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Daylight Saving Time Isn't Worth It, European Parliament Members Say (arstechnica.com)
AmiMoJo shares a report from Ars Technica: Earlier this week, the European Parliament voted 384 to 153 to review whether Daylight Saving Time is actually worth it. Although the resolution it voted on was non-binding, the majority reflected a growing dissatisfaction with a system that has been used by the U.S., Canada, most of Europe, and regions in Asia, Africa, and South America for decades. The resolution asked the European Commission to review the costs and benefits of Daylight Saving Time. If the EU were to abolish Daylight Saving Time, it would need approval of the majority of EU member states and EU Parliament members.
"We think that there's no need to change the clocks," Ireland Member of European Parliament (MEP) Sean Kelly said to Deutsche Welle. "It came in during World War One, it was supposed to be for energy savings -- the indications are that there are very few energy savings, if any -- and there are an awful lot of disadvantages to both human beings and animals that make it outdated at this point."
"We think that there's no need to change the clocks," Ireland Member of European Parliament (MEP) Sean Kelly said to Deutsche Welle. "It came in during World War One, it was supposed to be for energy savings -- the indications are that there are very few energy savings, if any -- and there are an awful lot of disadvantages to both human beings and animals that make it outdated at this point."
I'm curious as to how daylight savings time is disadvantageous to animals.
Don't fornicate. Seriously, just don't do it.
> being robbed of 2 hours of potential daylight after work and school.
What the fuck are you talking about?
DST moves the clock forward by 1 hour. That means it stays light longer.
The exact opposite of what you are saying.
Even back then, they could have said: “We start school at ten”. Problem solved.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There were actually two resolutions on Daylight Saving Time. The other was about abolishing DST and was rejected: https://www.timeanddate.com/ne...
LED lamps consume several times less electrical energy than incandescent bulbs.
I mean nowadays it is possible to save energy on lighting by less radical measures.
However, it would be very hard to cancel Daylight Saving Time. As there will be undoubtedly political populists trying to construct a career by defending this tradition.
Balderdash, the Parliament represents the views of the people of Europe and none who hold democracy dear would fail to implement its decisions.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Emoji forces single language software to support Unicode and DST forces single time zone software to support different time zones. And screw up badly.
That's the only positive thing about DST that I can think of.
I have ten clocks. By the time I reset them it's time to go back in time. I have no time for this.
65N here and I haven't met a single person who thinks DST is a good idea, even when the clocks go forward.
Just as the autumn proper ends and it turns really dark, grey and nasty for November-season, you lose an hour of daylight in the evening along with a good chunk of your will to live. By the time you get to December the sun might bother to drag its arse over the horizon by 10:30, but it'll never get above the trees and it'll be back in bed by 2:30. The kids are going to school in the dark and coming home in the dark, whether we faff about with the clock or not.
Here, DST is a swift kick in the nuts when you need it the least. Much further north and there's no daylight to save.
Why do so many people think winter time is DST for some reason?
DST is summer time. It's not that difficult.
> those people are appointed
appointed by whom ?
That means the sun during the winter will be rising much later.
Well, yes, but without "summer time" we wouldn't have "winter time". And in the summer we have so much daylight we have to black it out if we want any sleep, so (until we can bottle the stuff) why would we want to save it then?
Why do we have to piss around with the clocks at all?
Typical political fail, which I have heard all too often "Well, theoretically possible, but nobody would ever do that". Heard it all too often in my civics classes. I find it absolutely incomprehensible to have no fail safes.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Everyone speaks of circadian rhythms, and how important they are. Part of that? Is sunlight, blue skies in the morning. *That* supposedly syncs things up.
So while I really don't care that much about the time zone changing, if people are going to want 'more sun at night', that's really the wrong reason to do it today. If we keep it, it should be so that the sun appears in the morning. That way, when the majority of people are in transit to work?
They get sunlight, blue skies in their eyes.
But really, all this blather about it hurting animals and man? Welp, certainly if it 'hurts' man, greater suicides, deaths due to all the reasons I've read about -- then I say this...
Are we going to start receiving hazard pay, every time we travel to a new timezone for work? Because that's the same, yes? Even 1 hour off, hurts humans! Can *kill*! If it can kill, then traveling for work is sort of like taking up smoking, because the boss demands it -- yes?
Yet why aren't scientists and others warning, screaming, yelling at the top of their lungs how DANGEROUS time zone travel is?
Welp, I can only conclude that there is no agenda of people wanting to kill off DST, and coming up with silly excuses to do so.
People want DST gone? Fine, I'll listen. People want to claim it's killing, harming people? THEN IT APPLIES IN ALL CASES, have some damned sense!
No, these are the EU parliament. This is why it's non binding. The EU didn't feel the need to give the democratically elected assembly any actual power.
Yes the current system gives more sun in the summer months.
There is exactly the same amount of sun in summer regardless of whether the clocks are put forward, backwards or left exactly the same.
> those people are appointed appointed by whom ?
Russian hackers, of course.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
... can we take another look at the definition of the working week?
I'm pretty sure that most of the folks who vote in the EU parliament don't work five days a week or more. So how about we declare that Friday is actually part of a 3-day weekend and that the working week is only 4 days long?
Given the amount of time I'm asked to spend in pointless meetings each week, if I could schedule those to run back-to-back on a Friday I could achieve this with at worst zero drop in productivity...
I'd rather we did this than worry about the time of day...
Look, I know how it works in theory. I look at the practice, and the practice doesn't work as the theory.
Often enough laws are passed that are blatantly against citizens. The EP does nothing, or at best waters down the law a bit.
I am not a citizen of the UK, actually I live in one of the most pro-EU countries in Europe and worse, I had my education at the European School (if you even know what that is). You can believe me that you get indoctrinated into believing the EU is good. I actually still think that the concept is useful and should be implemented, but the way the EC behaves (pro TTIP, totally in the hand of lobbyists, okayed the blanket road toll on German highways, Glyphosate, Roaming allowing national-only contracts, etc...), and the way the EP behaves has totally disillusioned me.
