aren't researchers, and that is not a research paper.

[Primus Secundus Tertius]

Re: I disagree

1. If you want to get up early please yourself. But don't expect me to agree.

2. In the winter it means two hours of darkness better spent in bed.

[Eclectic Man]

Re: I disagree

According to this (https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/RP93-111/RP93-111.pdf), page 4 (text in site not selectable for some reason), the UK experimented with permanent British Summer Time from 1968 to 1971. Clearly as we reverted back to alternating between GMT and BST it was not considered worthwhile. We only had Double BST in WW2 and briefly in 1947.

As a young child in the 1960s I remember going to bed at the appropriate time * but waking up later and finding it was still broad daylight, and having trouble getting back to sleep. In fact the idea of BST or GMT is only because some legal agreements, contracts etc. stipulate activities based on times of day - some roads are only for busses, taxis and bicycles before or after a specific time, some parking becomes 'free' after specified hours etc.

*When Mummy or Daddy told me to, for the third or fourth time usually. It was just not fair, especially if they had let me watch the start of film and I had to miss the ending, especially as my (older) sister was allowed to stay up. <sulks>

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I disagree

"UK experimented with permanent British Summer Time from 1968 to 1971"

I remember that, terrible idea. One day a week at school we had sports in the afternoon after a reduced 2-lesson timetable. During those years this had to be swapped round. Two lessons after running/skulking around outside for an hour and half or so is ungreat, not to mention the lost opportunities to slope off early.

[tip pc]

Re: I disagree

One day a week at school we had sports in the afternoon after a reduced 2-lesson timetable.

we had that everyday of the week this time of year at my secondary school in the 90's. wasn't always sports but after school activities was shunted to after lunch then return to class.

thought that was normal,

[David Hicklin]

Re: I disagree

"UK experimented with permanent British Summer Time from 1968 to 1971"

Strange I can't remember that but I guess as I was still at primary school the only issues we had with time was it was so slow for growing up.

Now I'm at the other extreme I find that time is just flying by....I guess it is just evening things up before the end

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: I disagree

"Strange I can't remember that but I guess as I was still at primary school the only issues we had with time was it was so slow for growing up."

Something that might jog your memory. Free (or subsidised) orange fluorescent armbands or sashes "to make children safer" walking to school in the dark. (Yes kids, most of us walked to school in the olden days before cars or wheels were invented!)

[Eclectic Man]

Re: I disagree

I remember walking to and from school when I was only just 4 years old, on my own. Although to be fair there was only one relatively quiet road to cross. I only got a lift in the car from my parents when it was raining hard. Dad was the head master of another school, so had to set off early to get there on time. My slightly older sister would not have been seen dead walking with me, even though we were only a year apart.

[Captain Hogwash]

Re: I disagree

Not only is it a waste, it causes waking much too early. GMT throughout the summer would have me waking up with a 03:35 sunrise. We should move to BST and stay there.

[munnoch]

Re: I disagree

"We should move to BST and stay there."

No because in the North of the country it would get light an hour later in the winter and people would be traveling to work/school in the dark with consequent risks to safety. Even on GMT is still pretty dark in the morning in the middle of December in most of Scotland (remember us?).

The UK is located at a moderately high latitude therefore the amount of daylight varies greatly between mid summer and mid winter. There is no one size fits all solution that will give you 8 hours of darkness just when you want it all year round in which to get your beauty sleep. GMT/BST is the compromise that attempts to balance that.

[AJ MacLeod]

Re: I disagree

As someone who lives in what most people would consider the far North of Scotland I completely disagree. By this time of the year it's dark at getting up time anyway, changing the clocks makes virtually no difference. On the other hand, now that the clocks have gone back it's practically dark by the time lunch is over - it's plain stupid. I'm all for going GMT+1 all year round or even +2.

Also, as someone who never wears a watch but can mostly tell what time it is anyway through long practice, the changing of the official clocks mucks up my body clock for days at both ends of the summer.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: I disagree

"Even on GMT is still pretty dark in the morning in the middle of December in most of Scotland (remember us?)."

Ditto here in NE England. And Scotland is 80 or so miles north of here. Although the far SW of Scotland is actually further south of here :-)

[NXM]

Re: I disagree

I had a discussion with someone in Kent who was amazed that when he got to Scotch Corner on the A1 it was still a very long way from Scotland.

And someone else absolutely didn't believe the sun went down later in summer the further north you went. Obviously never heard of the Arctic Circle.

[David Hicklin]

Re: I disagree

" We should move to BST and stay there."

Get yourself a motorised blackout blind on a timer, and then when it is time to get up it can raise the blind and shock you violently awake.

[aks]

Re: I disagree

They did that as a wartime measure.

[Groo The Wanderer]

Re: I disagree

So change YOUR alarm clock instead of forcing entire nations to change to suit YOU!

[Zakandy]

Re: I disagree

UK and Europe should move to permanent GMT+2 all year round. Living in GMT is incredibly miserable.

[LenG]

Leave the clocks alone

There are the same number of hours of daylight whatever you set the clocks to. The change however is disruptive and most studies from reputable sources indicate adverse health effects.

[AndrueC]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Sunlight before 7am is useless to most people. Sunlight after 7pm very useful for those who enjoy outdoor sports. If it's going to be fixed, fix it at GMT+1 all year round.

[rafff]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

" If it's going to be fixed, fix it at GMT+1 all year round."

We tried that for a few years in the 70s(?). You have to remember that Edinburgh is west of Bristol, so all the inhabitants of our frozen northern wastes* are way out, even on GMT. On BST they are totally out of sight.

* Awaiting rude gestures from Scottish readers.

[ibmalone]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Exactly how I feel when some home counties MP comes up with yet another proposal for permanent daylight savings because they like long summer evenings and think adding an hour to the clock will make that last all year round. In Scotland and NI the days are longer in the summer in the south and shorter in the winter, on top of which NI is quite far west, meaning that from mid December to mid January the sun doesn't rise in Belfast or Glasgow until after 8:40 GMT, for London it's 8:00 GMT. Sunset on the other hand is about 1600-1630 Belfast, 1550-1620 London during the same period and 1540-1610 for Glasgow (being furthest north and losing out at both ends).

i love long summer evenings that last till 11pm, but if the UK ditches clock changes it has to go GMT, +1. All year helps nobody; you are not actually increasing the number of hours of daylight despite what politicians sometimes appear to think.

So even with +1 DST most people in the south of England will still be at work until sunset anyway, while those in the "provinces" would get to trudge to work in the dark as well.

[ibmalone]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Too late to edit: "has to go GMT, +1. All year helps nobody"s/, \+1. A/. +1 a/

[IanRS]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

When GMT was first proposed, the French wanted the meridian to be defined as going through Paris, an hour ahead. By going to GMT+1 are you really saying the French should win, leaving everybody with permanent PMT?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Paris is only 2.4deg E of Greenwich, so only about 10min time difference

[aks]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Being from Greenwich, I'm biased. Officially, it's called UTC and aircraft use it universally, naming it Zulu.

If I ran the world (heaven forfend), the whole world would run on GMT and simply get up and go to bed at the appropriate time for their longitude. ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

UTC is the reference time, GMT is a timezone.

[Timto]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Absolutely.

Finishing work at 5:30pm in the winter is depressing as hell because there is no sunlight.

We should stay on BST all year round.

I'd much rather go to work in the dark than come home from work in the dark.

Mornings are for losers

[The Dogs Meevonks]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Soon it will be dark at 4pm... so having that extra hour in the afternoon will still leave you in the dark at 5:30

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

So all the daylight we've saved over the years - what happened to it ?

[stiine]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

I spent it.

[parlei]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

It is stockpiled by the EU, to use in an emergency. Or rather it was, until the NPM-fanatics sold the whole stockpile to their mates.

The most common use is to improve high speed trading, bu having an extra second or two to complete the trade.

[Jan 0]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

> So all the daylight we've saved over the years - what happened to it ?

