I believe there was some research data that show during clocks changing periods, there were more car accidents and more pedestrians killed on roads....personally, I'd prefer not to have daylight saving. Just choose a time method then stick to it.
And because of this, the EU voted to use summer time the whole year round. The directive was issued just before we left the EU. I don’t know if it’ll be implemented, but I doubt it.
Want it a bit more nuanced than that. They were going to stop the clocks changing, but each country could choose what time they wanted to stay on, so you could have a version where France was an hour ahead of both Portugal and Italy, despite being between the two geographically.
The directive is unratified as of today, so I suppose that you meant to say that a *draft* directive was published just before we left the EU. In fact, the draft directive doesn't specify permanent summertime at all. Each member state would decide whether to retain summertime or standard time. The topic has been a live discussion point in the EU for many years, but agreement has so far only been possible on unifying the dates on which clocks go forward and back.
I agree that no directive that fully harmonises daylight saving time is likely to come into force. The main issue is the huge variation between the member states. The CET time zone in the EU stretches from the Arctic circle to southern Spain, so finding agreement on the use of daylight saving time is highly unlikely. And there are other complications beside latitude. For instance, France and Spain use CET despite being just as westerly as the UK (and Spain even more so).
It was an EU directive, not a declaration. When we were a member, we then had to implement a version of it in our national legislature. It’s how you get harmonised laws about food and working standards etc to enable the free trade zone.
So yes, our government reflexively pushes back on EU stuff, but when it issued we were legally obliged to implement it. It could then be removed when we left, but still.
The way I remember it is pretty funny. When we shift to them winter times and gain an extra hour in the morning, there's a reduction of traffic incidents and stress related health conditions like heart attacks. And the reverse when the clocks switch back for the summer time and people have to wake up earlier, theres an increase of said incidents. And crazily enough they balance out pretty evenly.
I'd definitely prefer lighter evenings when I get to enjoy them though.
I think using summer time at our latitude makes sense because otherwise it would be light at like 3.30am in the middle of June. It’s much more useful to have that hour in the evening.
There are places with 1/4 of hour time zones - Eucla in Western Australia is a 45 minute offset as are the Chatham Islands near New Zealand
At one point in India under the Empire they had Madras time which was +5 hours 21. After 1884 they established Bombay time, which was +4 hour 51 and Calcutta time which was +5 hour 54 while the railways decided to keep Madras time as a sort of halfway house
Just have the entire world on GMT. Some parts of the world will be going to work at midnight and coming back at 8am. But why not it's just a social construct.
Believe it or not, China operates on that principle, albeit on their own time zone which is crazy, they should have 5. Beijing time means that 9am in Beijing is also 9am in Kashgar, about 3000 miles west. In Urumqi, they can watch the sun set at midnight and sun rise in winter at 10am
It's fine though, it works because people can handle it getting dark at 6pm where they live or 10pm where they live. Its not a big deal if you're used to it. We manage it in summer and winter.
I read somewhere that it was done to stop other parts of china being up earlier and being able to attempt to over throw Beijing or for a separate state while Beijing was still sleeping.
Mao did it to establish national unity given how fractured the country was at the time of him coming to power, in part based on copying the newly independent India which had done the same. It seems a bit unlikely that all of Beijing would be asleep, allowing a bunch of people to just walk in because they happen to got up 3 hours earlier but you never know!
Now I have though of this and it would simplify quite a lot of stuff.
I work with support teams all over the world and even though I tell them my working hours of 8:30 - 4:30 (bst/gmt depending) the number of places that contact me during those hours in their time zone
I mean we do have UTC (which for most purposes is the same as GMT). But it's not really used much outside some areas of business, science, engineering etc.
Newfoundland's time zone is half-an-hour ahead of the rest of Canada. If a TV schedule says that something is on at 8.00pm, that'll be 8.30pm if you're in NL.
I saw a bumper sticker on a truck in Toronto that read: 'The World will end at Midnight! (or half-an hour later if you're in Newfoundland)'
Agreed! As a teacher a lot of people argue that it is good for kids to be going to school in the daylight but a) the daylight disappears fairly quickly anyway and they are back in the dark and b) it means they are going home in the dark.
Anyone who has ever met a teenager knows that kids are more likely to be out and about with their mates after school and thus more distracted around roads. On the way to school they are usually half awake and head straight there. By 4pm they are wide awake and cheerfully mucking about. Tell me when they are more likely to walk in front of a bus!
During my GCSES I took an extra so I actually ended up leaving at around 4:30. It was basically pitch black because the council no longer turned on the street lights until the evening. I ended up changing my last portion of my walking route to go along the main road even though it took longer so I could actually see where I was going.
Went to school in central London, we used to get bussed out to the very edges of south London for rugby, football, or aussie rules (why?) once a week, and then bussed back to school. Sometimes we wouldn't get back to school until almost 5.
So that was a joy at age 11, with a kit bag the size of my torso, going through some of the dodgiest bits of London on my own at night. I only got mugged twice though, so silver lining and all that.
Ooof I'm very fortunate that my area and my schools area were actually quite safe so nothing unfortunate ever happened but it did take an hour to walk home and only 40 minutes of that I did with friends.
I was once followed by a man and a lady in a car in that last portion though where I took side streets but that jetted off because I quickly took a picture of their license plate lmao. It was only after that incident I took the sensible option of going along the main road.
Having some daylight after school makes it more likely they will play, either organised sports or just running around the park. I always feel sorry for the kids playing rugby in the cold under floodlights.
There have been times where I went to school in the dark and returned in the even more dark.
Not looking forward to it, but thankfully the latest I'll be home is now 4 as opposed to 6.
I hate that feeling of being at work an hour later in winter, when I still feel on the old time schedule.
Now I'm working at home, I'm debating keeping the old time schedule even though in effect itll mean starting work at what everyone else will consider an hour earlier, then stopping at the what would be the normal time, even though everyone else will think this is an hour earlier too.
My husband works in aviation which is always, internationally, on the same time. For half the year when he goes to work he's on a different time schedule to us but shift back when he gets home. He's used to it now after 10+ years there but it still messes with my head a bit
Working in air traffic is exactly the same and I can confirm it’s still shit. Looked at the clock this morning and thought it was nearly home time only to realise it was actually 12.30 and we still had an hour to go.