I say: scratch everything and rebuild it. With much more power to the EP, and lobbyists kicked out of Brussels. Ironically the "more power to the EP" part was supposed to be part of the EU constitution... but we know how that went: the trust in the EU was already in an all-time low, and people wanted to get back at the EU. Totally comprehensible.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I'd really like getting rid of DST. But I expect quite a fallout caused by devices keeping time (and observing DST) but not getting updates. We have witnessed struggles with operating systems, when governments decide to move time change date and companies fail to apply upgraded tzdata package. With embedded devices this will be many times worse.
:wq
So, who were the candidates for president? How many votes did the second place get? (The answer, is zero, because the president is appointed in a really stupid way that in no way reflects democracy).
It's a shame the EU wasn't structured in such a way as to keep them accountable. Who are they directly accountable to? Parliament as a whole, the cabinet, or the head of government? If I object to a decision by my commissioner, who do I contact to make this objection known? The fact that I live in a country where the government doesn't represent the people doesn't excuse the EU from being crap here.
I have two objections to the EU Parliament - firstly, STV is not mandatory. Secondly, it has no ability to initiate legislation. The only elected body of a nominally democratic institution only has the power to rubber stamp, or reject legislation.
Oh piss off with your "educate yourself" drivel. Some people disagree with you. This does not mean they're not educated. It means they haven't bought in to the idea that the EU is the bastion of democracy. It's not, and pretending it is because the power is vested in a group appointed by a group selected from a body elected by the people in an election that is not necessarily representative, does not make it so.
Yep
The problem I have with getting rid of it is that I very, very strongly prefer the summer time - but the "original" time is winter time. I want DST for the whole of the year.
Exactly, and that's why I strongly prefer DST for the whole year. Without DST it would be dark an hour sooner in the summer. I don't want that. Where I live (Portugal) people stay up long and get up late. Our time zone is wrong.
none who hold democracy dear
In other words, the European Commission, which holds all the power.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
This. As a European, I am glad the EU exists and I applaud the good that it has brought, but its political structure is deeply flawed. "Hold democracy dear" is not a term I would apply to the likes of Druncker, Schulz, and many of the Commissioners. There is not enough direct voter influence on the EU power structure, and that's not merely undesirable, but dangerous. We need those fail safes.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I've always thought that the use of time zones was a bit of an anachronism. Pick a longitude; the international date line is as good a place as any, and that sets the time and date for everyone on the planet.
So you end up going to work at 22:00 and return at 08:00 and it's all in the daylight, so what , these are just numbers. Travel planning will be simplified and so will arranging meetings where people join on-line from different time zones.
Maybe you should learn how the EU works. The EU executive proposes laws and directives and the EU parliament approves or disapproves them. So yes they certainly do have actual power.
Though this would mean that we have to go to bed while the sun is shining. I think that also doesn't work so well with the circadian rhythm.
Try Spain, they are an hour ahead - it's still dark in winter when the kids leave to go to school in Galicia.
Voter influence is how we ended up with the disasters of Brexit and Trump. Voters are idiots. Having educated people with advanced degrees in position to make the right decisions is the correct choice.
You've responded to me, yet I don't see how your comment applies to what I've said in my post. I didn't advocate changing anything, or modifying anything.
My comment about "if we keep it" was meant to stress that we shouldn't *change* it so that there is more light at night. That's the post I was responding to..
In terms of "go to bed when the sun is shining", all I said is that it's supposedly good to have sunlight + the blue sky in the morning. To sync things up. This doesn't mean you have to watch the sun rise, or anything silly like that. Only that the sun HAS risen by the time most people go to work.
Does anyone really want the version of 'getting rid of DST' that involves not having that extra light after work/school when you can actually go do something instead of in the morning when it's useless, then dark way too early? Who wants daylight gone by 5:30pm like it is here now? Unless that's what we're getting, screw it, keep DST so at least we get it in the summer. (Your times and seasons may differ but the principle is no doubt the same).
You're an idiot if you think that standard work times could be changed as easily as an arbitrary time zone convention.
The whole idea of DST and changing time zones is that it's way easier to change the hands on the clock - and arbitrary but binding convention - than actually changing ten thousands of time tables, work schedules, bus and metro routes, etc.
And having fixed standard work times is just as idiotic as the idea of daylight saving...
The majority of us don't work in fields or require natural daylight to do our jobs anymore.
Many of us have to deal with clients or suppliers in other countries who don't work at the same time anyway.
Many businesses are intentionally open outside of regular working hours because that's the only time many customers can go there (retail, restaurants etc).
Travel congestion is a serious problem in terms of time wasted, the unpleasantness of the congestion and environmental impact. You end up with transport infrastructure thats massively overcrowded for a few hours a day, and mostly idle for the rest of the day/night.
Many businesses operate 24/7.
Many call centers are located far away from the locations they serve (eg lots of indian call centers serve customers in the us and uk despite a huge timezone difference).
Just because something has always been done a certain way, doesn't mean that is still the best way.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
So why was this only a non-binding resolution? Why didn't they go the whole hog and introduce legislation to actually make the commission review the costs and benefits?
The farm day started at sunrise, irrespective of what it said on the clock.
There's no reason why the school day couldn't have started later, tying it to the arbitrary position of clock hands is stupid when you're in a location which results in the sunrise/sunset times changing significantly depending on the time of year.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Direct democracy is even more dangerous. It just takes a well-crafted series of facebook posts to convince millions they're in danger, and their votes can be swayed.
Everyone hates it, everyone thinks it has adverse effects, and yet we still have it. Is someone making a buck off it? Is the Little League lobby running the country? Do the lizardmen who've infiltrated all the world's governments like it?
What's the deal here?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I personally never thought it had much statistics to back up doing it anyway. The logic wasn't there, you have a natural cycle of shorter days and longer nights in Winter, the reverse in Summer. Changing the clock a hour doesn't really affect this in terms of saving anything. The problem is getting a whole series of governments to agree its time has past. That in itself is where the real problem lies.