Wasn't it used to keep a lettuce alive while our economy collapsed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Has anyone set up a Reeves lettuce yet (or perhaps a cabbage?), to count her lifetime in office after Wednesday's budget?

[nijam]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

We used it to go round the house changing all the clocks.

[Dagg]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

I'd much rather go to work in the dark than come home from work in the dark.

Don't know where you are in the UK, but I was in the midlands and mid winter it was drive to work in the dark, see the sun barely rise above the horizon mid morning the set mid afternoon then drive home in the dark.

I'm now living in Australia and the southern states have daylight saving and it is a waste of time, The state of Victoria maps to North Africa in the northern hemisphere and daylight saving is a complete waste of time.

[Ken Shabby]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Plus it upsets the cows and fades the curtains.

[Bebu]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

I'm now living in Australia and the southern states have daylight saving and it is a waste of time, The state of Victoria maps to North Africa in the northern hemisphere and daylight saving is a complete waste of time.

Of the east coast states (all in the same UTC+10 zone) Tas, Vic, NSW (incl ACT) have the same DST but Qld doesn't (not half a joke about the cows and curtains either) - it is said that it's not Qld's being one hour behind the rest that is the sticking point but rather the other twenty years in arrears. :)

Having mostly worked in DST states - its rubbish and we don't really have twilight on the mainland (but perhaps Tas.) The onset of DST used to knock me about for several weeks.

[Andrew Scott]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

blinding sun in your eyes when driving home after work. much easier when it's dark. right now the sun is low and instead of being blinded at 7 i'm being blinded from 5 to 6 and that causes the traffic to slow down. nice overcast days fix the problem, but we don't get many of those at this time of year.

[ChrisC]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

Considering the morning rush hour tends to be more concentrated (due to the significant overlap of commuter and school run traffic) than the evening (as most of us head back home well after the corresponding school run has ended), and therefore the chances of encountering one of the growing number of completely useless drivers is higher during that morning period, I'm rather less happy than you are at the idea of making our mornings darker for more of the year...

[Timto]

Re: Leave the clocks alone

More accidents happen on the way home from school/work than before hand

[Chloe Cresswell]

Stuff like CCTV I don't even bother with the changes. The DVR/NVRs stay on GMT all year.

[Like a badger]

I'm like that myself. Get up when the sun rises, go to bed when it sets. Fantastic in summer, not so great in winter. "What time of day do you call this Badger! And I hope you're not going to push off at half past three again?"

[bazza]

International Atomic Time

Really, all IT, technology, software should be working from the TAI (International Atomic Time - with a French accent). That follows the time rules that are commonly used in software (365 days a year, 1 day extra in leap years, no leap seconds, 7 days a week), and is aligned to what GMT at some point back in the 1970s.

All representational time - i.e. "computer" time presented to a human for consumption, should be converted (if required) into the local time zone, and if it really matters converted with the appropriate number of leap seconds.

This solution would make computer time far simpler to handle in software, far more reliable for records keeping, the lot. Instead, we have a mishmash of what "time" is in software, with most being mere approximations to UTC, and most dealing badly with leap seconds. The mishmash came to a head a couple of years ago when it was realised that the world's "bodges" for dealing with things like leapseconds had finally gone irretrievably wrong, as the IERS announced its intention for an anti-leapsecond. Yes, the earth's rotation has got faster.

This has been a clumsy and ill-handled issue in the field of operating systems and software development for decades, and it's faintly ridiculous that it continues to be so.

[Sam not the Viking]

Re: International Atomic Time

The earth is predictably coy about time.......

https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time

"Time" is for landlords ----->

[munnoch]

Re: International Atomic Time

"https://infiniteundo.com/post/25326999628/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-time"

By far the worst case is running in one time zone with events referenced to another time zone.

The scenario we had to support was trading North American futures contracts from APAC. Twice a year the trading hours as seen from Asia would shift. Or 4 times a year if you were in Oz... (no DST in most Asian countries).

We got it wrong most times, but the futures traders were utter dicks so they got the quality of service they deserved...

[ICL1900-G3]

Re: International Atomic Time

Our landlord called Time and then said it was happy hour... 'you lot go home and I get to put my feet up'.

[Bebu]

DST = Don't Stop to Think?

Stuff like CCTV I don't even bother with the changes. The DVR/NVRs stay on GMT all year.

I once lived in a unit complex with clock controlled (on at 1800/off at 0100) nightime lighting of the common areas *and* at the onset of DST every year a longtime resident would set the clock back one hour.* (Restored it at DST end.)

The sun sets in Sydney ca 5pm (0700UTC) midwinter and ca 8pm (0900UTC) midsummer.

_{* for the equally challenged the lights came on in broad daylight (and off) an hour earlier.}

[druck]

Re: DST = Don't Stop to Think?

The first time I went to Sydney in southern summertime, we spent all evening in the harbour area waiting to get dusk and night shots of the bridge and opera house. The second time the weather conditions were still hot and sunny, but it got dark as soon as we arrived at 5pm which was a complete surprise. You would have never have known it was winter there otherwise, having come from the what we call summer in the UK.

[munnoch]

"Stuff like CCTV I don't even bother with the changes"

At least as of yesterday the clock in the car is correct again...

[Chloe Cresswell]

My cars both have simply a Summer Time setting. You just turn it on and off.

[Phil O'Sophical]

My car has a satnav, it knows exactly what the time is, and exactly where it is, so it should know whether DST is in effect. It doesn't, I still have to set it manually.

[John Brown (no body)]

Same here, as I discovered on Sunday morning. The clock is set to synchronise with GPS, but has a separate setting to select DST or not. Hundreds of CPUs in a modern car and it can't even cope with DST LOL.

[bazza]

>Stuff like CCTV I don't even bother with the changes.

You have to be quite careful about timestamps on CCTV, if you want to be able to gain anything (by way of admissible evidence) from having the CCTV. If you cannot show that the time stamp on the recording is accurate, it's difficult to persuade a court to allow it to form part of the evidence in a court case. The reason is a crime is committed by a person in a place at a time. If the "time" can be cast into doubt, it's difficult to say that the defendent's alibi is false. Especially if the alibi is backed up by evidence that is correctly timestamped (e.g. cctv from a pub).

Getting this right can be as simple as ensuring that it has a connection to an NTP server, updates, and that setting the time is logged. If you have a log file indicating that the time is being set according to reputable NTP servers, it's pretty difficult to dispute your cctv coveage.

[Chloe Cresswell]

"The time is correct in GMT" works happily for the local police.

[ChrisC]

Indeed - so long as the time can be shown to be accurate *for whichever timezone the system is using*, then sticking to a single timezone all year round makes it no less reliable as evidence. Our local force has been similarly entirely happy to receive GMT-timestamped footage from our system regardless of the specific time of the year for which they'd requested it.

It could even be argued that, by sticking to GMT, you're eliminating any risk of the timestamps being unknowingly out by an hour due to the incorrect application of a GMT/BST update - if the timestamps are *always* set to GMT, then it's easy to make the BST correction when necessary, to prove that the footage actually does correspond to, say, 17 minutes past 3 on the afternoon of July the 3rd...

[Chloe Cresswell]

Yeap, I sync with one of the uk pool.ntp.org servers on each unit. When I say it's correct in GMT, I'm being annoyingly correct. But as the local police say my IP CCTV system at home, which is now 5 years old, is still better then the local Tesco's system, they might have lower standards then I do ;)

[Falmari]

"to prove that the footage actually does correspond to, say, 17 minutes past 3 on the afternoon of July the 3rd"

What about footage from 17 minutes past 1 on the morning of October the 27th, which 1:17 AM would that have been? :)

[Arthur the cat]

Seems a bit specious

Arguing about sunlight's effects on people in the morning or evening when we have copious artificial light that can extend lighting at either end of the day whenever we want seems a little implausible to me.

[FIA]

Re: Seems a bit specious

Seems a bit specious

The linked paper links to their research (Under supporting information at the bottom), which aspect of that do you disagree with?