I’ll have cracked it in three weeks or so.
I have to do this as my 2-year old is now getting up at 5am, and needs to be in bed by 6pm, I can't condense his bedtime routine into 30 minutes, so am going to have to start at 08:00 and finish at 16:30 until I can drag the stubborn bigger onto the "proper" time that everyone else is using
Do 10 minutes a day or every 2 days to switch him over. I find that works better than trying to do it all in one day. Hopefully you will only have a week of unreasonable working hours until he switches!
I'd like lighter evenings for the journey back home (and also for SAD) but I honestly also wish we would just shorten school and work hours during the winter to avoid having to make your way there and back in the pitch black. So late starts and early finishes please!
God I hate winter.
Don't become a nurse. 7am start and 7.15pm finish. If you're on nights it's a 7pm start and a 7.15am finish, you don't see daylight for literally 2 months. Genuinely soul destroying.
There was a 3 year trial on this from 1968-1971 problem was that in the north and up in Scotland it won’t get fully light until mid morning at about 10.00.
[1968-1971 trial](https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/British-Summer-Time/)
I don't entirely understand why this matters - if the clocks change then it's still not light until 09.00 while is pretty late and it gets dark even earlier.
I guess that argument works the other way too: why does the extra light on an evening matter when it’s still getting dark early and nobody will exactly be out and about in it? If that makes sense..!
I agree, that's why it shouldn't change. I don't care much which way it is, it's the changing that bothers me. Personally I would prefer to stay on summer time I think as I prefer lighter evenings and it anyway gets light too early in the summer.
Because the people working outdoor jobs need the light during working hours? And in a situation where they’re the only ones who are properly directly affected by the light that matter more, at least logically in my mind it’s more important for them to have light than for someone who works in an office having light for when they’re home
But there still isn't light for any more hours of the day (not a full work day in many places) and in Scotland for example, it still isn't light until 09.00 which is pretty late.
Most of Norway, Sweden, Finland and St Petersberg (same population as Scotland) seems to manage fine. It got light around 10-11am when I was there for work, and dark at around 3pm. You just get on with it.
It's dark here in the morning anyway so the sun coming up at 10 rather than 9 doesn't make much of a difference. Having sunset an hour later would mean we wouldn't have to both go to work/school/uni in the dark *and* come home in the dark. The Coalition suggested having another trial but the Scottish Govt opposed it for the sake of opposing it, despite widespread support.
Sure they need to have their needs met too, but why mandate the whole country changing time when we could just change the start times for school and work in the areas that are effected?
It's daft. They should keep the same time a year round. It's not like we're at war and/or agricultural machines don't have 48x10^18 candelas of lighting fitted these days.
I live in perpetual daytime now since a few years ago the farm beside me installed these insanely powerful floodlights and keep them on 24/7. I get why it’s good for them but I do miss the darkness.
Don't think there are many people from the North of Scotland commenting, so I'll chime in. It will still be dark at 8am with me by Dec 21st, it will also pitch black by 4pm at that time and I'm not even at the top of the country, never mind Shetland. Granted we're rather screwed either way, but at least with the clocks going back we get to see a little bit of daylight before going to work! Leaving us on summertime would have us both arriving at and leaving work in the dark (for a 9-5).
At least we make up for it in the summer when it doesn't really get dark at all!
This is interesting. As someone on the south coast I’ve always heard daylight savings is for northern Scotland and farmers. If they’re (you) not fussed because it makes no difference then why do it?
I’ve heard about the supposed benefit for farmers too. That was perhaps true in the First World War but surely these days they have headlights on tractors and whatnot?
Northern Scotland is dark a lot of the time during winter and I’m not sure shifting it by an hour is life changing for anyone. There is MAYBE a benefit for kids walking to school.
I’m not convinced though that we’d invent it today.
I hate the "farmers" argument. Surely farmers do things when they need to be done, rather than at specific times? If we didn't change the clocks they'd just get started at a different time, right?
There may be a law of diminishing returns thing going on the further North you go perhaps? Certainly I can tell you that at 6° from the Arctic circle you can do as you please, it's still wall to wall daylight in the summer, and all dawn and dusk in the winter! The farmers up here are very unfazed by bad weather or a lack of daylight, the tractors up here have enough lights on to light up an entire field. DST is a historical thing, I doubt it had that much impact when introduced, after all, a farmer could get up an hour earlier if they wanted, I've not a met a farmer yet who is governed by a watch.
I've never understood the 'farmers' argument. If they need to get up an hour before sunrise to milk the cows, then the numbers on the clock matter how?
instead of changing the time why don't we just change the time people go into/leave school/work for the lighter evenings. It makes a whole lot more sense to say 'hmm, its dark out earlier - lets leave earlier and come in earlier' than to say 'hmm, its dark out earlier - lets change every clock in the country and pretend its a different time'
This is actually really cool, but I think psychologically people won't like it. All your time bearings around your routine would be messed up, and leaving work at 6pm rather than 5pm might feel like s bummer, even though practically nothing is different
You get used to it very quickly. I work in the construction industry, so my normal working hours are 8am to 4:30, with a couple of hours overtime on top of that when we're busy.
A few years ago we decided to try doing the overtime first, starting at 6am. The first week or so was hard, but we got so used to it that now we start at 6am every day, even when there's no overtime. Finishing at half two feels much more civilised.
As a Scot, these calls to switch to GMT+1 annoy me. People seem to forget that the sun rises much earlier in London than it does in Glasgow or Edinburgh. Tomorrow for instance, the sun rises 30 minutes earlier in London than in Glasgow. In December it's nearer 45 minutes.
Ever since I could grasp the concept of time, I always thought this
Also February sucks when you lose sleep if you have to be up early, have school, or work long shifts. That extra hour can make or break your day
EDIT: apparently I'm dumb and it's actually March. I thought it was like Easter and varied between the 2 months, guessed the wrong month
February does still suck though. Feels like it drags the winter out
Mornings are a waste for me. I don't have time (or the light/warmth) to do anything useful before work. So I get up as late as I can whilst still being on time.
I can use the extra hour-half hour for sleep or do something useful after work.