The solution is to take sun from the summer and move it to the winter!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
The Turtles, obviously!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
You do realise that the actual amount of daylight doesn't change , right? Its just a number on a clock. If you want more light then get up earlier! All DST does is fool your mind into thinking its later than it is so whats the difference?
... and then setting them an hour out? Plenty of idiots above have talked about the "extra hour" of daylight they get with DST. Err, no, you don't. The earth doesn't rotate any quicker, you get exactly the same amount of light FFS. Want some more during winter? Then get your arses out of bed an hour earlier! All DST does is fool your mind into think its an hour later than it actually is so whats the point? Just keep the clocks the same and get up an hour earlier.
Removing the standard 9-5 working hours would be a far more sensible thing to do. Having everyone trying to get to and from work at the same time causes peak loads on roads and public transport and often results in lots of stationary cars sitting and polluting but not moving anywhere. In the UK, it's particularly stupid synchronisation because most shops use it as well and so ensure that they're open only when people with jobs can't go to them because they're at work.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
So while I really don't care that much about the time zone changing, if people are going to want 'more sun at night', that's really the wrong reason to do it today. If we keep it, it should be so that the sun appears in the morning. That way, when the majority of people are in transit to work?
Why? In the mornings, people get up and go to work and sit inside. In the evenings, they go out and can, if there is any, enjoy the daylight. When GWB extended summer time in the US, it had no measurable impact on any sector of the economy, except sports clubs, which saw an increase in custom, because people had more sunlight in the evenings when they could go and enjoy themselves.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
If you can persuade all employers to let their employees come into work an hour early and leave an hour early, that would fix the problem as well. Good luck with that.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Time zone change: uniform change for all of society
versus
Individually changing all bus schedules, plane schedules, work schedules, child care schedules, school schedules, TV and radio programs, and so forth.
You don't see any difference?
Jet lag for every human being, twice a year ... insanely stupid.
But at least the kids' soccer game has more light! Bleah.
and yes, get off my lawn ...
Without DST you'd have less light in the evenings in the summer, and the same bleak dark winter days that you already complain about in the winter.
I believe the message to which you are replying would answer the question that you have asked, ie one proposes the other disposes in this case.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
Set your alarm clock an hour earlier then
As a morning person myself, I just do things earlier in the day then others tend to do. Chances are your job will be slightly accommodating, allowing you get in an hour early and leave an hour early. As this normally expands the coverage in the company.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Being rude louder doesn't improve your point.
As it happens the cemetery has a sensible opening schedule within sight of my desk right now that varies by month to acknowledge that it's not good to have people wandering around in there after dark. It's not that hard.
Another example: our local schools already coordinate on opening hours and holidays to avoid creating problems for parents. Adjusting the hours to something sensible and safe by (half-)term probably would not be hard.
9-5 never made that much sense and doesn't even acknowledge that humans are diurnal and live at different latitudes with different sub hours and climates!
Let's stop working to an entirely illogical rigid timetable, messing around with the clock to try and fudge it, and, given that most of us have smart assistants with calendars, etc, go with something that better reflects reality, ASAP.
Birching seemed like a good idea at the time, but seems less so now that most societies have given it up. DST will be much the same in the rear-view mirror.
But whatever, calling the poster above an idiot does not advance anything.
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
I used to be a fan of direct democracy. Why not just vote on everything now that technology makes voting cheap and reliable, right?
But the reality is that most people aren't interested enough to educate themselves about important topics, but want to participate anyway. Even the ones who seem to be engaged are often really just angry because of decades of abusive Daily Mail headlines warping their perception of the world and baiting them every single day.
Someone will now accuse me of being a fascist who gets butthurt when things don't go his way, but actually every democracy has things to prevent direct democracy getting out of hand, e.g. a constitution.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
"UTC+1 for the whole year has been tried in the UK: it was not popular. They particularly hated it in Scotland." - when did they do that? apart from every year up to 1916
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
farming technology has moved on since then
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
The vast majority of us are represented by people we didn't vote for, yet somehow when it comes to the EU it's an indicator that the system is undemocratic.
One of my MEPs is Nigel Farage (the MEP with the 2nd worse attendance record) - I didn't vote for him.
I didn't vote for my Prime Minister (as I'm not in her constituency)
I didn't vote for MP either
In fact, I've never lived in a constituency where I was represented by the person I voted for, somehow I've always lived in uber-safe seats.
I'd love to see the end of DST, but if this is agreed to by all the EU member states then it'll be a nightmare for us in the UK, because the lunatics are in charge of the asylum, so 1). They can't agree on anything, and 2). If the EU does it, it means that it's undemocratic and bad.
I heard a proposal on Car Talk for what you want. It's call "Daily Savings Time" . Each day, at 2pm the clock is advanced an hour, so you lose an hour of work. Each day at 2am the clock is moved back an hour, so you gain an hour of sleep. Presto!
And yet there often are (gasp) reasons as to why things are the way they are. Maybe you need to be in the office 8 to 5 because customers expect to be able to reach you? Or co-workers who want to talk to you can? Or there's an early shift because the UPS truck comes at 4pm to pick up product and producing something at 4:01 is worthless?
Given that the sun here sets well after midnight in summer and is back up again before 4am, and I've seen people out having a picnic in broad daylight at 2am, summer evenings really aren't an issue. Spring and autumn, though, sure. If we could have permanent DST, great; it's the changing back and forth this half-time half-assed DST implementation brings that makes it suck a pain.
As far as I'm concerned you can turn the clock by 12 hours or whatever makes you happy, as long as it STAYS THAT WAY.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I guess it should be doable to "retrain" customers to reach you at different times. And with easier and easier telepresence, being able to talk with a coworker is by no means tied to being in the same place at the same time anymore. Most of my communication is with people I never met and will most likely never meet.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
We've done that a long time ago. We even did away with a having to be at work at a certain time. And guess what: It works.