Do you have alternative scientific research that backs up your assertion?

Otherwise, you're probably wrong.

[vtcodger]

Re: Seems a bit specious

Y'know, I actually read their paper. I found it long on opinions and quite short on facts -- which, they concede, are quite hard to come by. Do I think they are charlatans or fools? No. But, on the other hand I don't find them especially persuasive either.

Because I suspect that any benefits from artificial lighting might depend on a reasonable amount of shorter wavelengths in the artificial lighting. I don't necessarily agree with the OP either unless more folks than I think likely are using daylight (5000K or 6500K) CFLs or LEDs. in their kitchen, bathroom, bedroom.

[Neil Barnes]

Re: Seems a bit specious

And indeed, using lights a _lot_ brighter than those commonly used indoors.

Unless you're a photographer you're probably unaware how much brighter daylight is than normal domestic lighting.

[Yes Me]

Re: Seems a bit specious

"long on opinions and quite short on facts"

Exactly. As a kid I always loved the longer evenings after each change to BST, plus the fact that sunrise woke me up at the right time instead of far too early. Agreed, it's hard on the dairy cows in Scotland, but they don't get a vote...

Moaning about having to adapt your body clock is sad. Your body clock adapts to the longer and shorter days anyway; the change to and from BST is a minor hassle by comparison.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Seems a bit specious

"Agreed, it's hard on the dairy cows in Scotland, but they don't get a vote..."

I don't think dairy cows care much at all about the numbers on a clock. They need to milked, for example, in the morning at more or less the same time since their last evening milking and don't really give a toss about whether the clock says it's 4am or 5am :-)

[jake]

Re: Seems a bit specious

For info on how the frequencies of light affect Humans, look up SAD (seasonal affective disorder). Lots of research on the subject.

[Snake]

Re: Seems a bit specious

It's what happens when you listen to scientists that only see the issue in their topic of study.

It was called "Daylight SAVINGS time" to (a, and primarily as Wiki properly notes) give farmers more daylight hours during the longer summer days to work in the fields. This had the effect of (b), reducing the energy consumed by the population by causing them to go to sleep 1 hour earlier and thereby using less electricity for things like lighting at night.

It still has those same effects, the question is now if those effects are still necessary for a mostly-industrialized society. Farmers make up less than 8% of most nation's population in the U.S. and UK, so is it necessary to continue to move clocks around for their benefit?

It's personal at this point. I like having a summer where the sun doesn't set until after 9, it's very convenient for long outdoor activities (as it was designed for). I can get a good night's sleep on my days off and still have a long and full day ahead of me.

So YMMV.

[rafff]

Re: Seems a bit specious

"I like having a summer where the sun doesn't set until after 9,"

Move to Scotland, or Orkney, and you can have even more - even without BST. Mind you, the winters ....

[cheb]

Re: Seems a bit specious

...are dismal. The advantage of the long nights is that you can't see the terrible weather.

I'm not as far north as Orkney but I'm a lot further west, just about half a time zone west on London.

[keithpeter]

Re: Seems a bit specious

UK runs from just about 50N to 60N in latitude. That range coincides with a larger rate of change for cos(lat) and so a large range of sunrise/set times. I'm not sure that there is a way to please everyone.

Icon: early winter mornings with kids going to school &c

[An_Old_Dog]

This is Nothing but Camouflage

... for the Forever War between Early-Birds and Night-Owls.

(Icon for "Night-Owls". Use the devil icon for Early-Birds.)

[Wang Cores]

Re: This is Nothing but Camouflage

There's a war goin' on outside no man is safe from

[Graham Dawson]

Re: Seems a bit specious

This idea that it was for the farmers is a myth, possibly spread as a post-hoc justification. Farmers generally start their work so early and end it so late that moving midday an hour one way or the other is neutral at best, and at worst causes then significant disruption. The cows still want milking at the same time of day; they can't read a clock.

The real reason for it was the erroneous belief that it would save electricity.

[Bebu]

Re: Seems a bit specious

give farmers more daylight hours during the longer summer days to work in the fields

I don't know about Pommieland but antipodean farmers pay scant regard to clocks at the best of times. I would imagine farmers everywhere work to "solar time" - when the sun is up they have already been puting in a few hours of hard yakka and when the sun has set why do you imagine their tractors have headlights? :)

Having lived next to* 200+ ha. of sugar cane I can attest that cane is harvested 24 hrs/day.

_{* hint: don't. Even though the cane cockies don't now burn off the cane before harvesting it is still very dusty.}

[SundogUK]

Re: Seems a bit specious

"less than" is doing some heavy work here. 8% is not even close.

[SundogUK]

Re: Seems a bit specious

If that was what they were arguing, you might have a point. But it isn't. They are arguing that the change now causes more health issues than any benefits gained.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Seems a bit specious

It's often been said it's "for the children" having to go to school in the dark and/or not enough daylight for them to play outdoors after school. Well, if schools in different parts of the UK can have holidays on different days/weeks/time of year, why not also allow them to adjust when school starts and finishes too? That already seems to happen anyway with some schools starting at 0830 (or earlier?) having shorter lunches than the 90minutes we used to have, and finishing as early as lunchtime on a Friday or 14:30-15:00 on other weekdays, not the 9am to 4pm that was standard back in my day :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

"hope for more advanced notice." I'd settle for a simple notice, given very early - an advance notice if you will

[steamnut]

cross border data collection nightmare.

I used to look after a server which collected data from different time zones. The whole DST issue was a nightmare. In the end all data was stored with UTC timestamps.

When collecting data the greatest problem is the moment the time changes; what do you do with the extra hour for which there is no data? Or, the reverse,what do you with the data for the hour now gone?

[Mike007]

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

Fronted web app uses local time (of course).

Service will take a string and interpret it in server local time.

Database will also interpret a timestamp given as a string in its local timezone.

"Automatic handling of timezones" sounds good in theory... The last system written by my boss that I had to bulk import data from he assumed he could cheat and pretend there were no timezones. He fed in GMT and treated the output as GMT, unaware that the SQL backend was set to London... The overlapping data was unfixable.

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

You have already answered your own question. If you are collecting data from across different timezones you reference them all with your own preferred non-changing marker such as GMT plus an offset. Oops, silly me, it is now called UTC or co-ordinated universal time (suspect the French were involved as the letters are the wrong way round and they never got over Greenwich being used in preference to Paris)

It is amazing that almost every time the clocks change we get the same people shouting the same tired slogans about making things simpler by not changing. Nobody ever comes up with a meaningful reason to stop this activity that has not be solved a million times before. Do you really think you are the first person to need to track data while the clocks change? Forty years ago I worked with the police in a civilian capacity and they managed just fine even if they were in the middle of taking notes which had to be presented in court. At 2am you make an entry in your notebook to say the clocks are changing and that it is now 1am (reversed for the March activity)...job done

Adding computers actually makes all this simpler and the first thing I would ask someone is how many clocks/watches they actually had to adjust and how many auto-updated?

[John Miles]

Re: suspect the French were involved as the letters are the wrong way round

according to Wiki UTC came about because (GMT) it was to do with astronomers thinking GMT starting at noon.

The authorities wanted an abbreviation that was same in all languages and ended up using UTC - which followed the Universal Time 0 (UT0), UT1 .. pattern (wiki)

[keithpeter]

Re: suspect the French were involved as the letters are the wrong way round

"astronomers thinking GMT starting at noon"

I knew that as GMAT. Then everything was rebased to J2000.0 and we just used the Julian Day Number.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

In the end all data was stored with UTC timestamps.

Time should always be stored in UTC/GMT, daylight saving is purely a display issue just like non-GMT timezones. Even Microsoft has this right now.

If you store it in UTC there is no "extra hour for which there is no data", there is data for every hour. There is a display issue, if someone asks for the data for "02:30 on October 27th" you need to know if they want 02:30 BST or 02:30 GMT, but that's no different from fielding a request from California where it would be PST. You just need the users to be precise in their queries.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

"but that's no different from fielding a request from California where it would be PST. You just need the users to be precise in their queries."