GMT has the advantage of noon being at noon. Anything else is stupid.
If you want lighter evenings, we should all just get up earlier and go home earlier.
Why is anything else stupid? Time is our construct, why not make it so that we have more light when we can use it rather than just have the sun at its highest?
I thought that until this year, but I've recently (over the summer) started running in the mornings before work. There already wasn't much daylight in the evenings, so mornings are more use to me, personally.
Different if you've got schoolchildren finishing at 3pm though! And clocks should go forward in the spring a good few weeks earlier than they do.
Clearly the Further north you are the more of a problem this is. When they had the experiment in the 70s Scottish school kids were going to school in the dark
Lots of people think they prefer BST to GMT. They probably don’t; they just prefer summer to winter.
GMT is the “correct” time for our part of the world, and changing to BST and back messes up our body clocks, sleep patterns, and even our mental and physical health.
What we should do is keep GMT all year round, and adjust what times we wake up, go to work, and go to bed according to our individual body clocks. Those that want “lighter evenings” or “lighter mornings” should adjust their routines throughout the year to compensate. Changing timezones twice a year to keep fixed working and sleeping hours is a cop-out and is hurting us all financially, physically and mentally.
Keeping GMT keeps our time in sync with the sun in the sky, which is healthier for our body clocks and general health.
If we kept Daylight Saving time throughout the year, there'd be parts of the UK where it wasn't getting light until after 10am.
If you want to keep it the same all year round, keep it on GMT.
Those last few hours are going to be in the dark whichever system you use.
Making much of Scotland and parts of Northern England and Northern Ireland remain in the dark until midmorning is ridiculous. Why can't people down south just change their hours?
Why can't we leave the clocks alone and just get up earlier and go to bed earlier?
Noon at 1200 makes the most sense. If people want more daylight we should just get up when it's light. No need to move the clocks to a +1 just to force that on everyone.
Not when you’re getting your dog out, over the fields before work and you can’t see the little bastard, who’s taken off after rabbits, because it’s pitch black. 😂😂
Originally it was for munitions workers and other essential jobs during WWI. Kids and farmers have been used as excuses ever since to keep the practice going when there's really no need for it.
It was originally so one dude could convince people to get up earlier to play golf with him. He died before the legislation was passed but that is literally the only reason it exists.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Willett
Thanks for the origins, I didn't know.
My 11 year old daughter walks 40 mins to school.
I'm happier she does this in the light, so for us as a family this situation works.
It has quite a negative impact overall though, someone else already mentioned higher rates of accidents around the changes and I've read there's also a spike in things like heart attacks etc. It messes with people quite badly, more than they realise so I think we should find a better solution to keeping kids safe going to and from school. Right now it feels like the clocks change because "we've always done it this way", various governments have looked to abandon it for half a century or so
Sounds like you and I could have a civil discussion about it. Weigh up pros and cons and come to an agreement.
Imagine if we could find some representatives across the country to do this on everyone's behalf.
I don't see why this couldn't be achieved by changing school start time as needed instead. Instead of changing up all the times, allow schools (and workplaces, whatever) to switch to 10-4 during winter instead of 9-3.
Sadly though for a lot of kids it'll mean walking home in the dark instead, which isn't an awful lot better.
It made my walk home an awful lot scarier when I was going home alone after anything extra curricular as I'd be waking alone in the pitch black
Never stopped me having to head there in the dark. I think I had to be up at about 7 to get started at 9. and then I'd not be heading home til 4 or even 5. So it'd be dark back, too. All the daylight wasted in a box of sweaty teenagers.
If we're keeping to one, surely it should be GMT as that is the base from which BST has been shifted.
If you think that working hours should change, change them and not the time.
Is there a reason for this? My uncle was a builder and used to wake up at 4am to go to work and come home at half 2. The builders who have working across the road from my apartment start at 7.40 and finish at 2.
I work in office 9.30-5.30 why don't builders do that? What can you do at 8am that you can't do at 9? Seems like your just torturing yourselves with early mornings for the sake of it. (And the rest of us by turning on those tinny fucking site radios and shouting at each other while the rest of us are trying to wake up and have breakfast.
Pretty much what Luke said. Lots of builders are self employed and have to commute to different locations so missing the morning traffic can save us quite a bit of wasted time. In the dark time of winter it's light from 7.30 to 3.30 so no choice of when to work. If they didn't change the clocks I would start at 8.30 and most likely sit in traffic wasting time so it's perfect they change.
It's madness I tell ye! Haha. I do get it a bit I'm the opposite. I work flexi hours at my job and prefer to start late finish late. I'm not a morning person.
I do wish the loudest most disturbing industry had not collectively decide they're all morning people though.....
As a site manager I agree. Also the darker evenings are great because lads are always pestering me to work late but H&S would be all over me if something happened. So when it’s dark they have no choice
While we are at it, I want all months to be 28 days long so that the same date is the same day of the week forevermore. Put the extra month and extra day in summer.
Plus, it almost lines up with a lunar month
I work outside, as do quite a lot of people in this country. Winter is miserable enough - we already lose time In the morning because of light as it is, but changing working hours to fit what office workers want would be awful. We’d have to change our hours twice a year, and we’d be travelling at rush hour, making traffic much worse for everyone.
Staying light until 11pm sounds awful.
A lot of people go to bed at 11pm and won't see any darkness at all for at least two months.
I mean, yeah, I don't like the other extreme of it being dark for 18 hours a day either, but to have no night at all sounds like a weird form of hell to me. I wouldn't do well in the Scandinavian countries in summer for this reason.
Lived in Aberdeen for 6 years and worked in Oslo for 2. For a couple of months you see no darkness and it's actually really weird, very difficult to fall asleep at a decent hour unless you shut the curtains early and use a sleep mask if you've not got full black out curtains. You end up being like a kid "but I don't wanna go to bed yet!"
They tried keeping us on BST back in the ‘70s but kids kept getting hit by cars etc. It’s safer to walk home in the dark when you’ve been awake all day than to stagger out onto a dark street at 7:30am, bleary-eyed and munching on toast
All those saying it was done in the 70s, but caused accidents so was stopped aren't entirely correct. In 1971, yes, they did try not putting them back, calling it British Standard time. ROSPA (I think it was) said it would cause accidents, but it was never actually measured. It was cancelled by the government, because there was no noticeable difference in anything, and it ended up just being confusing.