Yes, some people start at 6am. Some come in around 11am. But there's plenty of overlap that you can get a meeting scheduled, and a lot of NON-overlap so you can actually get work done, too, because you can't stuff that time with more meetings. Which led to people actually thinking before scheduling yet another useless hour long meeting for something that can be resolved in 2 emails.
This way the ones that want some precious afternoon rays can get them by getting out around 3pm while those that value their morning sleep can arrive just before lunch (and are actually awake by then instead of waddling in like zombies at 9am and require an hour and three coffee just to be barely functional).
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Not changing anything seems to be the more sensible alternative.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The OP was an idiot in the sense of stubbornly insisting on a point instead of just admitting that he was mistaken, because he pointed out in a fairly smartass way the obvious fact that the hours on the clock are an arbitrary convention, thereby missing the whole point of DST, which is exactly that. The hours on the clock are an arbitrary binding convention, so if you want to change the relation of society as a whole to the daylight hours, then for Christ's sake adjust the clock rather than changing all time tables in all professions and all areas of life. What I hate about discussions like this is that so many people assume in them that the original inventors "didn't get it" while not really understanding what they're talking about themselves. Just check how many people in this thread erroneously believe that DST is winter time rather than summer time. True, it's debatable whether DST has fulfilled its original purpose of saving energy in light of the oil crisis, but at least the inventors of DST did understand the overall purpose of adjusting the clock - more than you or the OP, apparently. Sorry if that hurts your feelings.
Now regarding your other suggestion of flexible time tables for everyone in every profession and every area of life. It's a utopian and illusory idea and I personally believe the disadvantages would far outweigh the advantages, but in any case it has nothing to do with a discussion of DST.
Without DST you'd have less light in the evenings in the summer, and the same bleak dark winter days that you already complain about in the winter.
Assuming the solution to abolishing DST is literally to abolish DST rather than the sensible approach: make a zone-by-zone decision on whether to stay permanently on DST or non-DST.
Most of England would probably be best on permanent DST - unfortunately, Scotland probably needs its own time zone. Maybe that can be fixed if Scotland break away so they can stay in the EU... Trouble is, in the current political climate, the Daily Mail is gonna be shouting "you can take our Greenwich Mean Time from our cold dead fingers". Sigh.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Where do I sign?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What about direct democracy in the small - the things people actually interact with daily or at least several times per month?
Then they can see the effects of their choices faster.
Also this would allow a more dynamic process by allowing people to together move towards a (local) system that works according to their wants and needs.
This could be done for instance by having several periods with increasing length so that the first vote will have a short period of validity, the second vote for the same question will have a longer period and the third an even longer (e.g. 4-8 years minimum before a new vote).
While this wouldn't scale it could have positive effects in educating people about democracy and what it requires from the voters.
What animals are inconvenienced by DST?
I mean sure, Rover might get his walk an hour later, or Bessie get milked an hour earlier, but it's not like these expectations are ENTIRELY the result of habituation to human schedules in the first place.
It's not like Yogi Bear is like "oh shit, I was supposed to steal that picnic basket at 8 and I missed it because I forgot to reset my goddamned alarm clock..."
-Styopa
Never worked on a farm, didja? Work starts *before* sunrise.
Time is arbitrary anyway. Stop shifting, pick one thing, do that. I prefer getting dressed in daylight so fuck DST, but that's just me and people like me. It's not as if DST adds more sunlight to the total.
--#
...for this Daylight Savings Time nonsense to die....
Because that way you leave your home in the morning when it's not dawning, but when it's NIGHT.
I don't know about you, but around here, the sun rises at midsummer at 4am and sets at 8pm, unadjusted. So let's say we shift that by 2 hours so it rises at 6am and sets at 10pm. Great.
Now midwinter. Sunrise at 8am, set at 4pm. And if you shift that by 2 hours to get some evening rays until 6pm that means the sun rises at TEN in the morning.
I don't know about you, but I should be at work before that time. So you'd essentially want to go to work while it's darkest night for the chance of maybe see the sun set when you finally come home?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Try that a little further north and it means that in Winter you leave your house in the morning when it's pitch black night, so you can see the sun set when you come home. Well, if you come home early.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Direct voter influence on the power structure (how I worded it) is not at all the same as direct democracy (i.e. referendums). It simply means that those in power are elected by the voter rather than appointed or voted on by a committee. Or failing that, having sufficiently powerful democratic oversight over appointed rulers. In case of the EU, a good start would be to give more power to parliament.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Why? Really? My post says precisely why. Circadian rhythms.
I don't give a fuck either way. If it makes you happy, crank those hands on the clock by 6 hours so you get to work when it's (now) midnight so you can get out of work with sunrise, but stop putting me into jetlag twice a year.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just in case you wonder why you've been downvoted: Almost everything in your post is erroneous. To figure out why, get a pen & paper and keep in mind that DST=summer time, standard time=winter time.
Earlier this week, the European Parliament voted 384 to 153 to review whether Daylight Saving Time is actually worth it. Although the resolution it voted on was non-binding, the majority reflected a growing dissatisfaction with a system that has been used by the U.S., Canada, most of Europe, and regions in Asia, Africa, and South America for decades.
I don't think anyone minds Daylight Saving Time itself. What they mind is the needless switching back and forth. Personally I want us to go to Daylight Saving Time permanently. It gives me the most daylight hours in the evening after work when I can made the most use of them. I don't need noon to be the point in the day when the sun is highest overhead. I'm perfectly fine with noon being defined in the manner with the greatest utility for the most people. If that means noon is what currently is 3pm then so be it.
I used to be opposed to direct democracy. I thought a representative democracy is best, where we choose our rulers and those rulers make the difficult decisions. And referendums are problematic, just look at Brexit. Or at the Dutch referendum on the EU constitution, with both sides of the issue playing on emotions. "If you vote against, the lights will go out and we will have war", as an example statement from a government member.