Back when we had dealings with a US partner, they couldn't seem to get their heads around the fact that the UK was on a different timezone to them. Coming from a country that spans multiple timezones, we found it not only frustrating, but incomprehensible that they didn't seem to understand timezones! I mean, FFS, every US TV "coming next/coming soon" announcement on networked channels announces at least two different timezones for when a show is about to start and even I know that here in the UK!

[DanceMan]

Re: incomprehensible that they didn't seem to understand

Search for Rick Mercer's Talking to Americans for more in that vein.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHUWas-yQSw

[druck]

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

Time should always be stored in UTC/GMT, daylight saving is purely a display issue just like non-GMT timezones. Even Microsoft has this right now.

They don't, the hardware clock is interpreted as a local time on Windows, where as Linux and all things sensible treat it as UTC.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

I thought that had changed with Windows 10 and UEFI? It's certainly how I run my dual-boot W10/Debian system.

[druck]

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

No, still happens if I dual boot between Windows 11 and Linux on a UEFI system.

[Dagg]

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

I used to look after a server which collected data from different time zones. The whole DST issue was a nightmare. In the end all data was stored with UTC timestamps.

Major issue in Australia with each state having its own timezone and only the southern states having daylight saving. In some cases parts (far west of NSW) of one state adopt the timezone of next door state.

So not only do you need to store datetime in UTC you also need to store the native offset from UTC.

[Bebu]

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

what do you do with the extra hour for which there is no data? Or, the reverse,what do you with the data for the hour now gone?

I had a purely informational environmental graph that one data source (outside temp) was local time and twice a year the graph went backwards (0300->0200) or forwards (0200->0300) one hour. My cunning plan (Copyr. Balderick) was from the preceding midnight to "speed up" time time on the graph for (0200->0300) so when it was plotting 0159 the real time was 0300 and conversely slowing down the time on the graph for (0300->0200) so when 0259 was being plotted the real time was 0300.

(I think I used something simple like T_graph = 2 - 0.25×(T - 3)² [1 < T < 3])

Doing this only on two days each year with gnuplot turned out to be more of a PITA than anticipated so basically "sod this for a game of soldiers" and who gives a rat's what the various temperatures and humidities, inside and outside the facility, were at 2am?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: cross border data collection nightmare.

> When collecting data the greatest problem is the moment the time changes; what do you do with the extra hour for which there is no data? Or, the reverse,what do you with the data for the hour now gone?

At some of our plants they stop everything during the clock change only starting back up afterwards. Of course if your logs are in UTC nothing changes.

[Will Godfrey]

About time too!

I never thought DaylightSaving was anything more than an elaborate con.

Since retiring I ignore it. I get up when it's light and go to bed when I'm sleepy.

[Alan Mackenzie]

There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

"DST" is a purely American term. In Britain it's called summer time. The article is about Britain. Why use the (somewhat ridiculous) American term?

[jospanner]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

Because it’s better and more descriptive

[Joe W]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

It saves no daylight.

It is the clock setting we have in summer.

Which one is more descriptive?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

Because "British Summer Time" sounds like sarcasm

[jake]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

"Because "British Summer Time" sounds like sarcasm"

Wait ... it isn't?

It was John Lennon himself who wrote "you get a tan from standing in the English rain", and he should know.

_{Goo goo a'joob g'goo goo g'joob, g'goo}

[Bebu]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

Because "British Summer Time" sounds like sarcasm

Or wishful thinking.

Scots Summer Time entering the realms of fiction?

[HorseflySteve]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

I'll you know I enjoyed the long sunny summer days in Scotland; both of them...

[Brave Coward]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

And it makes such lousy song's title :

'Daylight saving time

And the living is easy...'

[fitzpat]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

Until recently I was of the same opinion until I was led to this item in Hansard:

https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/1918-05-14/debates/080ac044-8f8c-4d21-8364-8b9f21bb84a2/DaylightSaving

Really annoys me!

[Dagg]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

In Britain it's called summer time

Nah, can't be correct. I've lived in Britain and I can remember summers that never occurred. The weather was just cold, wet and cloudy and they still had daylight saving. For those non summers they should have cancelled the "summer time" or at least asked for the money back!

[Bebu]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

"Nah, can't be correct."

I recall in the early noughties an expat pom pointing out the notable occurence of the previous day's max temp in London that day in midsummer was actually higher than the forecast daily max temp in Sydney at that time (being midwinter.)

Not being brilliantly warm in Sydney I couldn't help thinking what must winters in blighty be like?

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: There's no such thing as "daylight saving time" in the UK

"Not being brilliantly warm in Sydney I couldn't help thinking what must winters in blighty be like?"

Very much like summer. Mostly mild and wet :-)

[xyz]

I thought...

That after brexit, all clocks in England had been set back to 1899.

[K.o.R]

Interesting, I thought the prevailing opinion on abolishing the clocks changing was to stay on summer time all year round.

[VicMortimer]

It is, other than among these idiots who have styled themselves "experts".

The reality is that they've done no experiments, they've just decided having it get dark before we leave work in the winter is somehow good for us.

I know I'd rather wake up and leave the house in the morning when it's still dark or just getting light than have to drive home in the dark when I'm tired.

Permanent DST is clearly the best solution.

[Anonymous Coward]

The solution is to redefine the standard working day as 8am to 4pm (as is the case in some other countries), with an equivalent adjustment for school hours.

The only person who would complain about that is Dolly Parton.

[Jellied Eel]

Larks vs Owls

The solution is to redefine the standard working day as 8am to 4pm (as is the case in some other countries), with an equivalent adjustment for school hours.

The only person who would complain about that is Dolly Parton.

Nope. The problem with blanket statements like the sleep experts is that not everyone agrees. I'm not, and after all these years never will be a morning person and would rather work 10-6pm. Plus there could be other fun effects. Like I worked for a US company that thought 'breakfast meetings' were a GoodThing. Except being there for 7am would mean getting a train at around 5am and there weren't any. Plus would mean getting up at around 4am, and there were no buses running to the station.

Plus other sleep experts study stuff like this-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm#Human_health

and have shown that long-term disruption to natural circadian rythms can be very bad for our health. And IMHO, clock watchers should be first against the wall. Now that there's a more tolerant legal responsibility on employers to support more flexible working, along with WFH meaning less time wasted commuting, things are theoretically better, but there's still a lot of employers who expect 9-5 working.

[Bebu]

Getting slow in my dotage...

The only person who would complain about that is Dolly Parton.

I couldn't for the life of me work how why someone well endowed in brassiere department would be fussed about shifting the core working hour back one hour.

The penny eventually dropped... the lady also sings... songs... :)

[Rahbut]

Given that midday is supposed to be when the sun is at its highest (not 1pm), I agree that the working day is wrong not the time

Obviously there's a bunch of factors like staring at a screen for a living (which probably does all manner of untold harm), flexible hours and remote working that kind of make the time of day largely irrelevant for a proportion of the population.

Perhaps the Chinese are onto something...

[John Brown (no body)]

"The only person who would complain about that is Dolly Parton."

...and Sheena Easton! Although left-pondians might be less aware of that as her 9-5 song had to be renamed for release in the US.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we should just sack it off. I also think we need to look at time as a whole. Why do we still have rush hours? The environmental benefits alone of removing that would be huge. No one spends 8 hours a day in work communicating with others so if we switched to moving that part of peoples jobs to 4 hour windows there should be no loss of productivity. Sure, remote fixes a lot of that but it's still condensed into a specific set of hours. Retail could adapt to people just doing their shopping whenever they aren't in work. There is no reason 9-5 should be the default and it only is because it's a relic of the olden days.

[Chasxith]

Agreed. My currently employer doesn't care what my start and finish hours are so long as I do my 37,5 a week. Four years now of doing 07:00 to 15:00 and shaving at least half an hour off my travel times thanks to less traffic has been wonderful.