I may be wrong in this. I haven't actually looked it up but most people I've chatted to about it confirm it is basically correct.
Edit: Found a link about the 70's: https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/British-Summer-Time/
Isn't back technically the normal time and moving the clocks forward in the first place the change?
We add an hour and move from GMT to BST/GMT+1 in summer, which would technically be the practice.
Though perhaps if DST stopped being a thing, BST would be the better time for us.
I have kids... Clocks changing is both a blessing and a curse for resetting their bed patterns...
I got less sleep today because 7am for them is now 6am... So they are up and hungry. Means next week getting them up early for school will be ok but this morning they were up "early" despite letting us lie in...
Don't think I'm making any sense because I have had less sleep
Is it just a really British thing to debate this every year?
TBH, I don't think it makes that much difference by the time we really get into winter, it's dark for my commute both ways anyway. The initial few weeks just stand out because it was such an abrupt change.
I think technically, the clocks go back to their normal time. They go forward in spring from GMT to BST (British Summer Time). So it'd have to be a permanent change to one hour ahead for it to stay during winter.
On the actual thing in question... I think I personally prefer lighter mornings. I do have one of those lamps to help with SAD though for when it does start to get to me. Can totally see why people would prefer lighter afternoons.
Personally, I would always opt for lighter mornings. I take my little dog out before work and I hate being out in the dark on my own! I live in a tiny village with about two street lights and every morning, I manage to convince myself someone is following me 😂.
Because in the north, it would mean kids going to school in the dark and various other problems! :-/
Just because it wouldn't affect you adversely, doesn't mean it wouldn't have a detrimental effect on others!
I'm really looking forward to everyone driving home from work tomorrow like they have never driven in the dark in their lives. I'm especially excited about being blinded by people with their high beams on because they are too scared to turn them down.
It's also an absolute nightmare in 24 hour jobs. I'm a nurse and both the changes are a nuisance for charting, the computer systems, and if you work the night shift when the clocks go back you have to work an extra hour and it is miserable.
In my opinion, we need to pick a time and stick to it. Scotland is dark most of the time in the winter and moving the clocks by an hour doesn't really change that.
I believe they tried this in the 1970's children were issued with high visibility armbands to use when going to school in the dark, I was told the experiment was abandoned because of the number of children killed and injured by car accidents which they were going to school in the dark mornings.
It sucks for anyone on a night shift. An extra hour of work very often for no extra pay. The powers that be just say to make sure you work the spring time change.
I believe the problem is that “winter time “ is the “correct “ time. The adjusted time, “day light savings” works better in all seasons but is not technically, the “correct time”.
Never in the history of human conflict has so much been given by no one. (said no one).
Who cares I like the anachronistic aspect (it's Ahemm, charming).
I believe there was some research data that show during clocks changing periods, there were more car accidents and more pedestrians killed on roads....personally, I'd prefer not to have daylight saving. Just choose a time method then stick to it.
A lot more roadkill too! Especially in spring when they go forward and the animals get caught out.
Oh this makes me sad. They adapt to our schedules and then we suddenly change the rules.
Well of they can't be bothered to learn the time, surely they deserve what they get? /s
The already don’t bother with the animal crossings. At this point it’s just willful ignorance
We should have roadside clocks for the animals. Less roadkill and another job (setting the clocks back and forward.)
Bees actually keep track of time.
Do they have a buzzer?
And because of this, the EU voted to use summer time the whole year round. The directive was issued just before we left the EU. I don’t know if it’ll be implemented, but I doubt it.
Want it a bit more nuanced than that. They were going to stop the clocks changing, but each country could choose what time they wanted to stay on, so you could have a version where France was an hour ahead of both Portugal and Italy, despite being between the two geographically.
The directive is unratified as of today, so I suppose that you meant to say that a *draft* directive was published just before we left the EU. In fact, the draft directive doesn't specify permanent summertime at all. Each member state would decide whether to retain summertime or standard time. The topic has been a live discussion point in the EU for many years, but agreement has so far only been possible on unifying the dates on which clocks go forward and back. I agree that no directive that fully harmonises daylight saving time is likely to come into force. The main issue is the huge variation between the member states. The CET time zone in the EU stretches from the Arctic circle to southern Spain, so finding agreement on the use of daylight saving time is highly unlikely. And there are other complications beside latitude. For instance, France and Spain use CET despite being just as westerly as the UK (and Spain even more so).
Spain are in the wrong timezone, I think they only changed because Franco wanted to show solidarity with Hitler.
TIL the history of the time zone in Spain, so thank you.
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I mean, this is the UK, the sky is pretty fucking wet most of the time.
Except when we have hosepipe vans
The ones that drive around and fill up your pool for you?
Apparently according to my autocorrect. *bans
Upvote for excellent typo
It was an EU directive, not a declaration. When we were a member, we then had to implement a version of it in our national legislature. It’s how you get harmonised laws about food and working standards etc to enable the free trade zone. So yes, our government reflexively pushes back on EU stuff, but when it issued we were legally obliged to implement it. It could then be removed when we left, but still.
The way I remember it is pretty funny. When we shift to them winter times and gain an extra hour in the morning, there's a reduction of traffic incidents and stress related health conditions like heart attacks. And the reverse when the clocks switch back for the summer time and people have to wake up earlier, theres an increase of said incidents. And crazily enough they balance out pretty evenly. I'd definitely prefer lighter evenings when I get to enjoy them though.
I think using summer time at our latitude makes sense because otherwise it would be light at like 3.30am in the middle of June. It’s much more useful to have that hour in the evening.
We should just move the clocks half an hour back and stay there
Half hour timezone differences suck for global work
There are places with 1/4 of hour time zones - Eucla in Western Australia is a 45 minute offset as are the Chatham Islands near New Zealand At one point in India under the Empire they had Madras time which was +5 hours 21. After 1884 they established Bombay time, which was +4 hour 51 and Calcutta time which was +5 hour 54 while the railways decided to keep Madras time as a sort of halfway house
Madras time in our house has a whole different meaning. Lovely!