However during the referendum on the treaty with the Ukraine I saw kind of the opposite: utterly uninformed politicians voting blindly, and rather well informed ordinary voters (on both sides of the issue) not just voting but able to state their case, and explain rationally why they'd vote one way or the other. Sure, voters are still being played, but in general, I have been seriously disappointed in the quality of the decisions made by our politicians. Their insights aren't necessarily better than those of the general populace. And many (but not all) of them have the wrong set of priorities: their own career, the party interests, business friends, future job opportunities, and only then they think of the good of the country. That is a heavy accusation to make, but I no longer hesitate to make it; the evidence is all around us.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
And having fixed standard work times is just as idiotic as the idea of daylight saving...
You've never tried to manage a business have you? There is a lot of benefit to having most companies work predictable schedules. Real, tangible, measurable, economic benefit. If you worked in a company like mine you'd find that it's really hard to run an assembly line without people showing up at the same time each day. Good luck running a hospital with people coming and going whenever they feel like it. Have fun running a restaurant when the waitstaff or cooks can come and go whenever.
Many of us have to deal with clients or suppliers in other countries who don't work at the same time anyway.
And far more of us do work with clients who are nearby and need to be able to interact with us on a predictable schedule. It is a LOT easier to arrange this if most businesses have roughly similar or highly predicable schedules.
Many businesses operate 24/7.
Many more do not. What is your point?
I think most people agree with you. Having the extra daylight in the evening is nice. Very few people like standard time ("Winter" time).
It's about time we abolished this idiocy. Assuming the EU actually listens to the populace, then we will all just shift to permanent DST, which is the same as shifting one time-zone to the right.
The chances of the EU listening to the populace? Variable, sort of like a lottery.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
A lot of Europe is in the wrong time zone. Spain wants to stay in sync with France. Portugal is on UTC (or UTC+1 in summer) same as the UK and Ireland. They tried +1/+2 for a few years in the 1990's to match Spain, but it wasn't popular.
I'd say Spain and possibly France are in the wrong timezones, but they seem to like to be in the same timezone as each other and Germany.
Well that's too bad. In the winter, it's dark when I go to work, and dark when I get home, and since I have no windows - if it's a busy time I could quite easily go from December to Feburary without seeing proper daylight.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
And the evidence that you have to support circadian rhythms benefitting more from sunlight while people are in offices than from sunlight when people are outside is...?
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Take a wild guess why Iceland never bothered to join the idiots club.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
In Summer it's virtually impossible to get the kids to bed at a sane time because it's light outside until about 10pm. You think that makes any parents really happy?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I guess you've never heard of flexitime.
Do you have comprehension problems? What difference does it make if the clock says 5pm and you leave work then, or it says the real time of 4pm and you leave then having got into work an hour earlier? The real time you leave work will be the same. Are you too dumb to understand this?
Portugal is east of Greenwich, like the rest of Europe. "east is where the thumb points left"
I've no idea what 'east is where the thumb points left' means, but Greenwich is exactly on the Meridian (by definition), Lisbon is 9 degrees, 9 minutes West of the Meridian. Even Madrid (which is in the country to the East of Portugal) is West of Greenwich (3 degrees, 43 minutes), though Barcelona (right on the Eastern edge of Spain) is 2 degrees 11 minutes East of Greenwich.
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You're joking, but ...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Then you have a new problem, that anyone who works a 9-5 job has to figure out how to get their children to school an hour after they're supposed to be at work. Not a problem if one parent doesn't work, or in places where children can walk / cycle to school, but still a big issue in a lot of the country (particularly rural areas).
That said, there's a lot of research that shows that children don't lean efficiently until about 10-11am (depending on age, for many teenagers it's not until the afternoon), so there are other arguments for making the school day later.
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You've echoed my thoughts exactly. The time change is annoying and causes all kinds of problems with scheduling, computers, etc. On the other hand I prefer the summer schedule of having the day go longer because I don't need daylight first thing in the morning anyway. I feel like most people in the modern age fit into this category. So my vote if I had one (which I don't), would be to permanently stay on DST.
Sun rises at 4am here thanks to DST.... Without it would dawn around 3am.
I definitely want to keep it.
OK, during winter I can't decide if it sucks more to be dark again by 5am or if it's worth to postpone it to 6pm but 9am still being pitch black night.
bickerdyke
Seems to work reasonably well in Switzerland, and even for US constitutional amendments. There are hurdles to getting things on the ballot, so it's not absolute democracy, but it does create a lot more involvement of the populace in lawmaking.
Neither would I. All that really happens for me with DST is that I come to work an hour late and go home an hour late.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
But the reality is that most people aren't interested enough to educate themselves about important topics, but want to participate anyway.
Most? I doubt that there are any people who have well-informed opinions on the vast majority of issues that come up in Parliament. The issues are sufficiently complex that it would take full-time study to understand just a few of them.
The problem with representative democracy is that, in my experience, the representatives that we elect are only marginally less ignorant than the average voter. They have to rely on opinions from the civil service and self-proclaimed experts, who are often pushing an agenda and not giving impartial advice.
I suspect that the problem is that we pick people to be general representatives. I wonder how different it would be if we had to vote independently for people to represent us in different policy areas and require that they collaborate in issues that overlap multiple areas.
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These things either are becoming more and more non-linear (who does still watch TV? Whenever you're having superbowl - it won't be at prime time for 23 out of 24 timezones anyway!) or child care centers that have long opening hours (up to 24 hrs) and you pay as you go without defined drop off/pick up times OR are only scheduled to meet peak demand. (train/plane schedules) that would profit from demand being spread more evenly.
bickerdyke
Step 1: People have to write DST-compatible workarounds for software, costing billions.
Step 2: Politicians see opportunity for improvement after all the code is written.
Step 3: Remove DST in a region as a test.
Step 4: Costs the same amount to have all the contractors come back in and figure out how to unwire the DST components of code without breaking everything.
Step 5: Politicians compare costs and say not worth it.
Step 6: Goto step 1.
One of the proposals that I've seen is for direct democracy but with arbitrary layers of delegation. I don't have time to vote on every issue, but there's someone I know who's well-versed in issues relating to heathcare and someone else who knows a lot about education, so I delegate my votes to them in these policy areas. They may not have time to vote for everything, but they know enough to be able to judge other people that have sensible opinions, so can delegate my vote and theirs. You'd need some safeguards to prevent sudden swings in public opinion from causing things that have been worked on for months to collapse, but even something like preventing you from changing your delegation more than once a month would help there.