The job before that was firmly 9-5 with no exceptions ever. The company MD used to regularly sent out typed missives complaining that people were clocking out at dead on 17:00 and therefore "not working their contracted hours". People just clocked out 60 seconds later instead - I don't get how he thought it was going to make people do more work.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quite a few of my previous jobs have been the same. Mostly remote and I clocked in at 6:30am. Did the school runs. Had a couple of hours off in the afternoon to just do stuff like shopping or go for a walk then finish up the rest of the day covering (mostly more than) my contracted hours. You're right though. If you are going to force me to be there 9-5 then I'm not going to be as productive. That isn't some fight against the terms of employment or trying to stick it to the man it's simply the fact I work better without that because I have that extra time to think which I do even though I'm not actually working. If I have a complex problem to solve I can do it using focus but it always takes longer than if I just stop thinking about it for a bit as something always pops in the head ready for me to try it when I'm back on it.

[Spanners]

Didn't the UK try before?

My understanding that the reason it didn't work was that they decided to try permanent BST rather than permanent GMT.

The story I heard, in Orkney, was that the people in charge of this test were in the remote South East of England and like so many there don't really believe that anyone actually lives in the north part of the UK!

Get rid of this change. Just don't dump an unsuitable one on us so that sunrise is after 10am!

[HorseflySteve]

Re: Didn't the UK try before?

I lived about 10 miles east of Glasgow when this was tried and it meant walking to school in the dark. There was a big fuss made and we all had to wear HiViz sashes over our invariable dark coloured school uniforms so bleary-eyed drivers could avoid running us over.

Ironically,most of the bleary-eyed drivers on the road at that time nowadays are doing the school run as children aren't allowed to walk to school anymore, apparently, do maybe it's not so relevant now.

The problem with the UK is that it's shape and mean latitude give a large variation in daylight hours throughout the year. Where I lived, even with BST, the Sun rose incredibly early in June & July and it set well after 9pm. At Midnight, the sky was visibly lighter to the North.

If you want to appreciate the difference in daylight across the UK, use a World Clock that shows the shape of the solar terminator & see the difference between Aberdeen and Plymouth at midsummer and midwinter then you'll understand why fiddling with the clocks is never going to satisfy everyone, even with a 30 minute fixed which appears logical to some in the South who don't understand why norterners are moaning.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Re: The problem with the UK

Are you suggesting the solution is to make Scotland a separate country?

[HorseflySteve]

Re: The problem with the UK

It wouldn't help, just increase the overall amount of moan...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: The problem with the UK

But moan could be a major export for Scotland.

Now the oil has run out and as the rest of the world gets richer and happier there will be a demand for high quality traditional Scottish moaning.

[Spanners]

Re: The problem with the UK

Definitely not but we could have our national capital in a more logical place!

London is a bit further from the centre of the UK (A bit north of Newcastle) than Inverness.

Let England keep its historical theme park in London and move it back to a more logical York?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: The problem with the UK

York is already at the center of the world (well the 3 ridings anyway)

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Didn't the UK try before?

"At Midnight, the sky was visibly lighter to the North."

Agreed, even here in NE England, there's a distinct glow in the sky to the NW, even at "peak darkness" in the middle of summer. I've been in the far north of Scotland in mid-summer, and doesn't really get properly dark at night, more an early twighlight sort of feeling.

Also worth noting the [Ant]Arctic Circles and "the land of the midnight Sun" are just geographical reference points for the latitudes above which the sun doesn't actually set in summer for at least one day. So that's not to say that even some distance South (or North) of the relevant circle that it can still be almost daylight at local midnight.

[flokie]

Re: Didn't the UK try before?

There are different types of twilight https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/different-types-twilight.html

Around the summer solstice, and if you're far enough to the North the darkest it gets is nautical twilight (around 5 weeks of this in Glasgow) which is not very dark - and I guess what you witnessed at 58-60N.

Even at around 48N there will be weeks without true astronomical night, only astronomical twilight - and months of this further North.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Didn't the UK try before?

And at time of my reading your post, the voting ratio on it was, quite coincidently, 9 to 5 :-)

I decided not to up vote you and spoil the irony :-)

[Gene Cash]

Old proverb

After having Daylight Saving Time explained to him, a wise old Indian Chief said, "Only the government would believe you can cut a foot off one end of a blanket, sew it onto the other end, and end up with a longer blanket."

Seriously though, I just simply do not observe DST or whatever the fuck you want to call it.

I come in to work at 8am Eastern STANDARD Time year-round. If you think I'm coming in at 9am, your clock is wrong and you need to fix that.

I have done this for the past 25 years after I noticed it took me 3 months to readjust my sleep schedule. I have not had any of my employers complain.

I have never traveled to a different time zone, so I've always wondered what would happen.

I do notice when I'm on my own, during vacation or whatever, I have a 30 hour day. I do stuff for 22 hours, get sleepy and sleep for 8 hours. I don't attempt to "keep in sync"

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Old proverb

So you insist on a ridiculous theory that the East cost of the colony is a more sensible reference ?

Why not stick to the proper meridian ?

[Bebu]

Re: Old proverb

a wise old Indian* Chief said, "Only the government would believe you can cut a foot off one end of a blanket, sew it onto the other end, and end up with a longer blanket."

I don't suppose this chap is available as write in on Tuesday November 5?

_{* amerind (native american) arguably the other sort is in the offing.}

[Gene Cash]

People are too much of a pussy to actually bottle up and change the time

This "discussion" has happened TWICE EVERY SINGLE YEAR for at least the past 40 years. I have a newspaper clipping about this exact same thing from 1983.

Nobody's actually going to do anything about it. They're just going to bitch, moan, whinge, and complain, and do the same in March or whenever it changes again.

[The commentard formerly known as Mister_C]

Re: People are too much of a pussy to actually bottle up and change the time

Seeing the discussion resurface yet again is the way I remember that we're getting close to changing the clocks just so that flat earthers can pretend that the day / night ratio isn't a function of an oblate spheroid lump of rock with an inclined axis moving around a star on a slightly eliptical orbit.

[Version 1.0]

Time is an illusion

I completely agree that we should just have an annual time but I do see time as an illusion, I have family members (bothers and mother) in the UK (I'm currently living in the USA) and for years now have been occasionally working with people in other countries (India, Australia, South Korea, Italy etc as well as the UK) so tend to sleep about 8pm and wake up by 3am - that's always been fine for me so I have a big range of times in my life that I've always been comfortable working with - and when I physically visit these places it always needs a couple of days to be 100% in the new time zone.

A static time relationship between every country is very good, and a constant time world, where and when we all live, would be great!

Time is an illusion, but we are not an illusion wherever we are.

[HorseflySteve]

Re: Time is an illusion

It's most certainly not an illusion if you're paid by the hour!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Time is an illusion

Lunchtime doubly so .....

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Time is an illusion

I've got 3 pints...oops drunk two already!

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: Time is an illusion

Don't forget the salted nuts, because you tend to lose salt in the matter transference beam.

Unfortunately, you won't get any change from a tenner any more.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Time is an illusion

"Unfortunately, you won't get any change from a tenner any more."

Most pubs, you'd probably have the barmen looking at you funny if you only offered him a tenner for three pints these days, doubly so if you then expected any change from said tenner :-)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Time is an illusion

"I've got 3 pints...oops drunk two already!" ... Only two green bottles sitting on the floor. I wish to Christ, I wish to Christ that I had 15 more

[David Nash]

Re: Time is an illusion

As soon as I saw the title of this comment I scrolled down to make sure someone had posted "Lunchtime doubly so"!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Time is an illusion

It's the reg - we might be senile old farts but we still have our encyclopedic knowledge of 70s kid's TV shows and 80s comedies

[nobody who matters]

Re: Time is an illusion

Of course, being thoroughly pedantic, H2G2 was neither a 70s childrens TV show nor an 80s comedy (first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in March 1978 at 10:30 pm - GMT)

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Time is an illusion

I come here for both trivia and the pedantry .... and the sarcasm

Well obviously I'm not going to forget the sarcasm

And the puns....

