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Daylight saving time


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Not sure if the clocks go backwards or forwards tonight ? !!!!!

 

 

Easy to remember

 

Spring forward - as in the clocks 'spring' forward 1 hour in.... erm... the spring

 

Fall back - as in the clocks 'fall' back 1 hour in the Autumn

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About 10 years ago I was in Fiji and in typical local fashion the Government decided to advance the clocks by 1 hour for summertime, thereby going to GMT+13. However, they didn't really tell anyone until the morning after the change and did so by TV/Radi.

Aside from some minor confusion this unexpected event didn't cause much bother because everything runs (or doesn't) to the local phenomena of "Fiji time" anyway...

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Bloody backwards; I'm working, and I can't tell you how I'm not looking forward to having 02:00 twice.

I did 12 years on nights, but never worked a saturday night, so never had the 'pleasure' ;)

 

My wife also used to work nights at times, and sometimes did get the extra-hour shift, for which, of course, they didn't get an extra hours pay - the NHS's position on the matter was that they didn't deduct an hour's pay from the night the clocks went forward, so that balanced out the unpaid hour when the clocks went back. All very well in theory, of course, but somehow the nurses who did the 'long' shift, never seemed to have a duty fall on the 'short' shift... :scratchhead: :mad: :banghead:

 

You have our sympathy!! 

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Must admit I'm glad that I no longer live in an area that messes with the clocks twice a year.

 

As someone who does a 12 hour shift, with approx. 90 minute commute on top of that, which only leaves 10.5 hours for the turnaround (eat twice, sleep, bathe etc.), I would not like to be working when the clocks go forward and have an hour less. Presumably I'd have less sleep that night and be (even) more fatigued the following days. Doesn't seem safe to me.

 

Time is arbitrary. Set the clocks and leave them alone. Accept that some parts of the year will be light or dark earlier in the day.

 

Rant over :-)

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Bloody backwards; I'm working, and I can't tell you how I'm not looking forward to having 02:00 twice.

Thanks to all for your sympathy; suffice to say, I survived. There is talk that the EU countries might decide not to have the change in future; as I live in the UK, but work in CET, I wonder how that will affect me, if the UK decides to retain the twice-yearly change.

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Australia changes at slightly different times - we went forward for Spring at the beginning of October. It means that if I want to phone London, back in September I had to allow for being 9 hours ahead; for the last few weeks 10 hours; and from now until April or thereabouts, 11 hours.

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In the US it doesn't go back for a couple of weeks or so.  Must play havoc with international timings!

 

Brian.

 

One of the best things the EU ever did was synchronise the clock change dates across all member companies -saved us the trouble of having to prepare and operate an 'equal clocks' timetable for a week which seemed to confuse just about everybody.

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Australia changes at slightly different times - we went forward for Spring at the beginning of October. It means that if I want to phone London, back in September I had to allow for being 9 hours ahead; for the last few weeks 10 hours; and from now until April or thereabouts, 11 hours.

 

And not all of Australia changes either. My daughter lives in Brisbane and Queensland doesn't change clocks. Given that day length there only varies by about 2 hours over the year (being semi-tropical) I suppose there's no real need to do so.  Unlike the North of Scotland, for example ….

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Does anyone remember the all year round BST in the UK around 1970? It meant the sun rising at 9am in December!

 

Yes - and IIRC, all that happened was the usual moaning from the usual quarters.

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Yes - and IIRC, all that happened was the usual moaning from the usual quarters.

 

I believe it also led to an increase in accidents in the darker mornings.

 

The sun also rose a lot later than 9am in the far north.

 

David

Edited by DaveF
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Yes - and IIRC, all that happened was the usual moaning from the usual quarters.

Road accident totals dropped but IIRC morning accidents increased so that was one of the reasons to terminatethe "trial"

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

 

Morroco decided not to follow suit this year (it keeps UK time).

On Friday with just two days to go before the planned change they decided it was off!

 

Keithing

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And not all of Australia changes either. My daughter lives in Brisbane and Queensland doesn't change clocks. Given that day length there only varies by about 2 hours over the year (being semi-tropical) I suppose there's no real need to do so. Unlike the North of Scotland, for example ….

And, just to complicate things still further, some of the states which do implement daylight saving change on different dates. Or used to anyway, if I remember the notes in my desk diary correctly.

 

Here in WA the population has, sensibly, repeatedly rejected daylight saving when asked to vote on it. A few years ago a "trial" was implemented anyway for three years, after which opposition to the measure, if anything, strengthened. The main voices in favour are the business community who consider the three hours of the afternoon out of contact with the Eastern States to be time wasted. Everyone else rather likes the fact that after 2pm in summer there's not much to do but surf the net, make paper planes or duck off early to the pub or the beach :D.

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Can't they keep the clocks the same and tell you to show up a 8:00 instead of 9:00?

 

Yes, and that is why this whole clock-changing nonsense should end; It doesn't make any difference to how many hours of daylight there are, and as you say tasks which require daylight should just be done when it is light !

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And not all of Australia changes either. My daughter lives in Brisbane and Queensland doesn't change clocks. Given that day length there only varies by about 2 hours over the year (being semi-tropical) I suppose there's no real need to do so.  Unlike the North of Scotland, for example ….

 

Similarly, the needs of Spain and Portugal are somewhat different to the needs of Norway and Sweden - which is why trying to standardise such things across a whole continent is not sensible. Let each country choose it's own timezone and DST according to it's own needs...

 

I believe it also led to an increase in accidents in the darker mornings.

 

The sun also rose a lot later than 9am in the far north.

 

David

 

This is why it doesn't make sense to me to get rid of it here - "we'll reduce accidents by making the evening rush hour lighter" isn't going to help if it makes the morning one darker - especially as there's more traffic in the morning as you get both the commuters and the school traffic, whereas in the evening the school traffic is earlier (and usually in daylight either way) than the commuter traffic. People tend to be in more of a rush in the morning too, increasing the risk yet again.

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Yes, and that is why this whole clock-changing nonsense should end; It doesn't make any difference to how many hours of daylight there are, and as you say tasks which require daylight should just be done when it is light !

In principle I agree with this, but trying to apply it is difficult:

 

Start by defining a time zone to use. We already have a formal one: GMT because it is defined a the sun being directly overhead Greenwich at midday. This got changed a bit over the years (mainly by ditching GMT altogether in 1971 in favour of UTC which is offset from GMT by a second or 2, but we still often wrongly call it GMT) but the principle is there.

Decide on a nominal start time for something. School is as good as any. So let's start school time an hour after sunrise.

Sunrise moves virtually every day. What should we do, decide on 5am for June-July, 6am for May/August, 7am for April/September, 8am for March/October. 9am for February/November then 10am for December-January? That sounds complicated, so let's simplify it. School starts at 7am for April-September & 9am for October-March.

In order to fit in with this, we need to change work start times, shop opening times, railway & bus timetables.

 

This would be mass chaos & may even have been tried at some point in history. Much easier to change the clocks.

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...Time is arbitrary. Set the clocks and leave them alone. Accept that some parts of the year will be light or dark earlier in the day...

Indeed. As others above, you don't get more daylight by changing the clock setting. I enjoyed the 68 to 72 experiment of 'no change', and would see it reinstated in a heartbeat. Throughout most of my conventional 'office job' employment there were three months in each year when one travelled to and returned from the office in the dark, whatever...

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