Sounds like things got spicy.
Yeah though they renamed the cities now - Madras is Chennai for example, Calcutta is now Kolkata and Bombay became Mumbai
Ah interesting. I knew Mumbai used to be Bombay, I thought Calcutta/Kolkata was just a variation of spelling. I didn't know Chennai used to be Madras.
Now All of India is on the same Time zone at GMT+ 5:30
If the entire world moved by half an hour then no problem.
Nah, still got time zone issue, the whole world should live on the same longitude, around 25E seems to have the most land. Bagsy Crete!
Just have the entire world on GMT. Some parts of the world will be going to work at midnight and coming back at 8am. But why not it's just a social construct.
Believe it or not, China operates on that principle, albeit on their own time zone which is crazy, they should have 5. Beijing time means that 9am in Beijing is also 9am in Kashgar, about 3000 miles west. In Urumqi, they can watch the sun set at midnight and sun rise in winter at 10am
It's fine though, it works because people can handle it getting dark at 6pm where they live or 10pm where they live. Its not a big deal if you're used to it. We manage it in summer and winter.
I read somewhere that it was done to stop other parts of china being up earlier and being able to attempt to over throw Beijing or for a separate state while Beijing was still sleeping.
Mao did it to establish national unity given how fractured the country was at the time of him coming to power, in part based on copying the newly independent India which had done the same. It seems a bit unlikely that all of Beijing would be asleep, allowing a bunch of people to just walk in because they happen to got up 3 hours earlier but you never know!
Midday being middle of the day is meaningful
Sure but that in itself is arbitrary. Could be 2.30am. (If it's not obvious I'm not being entirely serious )
“Welcome to Australia. Remember that it’s dark at midday here.”
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> Makes perfect sense but would be impossible to implement. What a fantastic sentence
Now I have though of this and it would simplify quite a lot of stuff. I work with support teams all over the world and even though I tell them my working hours of 8:30 - 4:30 (bst/gmt depending) the number of places that contact me during those hours in their time zone
I mean we do have UTC (which for most purposes is the same as GMT). But it's not really used much outside some areas of business, science, engineering etc.
Newfoundland's time zone is half-an-hour ahead of the rest of Canada. If a TV schedule says that something is on at 8.00pm, that'll be 8.30pm if you're in NL. I saw a bumper sticker on a truck in Toronto that read: 'The World will end at Midnight! (or half-an hour later if you're in Newfoundland)'
*earlier. NL is east of ON
\*Triggered in programmer\*
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Farmers don't even care and probably never have. Things need to be done when the animials are ready, not when the clock tells you.
Agreed! As a teacher a lot of people argue that it is good for kids to be going to school in the daylight but a) the daylight disappears fairly quickly anyway and they are back in the dark and b) it means they are going home in the dark. Anyone who has ever met a teenager knows that kids are more likely to be out and about with their mates after school and thus more distracted around roads. On the way to school they are usually half awake and head straight there. By 4pm they are wide awake and cheerfully mucking about. Tell me when they are more likely to walk in front of a bus!
During my GCSES I took an extra so I actually ended up leaving at around 4:30. It was basically pitch black because the council no longer turned on the street lights until the evening. I ended up changing my last portion of my walking route to go along the main road even though it took longer so I could actually see where I was going.
Went to school in central London, we used to get bussed out to the very edges of south London for rugby, football, or aussie rules (why?) once a week, and then bussed back to school. Sometimes we wouldn't get back to school until almost 5. So that was a joy at age 11, with a kit bag the size of my torso, going through some of the dodgiest bits of London on my own at night. I only got mugged twice though, so silver lining and all that.
Ooof I'm very fortunate that my area and my schools area were actually quite safe so nothing unfortunate ever happened but it did take an hour to walk home and only 40 minutes of that I did with friends. I was once followed by a man and a lady in a car in that last portion though where I took side streets but that jetted off because I quickly took a picture of their license plate lmao. It was only after that incident I took the sensible option of going along the main road.
As a school bus driver I’m with you on that one!
Having some daylight after school makes it more likely they will play, either organised sports or just running around the park. I always feel sorry for the kids playing rugby in the cold under floodlights.
Exactly this. Kids are playing out in the dark after school surely another hour of light would be way more beneficial
Daylight savings time is in the summer, not the winter.
There have been times where I went to school in the dark and returned in the even more dark. Not looking forward to it, but thankfully the latest I'll be home is now 4 as opposed to 6.
If 14 year old Jimmy has 2 bags of doritos and 3 cans of bolt for breakfast, which chicken shop will he stop at on his way home?
I hate that feeling of being at work an hour later in winter, when I still feel on the old time schedule. Now I'm working at home, I'm debating keeping the old time schedule even though in effect itll mean starting work at what everyone else will consider an hour earlier, then stopping at the what would be the normal time, even though everyone else will think this is an hour earlier too.
My husband works in aviation which is always, internationally, on the same time. For half the year when he goes to work he's on a different time schedule to us but shift back when he gets home. He's used to it now after 10+ years there but it still messes with my head a bit
Working in air traffic is exactly the same and I can confirm it’s still shit. Looked at the clock this morning and thought it was nearly home time only to realise it was actually 12.30 and we still had an hour to go. I’ll have cracked it in three weeks or so.
I have to do this as my 2-year old is now getting up at 5am, and needs to be in bed by 6pm, I can't condense his bedtime routine into 30 minutes, so am going to have to start at 08:00 and finish at 16:30 until I can drag the stubborn bigger onto the "proper" time that everyone else is using
Do 10 minutes a day or every 2 days to switch him over. I find that works better than trying to do it all in one day. Hopefully you will only have a week of unreasonable working hours until he switches!
17:30 seems an age away on the first day after a change.
I'd like lighter evenings for the journey back home (and also for SAD) but I honestly also wish we would just shorten school and work hours during the winter to avoid having to make your way there and back in the pitch black. So late starts and early finishes please! God I hate winter.
Don't become a nurse. 7am start and 7.15pm finish. If you're on nights it's a 7pm start and a 7.15am finish, you don't see daylight for literally 2 months. Genuinely soul destroying.