[Groo The Wanderer]

We never did go in for that nonsense here in Saskatchewan, Canada, despite us being the "wheat belt" of farmers that DST was supposedly put into place to assist!

[Flip]

Change what now?

Just because you couldn't figure out how to set your clocks. Folks in Lloydminster just asked their Alberta neighbours how to do it.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

But what about the farmers having to take the wheat in an hour earlier - or whatever it is the farmers always complain about ?

[jake]

The only time one worries about "an hour early" during harvest is if rain's coming.

Here on the Left Coast of the southern half of North America, we always start harvest before sunrise, and rarely finish until long after sundown. Regardless of season. Unless it's raining, of course. Rain completely buggers up the program when you're running a combine. So does fog, especially when harvesting beans (and we do three crops of beans per year in these here parts ... ).

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Saskatchewan, Canada

A province so backward they think a time machine is a watch!

[Groo The Wanderer]

Hey, I don't vote for that idiot Moe and the SaskParty! A lot of us want those clowns gone in today's election, and I just pray it happens before they continue wasting billions on "pet legacy projects" while short-changing the budgets for health care, education, social services, drug addiction treatments, and mental health care.

Oh, but thanks to the SaskParty, we also have thousands of miles of new highways to nowhere...

[John Brown (no body)]

"Oh, but thanks to the SaskParty, we also have thousands of miles of new highways to nowhere..."

Don;t you mean highway *from* nowhere?

[Groo The Wanderer]

Exactly! There is nothing preventing someone from setting their own alarm early if they need to get up! Why force entire provinces or nations to do it for your sake? Most people want to sleep in whenever they can.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

The traditional objection in the UK is that farmers will have to bring cows to milking in the dark. Because cows follow a rigid work day.

[Will Godfrey]

Never heard that

I used to know a few farmers in Wales. For them time was dictated by the seasons and the animals.

[Mr. V. Meldrew]

Just a minute! .....

..... well 30 minutes.

A 30 minute change would finish this bi-annual debate for once and for all. I say 30 minutes and leave it there for ever. Either everybody will be happy, or annoyed. I care not.

[David Nash]

Re: Just a minute! .....

Annoyed, probably. Because that's what we do!

[Primus Secundus Tertius]

Clock Embuggerance Day is a relic from 1914, when THEY thought that WE should be made to get up earlier to get to work. They also stopped us drinking at all hours.

The drink restrictions finally ended in the 1990s in England (in the 1980s in Scotland). It is time Clock Embuggerance Day ended.

[Bebu]

Clock Embuggerance Day

"Clock Embuggerance Day is a relic from 1914, when THEY thought that WE should be made to get up earlier to get to work. They also stopped us drinking at all hours."

One Terry Pratchett's favourite words if not his own coinage.

The peoples of the Disc did live on a flatish earth but their tiny "sun" orbited close the Disc but as the Disc also rotated very slowly (1rpy) they did have seasons and variation in day length.

I could neither imagine the Patrician, Vetinari countenancing DST for a moment nor the diverse citizens of Ankh-Morpork not drinking at all hours.

What a world we live in where the fictious leaders and inhabitants of an impossibly daft world look positvely sane by comparision with ours?

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Clock Embuggerance Day

>What a world we live in where the fictious leaders and inhabitants of an impossibly daft world look positvely sane by comparision with ours?

Try reading Swift

[John Brown (no body)]

"Clock Embuggerance Day is a relic from 1914, when THEY thought that WE should be made to get up earlier to get to work"

1916, Akshully. And the Germans started it all, a few weeks earlier. And that stemmed from an idea initially proposed by Benjamin Franklin. Or something like that :-)

I suspect Britain decided to follow Germany in case they attacked before breakfast.

[nobody who matters]

,......"I suspect Britain decided to follow Germany in case they attacked before breakfast......>

....which was just the sort of underhand trick that you would expect from them!!!!

[Plest]

So long as they do it after 2030, after I retire, as i don't fancy making all those thousands of checks on pieces of software when the remove the DST handling code. I did all thousands of checks back in 1997-1999 in prep for Y2K and I'm planning on avoiding the old 2036 Unix deadline too!

[Spoobistle]

Night night

That's a good idea: redefine sunset as always half past eight - time for all god-fearing clean-living folks to retire!

[Anonymous Coward]

when the remove the DST handling code

If it's a proper OS they shouldn't have to change a single line of code, just update the timezones file & push it out.

[Ken Moorhouse]

Compromise

I say this twice a year:-

Do a one-off change of half hour, then leave the clocks like that forever more.

[Boris the Cockroach]

Set them

to GMT and leave it there... if you want an extra hour in the summer then get up earlier.

The reason GMT was picked is because London and Paris were roughly on the same time anyway, so the UK and France were in the same time zone until some little austrian twat decided to put paris on Berlin time. and there it has remained ever since.

Anyway.. I think we should go back to pre-railways time where every town/village had its own time zone

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Set them

>I think we should go back to pre-railways time where every town/village had its own time zone

Wouldn't that be a problem with a nation-wide high-speed railway system running to a precise timetable ?

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Set them

Not for the.....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Express

(Cant believe that this was the first thing that popped into my head after seeing the preceding posts, also icon).

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: Set them

Never heard of that. I suppose the concept of a passenger railway was too wild a fantasy for the American public

[Roj Blake]

Re: Set them

For it to be a problem, we'd need a a nation-wide high-speed railway system running to a precise timetable.

[david 12]

Sydney time

Melbourne Australia is 20 minutes darker in the morning in Sydney, but we've been in a common time zone since the telegraph was put in (which, in Aus, preceded railway time). So I spend more daylight in the evenings, and have to get up darker, every day of the year. But not only that, Melbourne DST gave up on having a later start to DST, because Sydney is so parochial: they couldn't get their heads around that fact that Melbourne was on a different time for a couple of weeks every year, and they were abusing us for not keeping proper office hours for a couple of weeks every year.

[Michael Hoffmann]

I see there is a concerted downvote campaign by that scourge of humanity: morning people!

Stop switching clocks, indeed: Leave permanent DST! Give us the extra evening hour of daylight! Let the morning people suffer in the dark!

Nightowls unite!

<returns to sipping his coffee, bleary-eyed, at a disgusting 8am>

[Dagg]

Should be justifiable homicide to kill morning people!

I've worked for a few bosses that insisted the office started early and then berated me because I had a BAD attitude. I used to work for IBM(bastards) and they loved so called breakfast briefings and breakfast meetings. These were always arranged to occur before work hours so they were getting your time for free. They used to justify this by saying look we give you free food. Bastards...

[Anonymous Coward]

> . They used to justify this by saying look we give you free food.

That's fine, I don't mind paying for the food in my kitchen - I'll see you during work hours

[John Brown (no body)]

"They used to justify this by saying look we give you free food. Bastards..."

I'd be putting it down as overtime. I never leave the house without having breakfast first. No way in hell would I be commuting for possibly and hour or two after getting up on an empty stomach and I'd not be taking the free breakfast as I'd not be hungry by then. Unless it was bacon butties. There's ALWAYS room for a bacon buttie :-)

[Dagg]

I'd be putting it down as overtime

This was IBM there was no such thing as overtime. You were meant to do it for the love of the company. C*nts

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll turn up in the morning for a fried meat sandwich; but don't expect anything productive from me before 9 and at LEAST a strong coffee.

Inspiration is one of those things that tends not to strike by design and rigidly following a schedule. Random thoughts being assembled at 3 AM are often the most powerful.

[Potty Professor]

9 to 5

I worked in an office in Birmingham (UK) that was supposed to be on a strict 9 to 5 working day. I used to get in at 8 in order to make sure all the IT was up and running before the Technical Writers arrived at 9. I also ran all of the previous day's 3.5" output discs through the AV Sandbox before putting them in the Outgoing Post box.

On more than one occasion complaints were made that I was leaving at 4, until I pointed out that I had already done an hour's work before the rest of them arrived.