This also addresses problems of gerrymandering. Constituencies are entirely fluid entities, with individuals able to add and remove themselves at will.
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I'm basically saying is that the clock is two hours out year round. Yes the current system gives more sun in the summer months. But it basically means we come home in the dark in winter. Why not come home to a little sun and enjoy some outdoor time with the family, friends the garden what have you.
Why not leave the clock alone and go to work at 6 AM rather than 8 AM?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It does depend to some extent on where you are in the time zone. I've lived most of my life at around 98W, in the middle of CST, and Daylight Saving Time works about right, except for that nonsense where they tricked Dubya into changing the dates for no valid reason. (DST does not "save energy")
For one year in 9th grade, I lived in Louisiana, near the eastern edge of CST, and it was really weird to see the sun come up half an hour earlier. It also would have set half an hour earlier, but I was too freaked by how early the sun came up to notice. There is a reason we have time zones, it's so that we don't have thousands of local times for thousands of cities.
There's also some difference in how it works vs latitude as well. Above the Arctic Circle, there are times when it's day or night for 24 hours, so that means there will be areas where +/- one hour wouldn't be enough. Fortunately, most of the human population doesn't live at such high latitudes.
The point of DST is to keep the sun from rising too early in the summer, to move that extra daylight to the evening in the summer (here sunset is 9PM at the solstice), and then back to standard time to keep the sunrise from being too late in the winter. But it can't fix the basic problem with time zones, that it's an entire hour difference in solar time between the east and west ends of a time zone.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
I have two objections to the EU Parliament - firstly, STV is not mandatory. Secondly, it has no ability to initiate legislation. The only elected body of a nominally democratic institution only has the power to rubber stamp, or reject legislation.
The last time that a proposal came up to move power to the EU Parliament and away from the Commission, it was vetoed by the French and the English. If the UK leaves and Macron remains staunchly pro-EU, I wouldn't be surprised if that changed.
The sad thing about the Brexit referendum wasn't that people wanted to take power from the EU, it was that they thought that giving it to the people most responsible for the least-democratic aspects of the EU was a good plan.
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From the same people who brought us Nazism, Marxism and WORST OF ALL - DST.
Even worse, there are tons of people not working 9-5 jobs, but have early shifts (or late shifts, same difference but the problem arises when kids have to go home). My mom was a nurse for years, her early shift was something like starting at 6h00. Schoolkids? What are schoolkids? People work around this, if there is enough demand, then an industry will organically arise to solve the issue.
Regardless of 9-5 jobs, this problem has *always* existed.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
... I want DST for the whole of the year.
I'm betting you live in the west end of your time zone. That tends feeling tends to get stronger the closer one lives to to the west edge.
The parliament can dissolve the commission. As can directly elected national governments via the council of ministers.
On the other hand it's the single thing that adds most of the difficulty...
bickerdyke
All the DST-lovers always try to pretend that it's impossible to adjust work hours.
That's a stupid argument. Walk down any street and take note of the business hours. Every business keeps different hours; they adjust their times based on day of the week and holidays; even having different hours in summer vs winter is fairly common. This conception that people have that we need DST so that everyone will work the same schedule is simply false. People already can and do account for the fact that working hours aren't always the same.
The world will not fall apart if business A adjusts their schedule by an hour and business B does not.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
I've heard of it. Now tell me what percentage of people, particularly of people in low-paid occupations, who constitute the majority of the workforce, work at places that offer it.
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Retrain customers you say? HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa!!
Oh, you were serious? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
There's also some difference in how it works vs latitude as well.
It seems that latitude may be more important than I expected. I've been living mostly near 30N, with some time near 35N, but it seems that a lot of the people complaining are north of 50N. That's farther north than the urban parts of Canada. That far north, the day is long enough that pushing it forward causes the summer sunset to be 10PM and later. In other words, after bedtime. But there's not a lot you can do about it; if you didn't use DST, the night would still last the same amount of time and you wouldn't get any more time to sleep before the sun came up.
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Right. Despite my criticism above, I'm still fairly pro-EU, but feel the organisation needed some fairly hefty reforms. Ironically, I think the UK being outside of the EU might mean they actually fix most of the aspects that were causing problems in the UK.
8 til 6, 9 til 5.
A normal working day has 1pm in the middle. Non DST has more hours of daylight before the working day than after.
In the depths of winter it makes no difference, dark going to work, dark coming home.
In the height of summer it makes no difference, dawn chorus at 3am. Blackout curtains needed at 10pm.
But in spring and autumn DST is better than not. And double DST would be better too. Put the clocks forward in spring. Leave in autumn. Forward again in spring and then leave it alone.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
No comprehension problems here, but I have to admit you and a few others don't particularly shine with their intelligence and wittiness in this thread. Shifting the clock by one hour is really not rocket science. My employer won't change my work schedule because you say so, and neither does my girlfriend's employer or just about every other one you can imagine. Having more flexible work schedules is all fine if you actually have them. But no, child care and TV and radio and hospitals won't change all of their schedules because you or I think it's better.
Meanwhile, with DST people can enjoy longer sun in the evenings instead of sleeping while the sun shines an hour earlier in the morning.
Now if you personally prefer winter time, fine - just say so. I don't. I prefer to have longer sun in the evenings. Got it? Or do you still prefer to pretend to be stupid?
The issue is that people who live in the north (or far south in the southern hemisphere) would have very skewed days for no benefit to them ...
You are always going to find corner cases where someone has a problem. Find the system that benefits the most people or failing that the system that most people want and go with it. Personally I think most people would prefer to have maximal daylight in the evening after work because that is of greatest utility to the greatest number of people. I like that during the summer solstice sundown is around 9:30PM or so. I don't really care if it is dark when I get up and commute to work.