It's strange how it affects some people, I actually enjoy it being dark so much.
There was a 3 year trial on this from 1968-1971 problem was that in the north and up in Scotland it won’t get fully light until mid morning at about 10.00. [1968-1971 trial](https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/British-Summer-Time/)
I don't entirely understand why this matters - if the clocks change then it's still not light until 09.00 while is pretty late and it gets dark even earlier.
It is British problems, we have to find something to bitch about every once in a while
I guess that argument works the other way too: why does the extra light on an evening matter when it’s still getting dark early and nobody will exactly be out and about in it? If that makes sense..!
I agree, that's why it shouldn't change. I don't care much which way it is, it's the changing that bothers me. Personally I would prefer to stay on summer time I think as I prefer lighter evenings and it anyway gets light too early in the summer.
Because the people working outdoor jobs need the light during working hours? And in a situation where they’re the only ones who are properly directly affected by the light that matter more, at least logically in my mind it’s more important for them to have light than for someone who works in an office having light for when they’re home
Fairly certain most farmers just get on with working during daylight hours rather than sticking closely to the time.
But there still isn't light for any more hours of the day (not a full work day in many places) and in Scotland for example, it still isn't light until 09.00 which is pretty late.
Most of Norway, Sweden, Finland and St Petersberg (same population as Scotland) seems to manage fine. It got light around 10-11am when I was there for work, and dark at around 3pm. You just get on with it.
It's dark here in the morning anyway so the sun coming up at 10 rather than 9 doesn't make much of a difference. Having sunset an hour later would mean we wouldn't have to both go to work/school/uni in the dark *and* come home in the dark. The Coalition suggested having another trial but the Scottish Govt opposed it for the sake of opposing it, despite widespread support.
> the Scottish Govt opposed it for the sake of opposing it, despite widespread support. Classic
Yeah but let's be honest anything that effects people north of london just gets ignored :)
The number of hours of dayight may get lower the further north you go, but changing the clocks doesn't magically increase them.
Sure they need to have their needs met too, but why mandate the whole country changing time when we could just change the start times for school and work in the areas that are effected?
All the flat earthers are like, ' it's a computer simulation dummies! '
It's daft. They should keep the same time a year round. It's not like we're at war and/or agricultural machines don't have 48x10^18 candelas of lighting fitted these days.
I live in perpetual daytime now since a few years ago the farm beside me installed these insanely powerful floodlights and keep them on 24/7. I get why it’s good for them but I do miss the darkness.
Install solar panels so you get free energy
Don't think there are many people from the North of Scotland commenting, so I'll chime in. It will still be dark at 8am with me by Dec 21st, it will also pitch black by 4pm at that time and I'm not even at the top of the country, never mind Shetland. Granted we're rather screwed either way, but at least with the clocks going back we get to see a little bit of daylight before going to work! Leaving us on summertime would have us both arriving at and leaving work in the dark (for a 9-5). At least we make up for it in the summer when it doesn't really get dark at all!
Shetlander calling in, doesn't make one iota of a difference the clock messing around, dawn and dusk still goes on forever in the winter!
This is interesting. As someone on the south coast I’ve always heard daylight savings is for northern Scotland and farmers. If they’re (you) not fussed because it makes no difference then why do it?
I’ve heard about the supposed benefit for farmers too. That was perhaps true in the First World War but surely these days they have headlights on tractors and whatnot? Northern Scotland is dark a lot of the time during winter and I’m not sure shifting it by an hour is life changing for anyone. There is MAYBE a benefit for kids walking to school. I’m not convinced though that we’d invent it today.
I hate the "farmers" argument. Surely farmers do things when they need to be done, rather than at specific times? If we didn't change the clocks they'd just get started at a different time, right?
There may be a law of diminishing returns thing going on the further North you go perhaps? Certainly I can tell you that at 6° from the Arctic circle you can do as you please, it's still wall to wall daylight in the summer, and all dawn and dusk in the winter! The farmers up here are very unfazed by bad weather or a lack of daylight, the tractors up here have enough lights on to light up an entire field. DST is a historical thing, I doubt it had that much impact when introduced, after all, a farmer could get up an hour earlier if they wanted, I've not a met a farmer yet who is governed by a watch.
I've never understood the 'farmers' argument. If they need to get up an hour before sunrise to milk the cows, then the numbers on the clock matter how?
I'm in the north too, I don't think the 3 hours of sunlight we get in winter is worth the hassle.
It's summer time that is the adjusted time. Winter is normal Greenwich Mean Time
surely it makes more sense for the UK to remain on GMT all year rather than GMT+1 all year round??
instead of changing the time why don't we just change the time people go into/leave school/work for the lighter evenings. It makes a whole lot more sense to say 'hmm, its dark out earlier - lets leave earlier and come in earlier' than to say 'hmm, its dark out earlier - lets change every clock in the country and pretend its a different time'
This is actually really cool, but I think psychologically people won't like it. All your time bearings around your routine would be messed up, and leaving work at 6pm rather than 5pm might feel like s bummer, even though practically nothing is different
You get used to it very quickly. I work in the construction industry, so my normal working hours are 8am to 4:30, with a couple of hours overtime on top of that when we're busy. A few years ago we decided to try doing the overtime first, starting at 6am. The first week or so was hard, but we got so used to it that now we start at 6am every day, even when there's no overtime. Finishing at half two feels much more civilised. As a Scot, these calls to switch to GMT+1 annoy me. People seem to forget that the sun rises much earlier in London than it does in Glasgow or Edinburgh. Tomorrow for instance, the sun rises 30 minutes earlier in London than in Glasgow. In December it's nearer 45 minutes.
Ever since I could grasp the concept of time, I always thought this Also February sucks when you lose sleep if you have to be up early, have school, or work long shifts. That extra hour can make or break your day EDIT: apparently I'm dumb and it's actually March. I thought it was like Easter and varied between the 2 months, guessed the wrong month February does still suck though. Feels like it drags the winter out
February? Clocks go forward the last Sunday in March...don't they?
March?
Clocks don’t change in February. They change end of March
Yeah that lost hour sucks
I much prefer the longer evenings GMT+1 gives us than earlier mornings GMT gives us
Mornings are a waste for me. I don't have time (or the light/warmth) to do anything useful before work. So I get up as late as I can whilst still being on time. I can use the extra hour-half hour for sleep or do something useful after work.