The major advantage was the lighter traffic for both my morning and afternoon commutes.

[EricB123]

Piss off! I'm sorry, what was the question?

[disgruntled yank]

DSThesia

The Congress of the United States suffers from a belief that Daylight Savings Time saves energy. In the winter of 1973-1974, after an early oil shock, the US was on DST. I did not enjoy it. It was a nuisance, though a lesser one, when the government extended DST about 30 years ago--there were operating systems to patch, one had to update Java, etc.

[EricB123]

Re: DSThesia

I walked to high school back then, and it was pitch black mornings after the "energy savings switch". An officer assigned to help us students cross a busy street had to push off the bonnet of a car to avoid being run over. No, thanks.

Tomorrow's class: Stop driving jacked up pickup trucks!

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: DSThesia

>An officer assigned to help us students cross a busy street had to push off the bonnet of a car to avoid being run over. No, thanks.

That's why children need to carry RPGs to school.

[Bebu]

Re: DSThesia

operating systems to patch, one had to update Java, etc.

I recall in the noughties the West Australian altered the DST date (or abolished it) at with very short notice.

Most proprietary Unixes didn't ship with the zoneinfo utilities but Linux had the packages and praising St AD Olsen for the architecture independance of the binary zone files all the Unix boxen were updated in time from files generated on the Linux box. Even SGI Irix had zoneinfo support builtin (if unofficially) only HPUX 10.20 had its own nasty but fairly simple file that had to be manually updated every year if I recall correctly. Never did discover why Java had its own version but for us Java wasn't in much use at the time.

Hint: If you fiddle with zone files remember to restart or reload the cron daemon. :)

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: DSThesia

UNIX had (and in most cases still has) a way of coping with timezones that while it is not as sophisticated as the Olsen tzdata system (which was actually implemented on UNIX before Linux was even around), is actually quite simple to implement, if not quite so automatic.

The TZ variable can contain the normal timzone name, the DST timezone name, the offset from GMT/UTC, the DST offset and the days of the year that DST comes in and goes out (both in terms of the Julian date of the switches, and the weeks within a month, the day of the week, and even allows you to specify exactly what time the switch happens).

It required the system administrators to know a little about their environment, time zone names, offset and when DST started and finished, but this worked well across the '90s and on into the current day. It actually also puts the representation of time for a user into their own hands, as TZ is an environment variable that users themselves can change.

I worked on SVR2 systems back in the mid eighties that had the Julian dates for the DST shift hard-coded into the C library, which was a pain, but it soon started to become a little more flexible in SVR3 and later, so by the time it got into '90s, the more sophisticated handling of the TZ variable had become normalised, and I saw it both on Digital UNIX, HPUX and several other UNIX systems of the time.

I first saw the Olsen system on Digital UNIX and HPUX, but this soon got adopted in other UNIX systems.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: DSThesia

Most proprietary Unixes didn't ship with the zoneinfo utilities

I've used various Unixes since the 1990s and have never seen one that didn't.

[Bebu]

Re: DSThesia

_{Most proprietary Unixes didn't ship with the zoneinfo utilities}

I've used various Unixes since the 1990s and have never seen one that didn't.

You may well be right. Quite possible that the zic utility wasn't installed by default as I vaguely recall zdump was. SunOS did have both I think. I am pretty sure Irix didn't have either as zoneinfo wasn't officially supported. Our Decosf boxes didn't and setld was so slow that fishing out the right CD and locating and installing a package wasn't an attractive proposition. (Setld packaging wasn't a bundle of joy either.)

[Peter Gathercole]

Re: DSThesia

AIX was quite late in adopting it. I think it was first introduced in AIX 5.2 in the early '00s, but I could be wrong.

[Jamesit]

What type of container is best for saving daylight in? I've tried to save it however it always leaks out.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

You've got to be really quick to get the lid on.

And remember not to open it and take a peek - the stuff leaks out fast

[jake]

"What type of container is best for saving daylight in?"

I'm pretty partial to my Lion Energy "Sanctuary" battery bank and attendant electronics ...

[Dagg]

You use the same one that Schrodinger's cat is stored in.

It is only when you open it do you know how much you managed to save.

[Peter Gathercole]

You need one with 100% internal reflectivity. But it's difficult to see whether you've caught any!

[BasicReality]

I’ve said for years, shift the clocks 30 minutes, right between the two options and leave it there permanently.

[DS999]

The paragraph at the end

Makes a great argument to continue with daylight savings time. They claim the greatest need for sunlight in the morning is during winter months, and talk about supposed harmful effects on health from having more light in the evenings but ignore the detrimental effect it may have on health in the summer when the sun rises at 4am.

If it harms humans to have light at 9pm when I guess they are saying we should go to bed, then how can that light not harm us that early in the morning when we are (trying to) sleep? Maybe they think everyone should be waking up at 4am in the summer, because that's when the sun is "telling us" to wake up? Let's just ignore that it is a known fact that physiologically some people are larks and some people are owls, and making the world a better place for the larks makes it worse for the owls.

If they want to argue everyone should be sleeping when it is dark, there is going to be an awful lot of sleeping going on at the UK's latitude in a couple months.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

According to the article, it isn't the daylight so much as the lost hour of sleep.

Supposedly this causes car accidents and dozens of fatalities every year in the USA.

So this is only a problem with the spring switch to summer time, the autumnal switch back gives everyone an hour extra sleep and so presumably saves dozens of lives.

My proposal, is we put the clocks back every autumn but abandon the crazy "spring forward"

[jake]

Who uses clocks?

The cow bellows in the morning when it's time to milk her, and then again in the evening.

I've tried telling her about the clocks changing, but she's not having it. She keeps telling me about the seasonal clock handily provided by the Solar Year & the Earth's axial tilt with respect to its orbit. I finally capitulated, and her milk stays sweet. Easier that way.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Who uses clocks?

"The cow bellows in the morning "

That is no way to speak about your wife*.

*Unless your name is Hilary Briss.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fades the curtains

And puts the cows off laying!

[DarkwavePunk]

Re: Fades the curtains

Queenslander by any chance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Fades the curtains

Sandgroper

[anonymous boring coward]

"At our latitudes there is simply no spare daylight to save during the winter months and given the choice between natural light in the morning and natural light in the afternoon, the scientific evidence favors light in the morning"

That's why we turn off DST in the winter.. duhh.

Great "research"...

[Hate2Register]

Sorry, giving kids an extra hour of play after school is more important than you.

[vordan]

Yes, that's the missing link which will save the UK economy..

[EricB123]

Humanity, Could You Please Move to the Equator Already?

You may not like the heat, but at last, FINALLY, we can talk about humanity's more important problems. (Ya know, by the equator, winter and summer have about equal amounts of day and night).

[Fading]

Simple solution...

Change the clocks every weekend - move them forward an hour at 3pm on a Friday and then back an hour on Sunday night. Get to the weekend quicker and that extra hour before Monday morning will really help the post weekend blues.

[NightFox]

Given that the latest(?) conspiracy theory seems to be that the sun has been replaced by one or more giant multiple-LED arrays, can't we just get the Rothschilds, CIA, Illuminati or whoever's responsible for these things to leave it turned on for longer so we can have a constant sunrise and sunset time all year round

If cost in as issue, they could always turn it off for a hour or so at about 2:00pm as I don't think people would be too bothered at that time.

[codejunky]

Hmm

Personally it would be easier for me if we didnt bother with daylight savings. When the clocks go back it makes it harder for me to spend time with my foreign friends who dont change their clocks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmm

codejunky> my foreign friends

Just the way that phrase has been used suggest that they are imaginary?

codejunky>When the clocks go back it makes it harder for me to spend time with my foreign friends who dont change their clocks.

Is this because DTS changes apply to British when they travel abroad to spend time with "the foreigns"? A kind of personal timezone sovereignty?

[codejunky]

Re: Hmm

@AC

"Just the way that phrase has been used suggest that they are imaginary?"

I doubt imaginary friends would care about timezone? Maybe you can answer that better.