Anyway people who live way up towards the poles get weird daylight no matter what. If that is an issue for them they should move closer to the equator.
Hey, the banks did it! Good luck trying to get into a bank office these days without a time reservation or a crowbar, all the customer service is online.
How will I know when to change my smoke alarm batteries?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
I see this confusion all the time. Everything people complain about is the returning to "Normal Time".
Honestly, the most expensive part of DST is the modern debates about keeping DST. Computers handle the rest on most clocks by now and you hardly need to worry about it.
Momento Mori
past nastification affects more people than the government wants to admit.
Why bother with that, just have the courts declare it a right or unconstitutional as needed. That way, we can all be smug about how smart the idiots wearing robes are.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
how sensationalised is swiss media though? Are voters swayed easily by tabloids?
At least with my East Cost perspective. Most 9-5 jobs normally have the last meetings end at 4:00PM.
The trick is to make yourself known in the office doing work at the early hours. (7am, 8am emails from work) let your boss and exec know that you come in early. When others get into work later, have a lot of deliverables done and ready for them.
Now if you are normally working 9-7 and you decide to work 8-6, in general if your management and team knows you are working in the early hours they normally don't have much an issue at all. Just as long they know you are doing your fair share.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The solution is to take sun from the summer and move it to the winter!
Ok, here you are.
Summer is now named Winter
Winter is now named Summer
Problem solved? :p
"My employer won't change my work schedule because you say so,"
Unless you're a medical or emergency worker or you working in a factory then the chances are these days that yes, you can shift your schedule an hour.
Get rid of it. Although, I'd prefer if they let us vote on it instead of just a bunch of assholes in brussels.
I remember when they tried this back in the 80s. The public confusion was more than palpable. I would like to see it removed, but at the same time do no look forward to the confusion again.
"The truth points to itself." - Kosh, Babylon5
This depends from job to job. If you are depending directly or indirectly on others, this might be a problem. e.g. if you have store opening hours from 09:00 to 18:00, this means that problems with the POS will be during those times. That means that the IT people who deal with those issues must be available. No, this will not be all of them.
But these people will have to often get into contact with the networking people, because the issue was a network issue. They then realize it was a cable cut, so they need to contact the cable company. They need to contact the people company that goes in and digs up the cable to repair it.
I could give many examples like that.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I used to love coming in to work early, because I could dos about posting on Slashdot while no-one else was around, and then knock off early and post on Slashdot from home for a few extra hours ever evening.
Then I realized I can just post on Slashdot all day at work on no-one seems to notice, so I only get up just in time to roll in to work right on time.
You think I'm joking.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
No, it's really not easier to do all of that. Do you know what's easy? Everyone just using GMT or UT.
I look at my clock. It says 14:34. The person I want to get in touch with works between 12:00 and 19:00. Can I reach them now? Yes!
And that would work for everyone in the world. How does it currently work?
It's 2:34 and I need to get in touch with someone 1000 miles away. What are their work hours? What is their timezone offset? Did either of us adjust for DST while the other didn't? It is so mindlessly complicated that I can't figure out why anyone wants to keep this system. I know lots of people who have missed meetings because they traveled across a timezone, didn't remember to account for that, didn't update their computer clock, and were suddenly an hour off.
I really don't care if the clock says 13:00 when I get up in the morning. Those numbers don't really mean anything. I'm happy working 15:00-23:00. But across the world we want to get up at 6am and we want to have the midpoint of the day at 12:00, and so we continue to waste massive amounts of time and effort playing time detectives when we could just all agree to use the same time, and then only have to share hours of operation.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Not changing anything seems to be the more sensible alternative.
The problem is that DST has been found to have negative side effects. From the forced shift of sleep schedule affecting peoples' health, to increased traffic incidents caused by weary motorists, to added weariness causing a drop in work performance. http://www.businessinsider.com...
Therefore, if DST has little to no positive benefits, then the negative ones make it sensible to spend some cost to abolish it so that we can get rid of the negative ones.
if you have store opening hours from 09:00 to 18:00, this means that problems with the POS will be during those times. That means that the IT people who deal with those issues must be available. No, this will not be all of them.
This is another of my pet peeves: Having store opening hours the majority of which fall in the time when most people with jobs can't visit the store. Unless you're something like a coffee shop with a large customer base that grabs a cup on the way to work, your most important business hours are likely to be the couple of hours in the middle of the day over which everyone else's lunch breaks are spread and the time after 17:00 when other people leave work. Changing your opening times to 11:00-20:00 would likely increase the amount of time when you're open and your potential customers are able to attend and would mean that most of your staff wouldn't be travelling to and from work at rush hour.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Direct democracy is even more dangerous. It just takes a well-crafted series of facebook posts to convince millions they're in danger, and their votes can be swayed.
Luckily you don't have direct democracy in the US, as this list can attest.
Time zone change: uniform change for all of society
versus
Individually changing all bus schedules, plane schedules, work schedules, child care schedules, school schedules, TV and radio programs, and so forth.
You don't see any difference?
What time zone change? Article is about changing daylight savings time, not time zones
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
I don't care what your clock says. I heed mine.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I just walk into my downtown bank branch, sign my name, and wait 0-5 minutes. Find a new bank.
We are probably "open" (read: someone being reachable) for more hours than your office. Unless there is actually someone (competent) answering the phones from about 6am to about 8pm.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
What I meant is that we should stop changing the clocks twice a year for no good reason.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
> being robbed of 2 hours of potential daylight after work and school. What the fuck are you talking about? DST moves the clock forward by 1 hour. That means it stays light longer. The exact opposite of what you are saying.
Right, which makes sense. What doesn't make sense is deciding the shortest days of the year should be made even shorter by falling back an hour during the winter, so instead of sunset at 6pm it's now sunset at 5.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Oh look, Ivan and Mikhail are at it again. What's the matter - Facebook and Twitter delete your accounts?