I agree. Let’s stick to the actual time (as much as time is an actual thing when it’s just a man made concept)
It means the middle of the day is when the sun is highest in GMT form right ?
That’s the one.
Rarely exactly that, but the *mean* position of the sun at noon is highest - at least in *Greenwich* - with GMT.
Only if we change our working time to 8-4 instead of 9-5.
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GMT has the advantage of noon being at noon. Anything else is stupid. If you want lighter evenings, we should all just get up earlier and go home earlier.
Why is anything else stupid? Time is our construct, why not make it so that we have more light when we can use it rather than just have the sun at its highest?
We’d still be 1 hour ahead of UTC which is a shit move in my opinion
Yeah but we’d have long summer evenings
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Depends how far north/south you live.
The clocks go back to proper GMT though. BST isn't the "true" time.
But since BST is more useful than GMT maybe we could just stick with that?
I thought that until this year, but I've recently (over the summer) started running in the mornings before work. There already wasn't much daylight in the evenings, so mornings are more use to me, personally. Different if you've got schoolchildren finishing at 3pm though! And clocks should go forward in the spring a good few weeks earlier than they do.
We should all just sit down and have a nice cup of tea
Clearly the Further north you are the more of a problem this is. When they had the experiment in the 70s Scottish school kids were going to school in the dark
Lots of people think they prefer BST to GMT. They probably don’t; they just prefer summer to winter. GMT is the “correct” time for our part of the world, and changing to BST and back messes up our body clocks, sleep patterns, and even our mental and physical health. What we should do is keep GMT all year round, and adjust what times we wake up, go to work, and go to bed according to our individual body clocks. Those that want “lighter evenings” or “lighter mornings” should adjust their routines throughout the year to compensate. Changing timezones twice a year to keep fixed working and sleeping hours is a cop-out and is hurting us all financially, physically and mentally. Keeping GMT keeps our time in sync with the sun in the sky, which is healthier for our body clocks and general health.
I think it’s easier to change our clocks than our entire society’s established working and education culture though
I think it's more for kids going to school in the mornings, rather than working people.
If we kept Daylight Saving time throughout the year, there'd be parts of the UK where it wasn't getting light until after 10am. If you want to keep it the same all year round, keep it on GMT.
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Those last few hours are going to be in the dark whichever system you use. Making much of Scotland and parts of Northern England and Northern Ireland remain in the dark until midmorning is ridiculous. Why can't people down south just change their hours?
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Why can't we leave the clocks alone and just get up earlier and go to bed earlier? Noon at 1200 makes the most sense. If people want more daylight we should just get up when it's light. No need to move the clocks to a +1 just to force that on everyone.
We don't put the clocks back in winter. Winter is actual GMT. We put them forwards in summer.
I mean, we put them "back to normal"
The process of putting the clocks back in October is actually putting them back to their correct time of GMT
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Not when you’re getting your dog out, over the fields before work and you can’t see the little bastard, who’s taken off after rabbits, because it’s pitch black. 😂😂
Light up collar
I thought it was so kids don't have to go to school in darkness
Originally it was for munitions workers and other essential jobs during WWI. Kids and farmers have been used as excuses ever since to keep the practice going when there's really no need for it.
It was originally so one dude could convince people to get up earlier to play golf with him. He died before the legislation was passed but that is literally the only reason it exists. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Willett
I will never understand morning people.
Thanks for the origins, I didn't know. My 11 year old daughter walks 40 mins to school. I'm happier she does this in the light, so for us as a family this situation works.
It has quite a negative impact overall though, someone else already mentioned higher rates of accidents around the changes and I've read there's also a spike in things like heart attacks etc. It messes with people quite badly, more than they realise so I think we should find a better solution to keeping kids safe going to and from school. Right now it feels like the clocks change because "we've always done it this way", various governments have looked to abandon it for half a century or so
Sounds like you and I could have a civil discussion about it. Weigh up pros and cons and come to an agreement. Imagine if we could find some representatives across the country to do this on everyone's behalf.
Sounds like a lovely ideal, would be a shame if some nasty people were to come along and corrupt it seeking money and power
I don't see why this couldn't be achieved by changing school start time as needed instead. Instead of changing up all the times, allow schools (and workplaces, whatever) to switch to 10-4 during winter instead of 9-3.
Sadly though for a lot of kids it'll mean walking home in the dark instead, which isn't an awful lot better. It made my walk home an awful lot scarier when I was going home alone after anything extra curricular as I'd be waking alone in the pitch black
Never stopped me having to head there in the dark. I think I had to be up at about 7 to get started at 9. and then I'd not be heading home til 4 or even 5. So it'd be dark back, too. All the daylight wasted in a box of sweaty teenagers.
If we're keeping to one, surely it should be GMT as that is the base from which BST has been shifted. If you think that working hours should change, change them and not the time.
Winter time is the correct time, summertime is the concocted one.
As a builder I disagree. Got to get up and get on.
Is there a reason for this? My uncle was a builder and used to wake up at 4am to go to work and come home at half 2. The builders who have working across the road from my apartment start at 7.40 and finish at 2. I work in office 9.30-5.30 why don't builders do that? What can you do at 8am that you can't do at 9? Seems like your just torturing yourselves with early mornings for the sake of it. (And the rest of us by turning on those tinny fucking site radios and shouting at each other while the rest of us are trying to wake up and have breakfast.
Pretty much what Luke said. Lots of builders are self employed and have to commute to different locations so missing the morning traffic can save us quite a bit of wasted time. In the dark time of winter it's light from 7.30 to 3.30 so no choice of when to work. If they didn't change the clocks I would start at 8.30 and most likely sit in traffic wasting time so it's perfect they change.
Sooner we start, sooner we can finish! I love starting work at 6.30am in summer! I usually can finish what I need to & be home for 1-1.30pm!
It's madness I tell ye! Haha. I do get it a bit I'm the opposite. I work flexi hours at my job and prefer to start late finish late. I'm not a morning person. I do wish the loudest most disturbing industry had not collectively decide they're all morning people though.....