"Is this because DTS changes apply to British when they travel abroad to spend time with "the foreigns"? A kind of personal timezone sovereignty?"

Why travel? I have friends in Europe, US, Africa, Asia and we get together regularly online. Calls, games, collaboration on projects and such. So having an extra hours difference between us can get in the way a bit. Surely it is not a unique situation having friends around the world?

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Hmm

Yes, for that week or two when the US and EU changed on different dates the extra hour was a killer, especially when the 9-hours between CET and PST became 10 hours. We just cancelled meetings for that period.

[David Nash]

Re: Hmm

It depends whether the friends are to the east or the west. Those in the US are closer in time to us during the next couple of weeks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmm

codejunky> Why travel?

What a curious question. But one that seems to explain a certain mindset?

Well, you've only got 90 days to spend in the Schengen area now. So Zoom & Teams must help you out with these project & games you have with "friends", hmm?

[codejunky]

Re: Hmm

@AC

"Well, you've only got 90 days to spend in the Schengen area now. So Zoom & Teams must help you out with these project & games you have with "friends", hmm?"

I dont think you read my comment before replying. While I have a few friends in a few different EU countries and not necessarily neighbouring ones that does not help with my friends in- "Europe, US, Africa, Asia". I would have a hell of a lot of travelling to go visit people around the world, which might get in the way of my life and job here in the UK. So while I occasionally meet a friend when I do travel I am not touring the world, it makes no sense.

"What a curious question. But one that seems to explain a certain mindset?"

An interesting view into your mindset is replying to a comment about having friends around the world and you seem to have stopped at the EU borders? The world is much bigger than the Schengen area. And the internet allows people to collaborate beyond borders. In fact one of the groups (a gaming group) can meet most days every week every year and catch up and spend time together catching up. For the group to meet in person means getting people from Europe (not all in the EU) plus Africa plus US and one from Canada. And thats just one group of friends I have.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmm

I think it's rather good (and a bit of a priviledge) to travel and meet people. And actually very important in some other cultures to meet face-to-face.

It would be a very sad world where people gave up the ability to move freely and interact for periods longer than 90 days with a "Why travel?" philosophy.

Are you some kind of StopOil/ExtinctionRebellion adherent, who doesn't want people travelling outside their 15min cities, hmm?

[codejunky]

Re: Hmm

@AC

"I think it's rather good (and a bit of a priviledge) to travel and meet people."

Yes. At no point did I suggest otherwise.

"It would be a very sad world where people gave up the ability to move freely and interact for periods longer than 90 days with a "Why travel?" philosophy."

I agree. I am not a fan of 'Just stop oil' and similar.

"Are you some kind of StopOil/ExtinctionRebellion adherent, who doesn't want people travelling outside their 15min cities, hmm?"

What kind of stupidity is this? What are you talking about? Where do you get such immense stupidity from when reading my comment? Trying to get many people physically together from opposite ends of the earth is damn difficult to do. Surely you can understand that simple concept?

I am guessing you are grasping at straws after mistaking the world for the Schengen area.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmm

Where do you get such immense stupidity from when reading my comment?

Per se notum?

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: Hmm

It would be a very sad world where people gave up the ability to move freely and interact for periods longer than 90 days with a "Why travel?" philosophy.

How many of those people have 90+ days of vacation a year, that would allow them to do that?! I too have friends around the world, but I'm not going to travel to the US (or even to France) for an afternoon's chat over a beer.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmm

Boomer retirees? How about remote workers?

Or more seriously, people who travel for business?

90 days is not long. If you take away a 2 week vacation that leaves 76 days in the 180 days. So ~11 weeks in 6 months. Less than 2 weeks/month travelling. Sounds about right for many assignments I used to have. (Before B-Day that is.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hmm

In fact one of the groups (a gaming group) can meet most days every week every year and catch up and spend time together catching up.

Is it to discuss modded Hearts of Iron?

[peterbr]

Am I missing something? Moving the clock, gives us an extra hr sunlight in the morning in the winter, so instead of getting up in the dark in the morning in november you still get day light. In the summer the sun rises much earlier, so we do not lose an hr daylight in the summer when clocks move in spring.

[David Nash]

Also the winter time is the proper geographical time. So strictly speaking we don't get extra sunlight in the morning in the winter. We get the standard amount.

[nobody who matters]

<......."Am I missing something?".....>

There are a lot of people who (like me) have a working day which begins at 7:00 am (or earlier) and finishes some time after 4:00 pm (sometimes several hours later!). We do not benefit from extra daylight for very long - by the time the clock returns to GMT, we are already travelling to work in the dark, and after the clock reverts to GMT we have only a week or two of some of that time being in semi-daylight before we are travelling to work in the dark again, and only another couple of weeks before we are starting work in darkness.

So yes, you <are> missing something - not everyone has the benefit of regular cushy 9 to 5 working hours and pissing about with the clock settings twice a year is more of an annoyance than a benefit ;)

[Anonymous Coward]

>not everyone has the benefit of regular cushy 9 to 5 working hours

That's right. I don't think I've ever worked "9 to 5".

Shifting meetings around by an hour, twice a year, doesn't bloody help when you're talking to both AsiaPac and West Coast US on the same day. That's a 6AM to 11PM schedule right there, now.

[nobody who matters]

I am sorry someone felt the need to downvote my post - perhaps you dislike my working hours? To be honest, I am not a particular fan of them myself, but they are what they are and the result is that I spend the winter months starting my working day in darkness, and ending it in darkness too and the bi-annual clock changing doesn't help much.

[andy gibson]

Lighter Later Campaign

I remember the "Lighter Later" campaign from a few years back which wanted permanent BST

https://www.wearepossible.org/lighter-later

[Anonymous Coward]

"It is sometimes erroneously assumed that DST provides us with more sunlight, but, in fact, all we are doing is changing our behavior by moving our schedules forward by one hour," the researchers said. "While this means there is an hour more sunlight after work/school, DST comes at an expense of one hour less sunlight before work/school, simply because we get up and travel to and from work/school one hour earlier."

I like having that one hour more sunlight after work in summer, it's the only time it's any use to me. Having more light on the way to work is nice, but hmm, I'd rather have a BBQ in the evening.

And DST does give most of us more sunlight, based on the contemporary behaviour of generally getting up to a clock. Obviously it doesn't increase the sunlight that our fair isle receives, did anyone really believe that?

[Anonymous Coward]

keeps someone in work

needs to be crushed. There will always a new generation coming through thats too dozy to adjust and just wanders in early or late for a week and sits there wasting time with the story.

Used to be major planning with a cast of thousands every switchover a long time ago. May be more automated,like my phone, but people are not.

[NXM]

an extra lie-in

We should put the clocks back EVERY Sunday. That way everyone gets an extra hour in bed.

[Patrick R]

Why not use this properly / smoothly, in Summer ?

It's called "Summer Time" yet the implementation is for 7 months (from April to October), why not have it just in SUMMER ? From May to August, the change would only be visible in the evening but not when you wake up ( probably for 90 % of people).

[G R Goslin]

Strictly speaking...

Strict;y speaking the human is a tropical animal, evolved along the equator. So, naturally, our body clock is set for sunrise at six, and sunsert at six, with only minimal seasonal changes. Having the bulk of the population moved, or driven from our natural roots, no amount of time tinkering is going to restore the balance to the optimum. Daylight saving is not a natural thing. I can remember, during the war, we had double daylight saving, which was really odd. At that time, my brother and I lived with an aunt. On one occasion, we all went to bed in the full daylight. later awakening, and dressing and going down for breakfast. A neighbour who had popped round was puzzled why we were eating breakfast at 10:30 in the evening

Daylight saving is a long running con. What Authority has done is instructed the entire population to get up an hour earlier. If the law, as passed had ordered the population to change their hours of working, there would have bee uproar. But by saying it was Daylight Saving, an ostensible benefit, we, the sheep fell into line.

I've long realised the utter stupidity of this, but inertia of Authority is paramount..