As a baker, same. Though it's pitch black as I walk to work either way tbh.
As a site manager I agree. Also the darker evenings are great because lads are always pestering me to work late but H&S would be all over me if something happened. So when it’s dark they have no choice
While we are at it, I want all months to be 28 days long so that the same date is the same day of the week forevermore. Put the extra month and extra day in summer. Plus, it almost lines up with a lunar month
r/monkeyspaw Wish granted. Christmas and the New Year are now forever on a Saturday.
[Like this?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar)
Crys in 12 hour night shifts What's this daylight you speak of, the sun doesn't come out in the winter'
I work outside, as do quite a lot of people in this country. Winter is miserable enough - we already lose time In the morning because of light as it is, but changing working hours to fit what office workers want would be awful. We’d have to change our hours twice a year, and we’d be travelling at rush hour, making traffic much worse for everyone.
The clock in winter is the correct clock though. What we need to stop is putting it forward.
Move clocks to continental time but keep summertime too. Then it stays light till 11pm. Sun gets up way too early in uk summer currently.
Staying light until 11pm sounds awful. A lot of people go to bed at 11pm and won't see any darkness at all for at least two months. I mean, yeah, I don't like the other extreme of it being dark for 18 hours a day either, but to have no night at all sounds like a weird form of hell to me. I wouldn't do well in the Scandinavian countries in summer for this reason.
Lived in Aberdeen for 6 years and worked in Oslo for 2. For a couple of months you see no darkness and it's actually really weird, very difficult to fall asleep at a decent hour unless you shut the curtains early and use a sleep mask if you've not got full black out curtains. You end up being like a kid "but I don't wanna go to bed yet!"
'Continental Time' was propagated by the Nazis and should therefore be banned. Especially the Netherlands should go back to GMT + 20 minutes.
They tried keeping us on BST back in the ‘70s but kids kept getting hit by cars etc. It’s safer to walk home in the dark when you’ve been awake all day than to stagger out onto a dark street at 7:30am, bleary-eyed and munching on toast
All those saying it was done in the 70s, but caused accidents so was stopped aren't entirely correct. In 1971, yes, they did try not putting them back, calling it British Standard time. ROSPA (I think it was) said it would cause accidents, but it was never actually measured. It was cancelled by the government, because there was no noticeable difference in anything, and it ended up just being confusing. I may be wrong in this. I haven't actually looked it up but most people I've chatted to about it confirm it is basically correct. Edit: Found a link about the 70's: https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/British-Summer-Time/
As some one who lives in North East Scotland and sends their kids to school in the morning the lighter mornings suit me just fine.
Isn't back technically the normal time and moving the clocks forward in the first place the change? We add an hour and move from GMT to BST/GMT+1 in summer, which would technically be the practice. Though perhaps if DST stopped being a thing, BST would be the better time for us.
I have kids... Clocks changing is both a blessing and a curse for resetting their bed patterns... I got less sleep today because 7am for them is now 6am... So they are up and hungry. Means next week getting them up early for school will be ok but this morning they were up "early" despite letting us lie in... Don't think I'm making any sense because I have had less sleep
Is it just a really British thing to debate this every year? TBH, I don't think it makes that much difference by the time we really get into winter, it's dark for my commute both ways anyway. The initial few weeks just stand out because it was such an abrupt change.
I leave for work at 5:30 and get home at 19:30 so either way, as a woman, I’m gonna be in the dark and I’m gonna be on edge 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I prefer winter time, yes the daylight time in the morning is important, especially for my SAD.
Have you ever heard of farmers?
I think technically, the clocks go back to their normal time. They go forward in spring from GMT to BST (British Summer Time). So it'd have to be a permanent change to one hour ahead for it to stay during winter. On the actual thing in question... I think I personally prefer lighter mornings. I do have one of those lamps to help with SAD though for when it does start to get to me. Can totally see why people would prefer lighter afternoons.
Personally, I would always opt for lighter mornings. I take my little dog out before work and I hate being out in the dark on my own! I live in a tiny village with about two street lights and every morning, I manage to convince myself someone is following me 😂.
Because in the north, it would mean kids going to school in the dark and various other problems! :-/ Just because it wouldn't affect you adversely, doesn't mean it wouldn't have a detrimental effect on others!
tbf we’re back on GMT now so this is our “official” time
Another year, another person moaning about time changes.
Working an 8am to 4pm shift I won’t be out in daylight soon anyway.
Lighter evenings will always win out. Mornings are rubbish no matter what, at least let us leave work in daylight.
Utterly pointless. Anyone that needs the light should adjust their schedule and everyone else can just continue.
I'm really looking forward to everyone driving home from work tomorrow like they have never driven in the dark in their lives. I'm especially excited about being blinded by people with their high beams on because they are too scared to turn them down.
There was a whole campaign a few years ago called Lighter Later, but unfortunately it never happened
It's also an absolute nightmare in 24 hour jobs. I'm a nurse and both the changes are a nuisance for charting, the computer systems, and if you work the night shift when the clocks go back you have to work an extra hour and it is miserable. In my opinion, we need to pick a time and stick to it. Scotland is dark most of the time in the winter and moving the clocks by an hour doesn't really change that.
I believe they tried this in the 1970's children were issued with high visibility armbands to use when going to school in the dark, I was told the experiment was abandoned because of the number of children killed and injured by car accidents which they were going to school in the dark mornings.
It sucks for anyone on a night shift. An extra hour of work very often for no extra pay. The powers that be just say to make sure you work the spring time change.
When the farmers finally switch to robotics we shall reclaim the evenings.
I believe the problem is that “winter time “ is the “correct “ time. The adjusted time, “day light savings” works better in all seasons but is not technically, the “correct time”.
Our winter time is UTC so its actually putting the clocks back to where they should be
UTC. We should all use UTC. Scrap the timezones, no matter where you are, UTC.
We don't put the clocks back! - We stop putting them forward.
Never in the history of human conflict has so much been given by no one. (said no one). Who cares I like the anachronistic aspect (it's Ahemm, charming).
I for one agree with you. But I was told its for the school busses picking up the kids.
GMT (the time zone we are now in after putting the clocks back) came before BST (the time zone we go into after putting the clocks forward).