... and when did that ever happen? Honest question. I googled it, and found nothing.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
These days, you're lucky to find someone (competent) answering phones from 9 to 5.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Every daylight savings time heart attacks increase by 25%, car crashes increase by 17% (2.75 billion cost over 10 yrs). The only reason people do daylight savings time anymore is because we've been doing it for so long we don't question it anymore. It never saved any daylight, I think a study after world war II showed the policy barely had its intended effect (increased productivity, energy savings) and came with a whole host of unintended consequences. For the love of god we need to quit this idiotic experiment!
Unfortunately at this point there are established interests that want to keep it going. Starbucks knows they get more business when the clocks change, and would resist any proposed law to get rid of daylight savings time. There are dozens of other companies in a similar situation. sources: https://www.reuters.com/articl... http://www.telegram.com/articl...
For one year in 9th grade, I lived in Louisiana, near the eastern edge of CST, and it was really weird to see the sun come up half an hour earlier. It also would have set half an hour earlier, but I was too freaked by how early the sun came up to notice. There is a reason we have time zones, it's so that we don't have thousands of local times for thousands of cities.
Yup, I noticed a significant difference in sunset when I visited my aunt in eastern Iowa (I live in western Missouri).
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Maybe my school (in the UK) was unusual, but in my class under 20% walked, the remainder took a bus or were driven - and most of those were driven. The few buses that went near the school didn't go to all of the places pupils came from and most lived outside of comfortable walking distance. The same was true of most of the schools where my mother taught (in various bits of Devon, mostly rural).
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What on Earth are you talking about? I said nothing about indoor versus outdoor. Nada. Zip. Zero.
You're so far out in left field, that I suggest you go and read up on the topic -- in depth. Sunlight and blue sky are paramount EARLY in the morning. As in, as close to waking as possible.
You can find dozens of studies to this effect with a simply google search. It's why people say smartphones are BAD at night. Why lights are bad at night. Why you should sleep in the dark. Why red light is better than other light, if you need light late at night. The list goes on and on, but you're out in left field blathering on about people being inside or outside, or economic impact.
It's *timing*. Did I mention timing? Also, it's the TIMING.
And FYI, yes being inside isn't good enough... so go and READ instead of blathering on here.
There is a difference between having the opportunity to elect your representative, versus a bureaucratic appointment. Theoretically elected representatives are swayed by feedback from their constituency. A bureaucrat only answers to the person that appointed him.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Ah, sorry, I misread
Back before the EU British Summer Time was announced when Her Britannic Majesty emerged from her underground Winter Palace. If she saw a shadow summer had arrived and we all wound our pocket watches. Anyone that didn't was killed, horribly.
This is how it should be.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Most places I've worked typically have core office hours where people are expected to be in the office or available. Typically something like 10 to 3 or 9 to 4 or whatever. The earliest I can leave is fixed, even if my schedule is flexible within these constraints. I prefer more daylight after work. Having DST hours year round means more daylight after work for me. Most businesses with this model aren't going to shift to be more fluid, because people need to be available during the same core times for each other. Sure, some businesses have different hours depending on the season, but it is unrealistic to believe that every company would do that.
You also need to take schools into account. Good luck getting your kid to leave a couple hours early every day because you want to enjoy more post-school daylight with them.
Hmph. I knew somebody was paying you to post all that social justice garbage, but I figured they'd be aware of it.
In the northern half of the US at least, our commutes are long enough and the winter days short enough that we're waking up in darkness regardless. The only sun I see is through the windows at the office, may as well be an LCD panel showing sunlight for all I know. Sun at the end of the day is better.
Tl;dr - Circadian rhythem is already f'ked, might as well get some sunlight after work out of the deal.
More the east end. The west end isn't bad.
For example, sunset in Buffalo today is 5:44 PM. Sunset in Boston is 5:14 PM
It's annoying enough that Boston officials keeps half-studying if they can join the Atlantic time zone.
Day Light Savings was put into place so that farmers children could help on the farm before heading off to school.
This is a myth that needs to die. I don't know why it keeps getting retold over and over again.
Farmers have generally either hated or ignored DST.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Unless you're a medical or emergency worker or you working in a factory then the chances are these days that yes, you can shift your schedule an hour.
Or work in a mine, or a refinery, or a shipyard, or an airport, or basically anything other than a Dilbert-style white-collar office worker. Which I know is over-represented here on Slashdot, but is still not the norm for most of us. But even as a non-Dilbert-style worker I hate DST because it makes it so businesses can make you be at work before dawn almost the whole year instead of only in winter.
Many of us have to deal with clients or suppliers in other countries
Okay, let me stop you there Mr fortune 500. The overwhelming majority of any population never has any business with people outside of their own timezone. At best they may have business with people within their timezone who will internally to their own company source something from another timezone.
Theoretically elected representatives are swayed by feedback from their constituency.
That's naive bordering on the ridiculous.
A bureaucrat only answers to the person that appointed him.
That's even funnier.
Actually, having lived in Spain, the attempt did them no good whatsoever. The Spanish arrive at work later in the morning, have a lunch at 1 pm and leave later in the evening than the Germans. They live on UTC even though their clocks say CET.
1968 to 1971.
Have you ever lived without DST? I have 38 summers with no DST, 35 with. I much prefer no DST.
That's naive bordering on the ridiculous.
Calling your state and local representatives does work in my personal experience.
A bureaucrat only answers to the person that appointed him.
Take positions in the President's Cabinet for example. You are appointed by the President, and you are removed by the President. You are answerable to, guess who, the President. Do you offer a counter example?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Calling your state and local representatives does work in my personal experience.
To what? If you mean get them an easy win by poking some public servants, sure. If you mean by getting them to draft and pass legislation that might be seen as counter to their fund raising efforts for the next election, mmmm nah, I don't think so.
Take positions in the President's Cabinet for example. You are appointed by the President, and you are removed by the President. You are answerable to, guess who, the President. Do you offer a counter example?
Sure, any of the president's industry appointments will do. How far do you think they're straying from what the industries they "regulate" want? You think the President is closely monitoring what the FCC or the EPA are doing?
Or let's talk about the SCOTUS? Any firing going on there? Or any other fixed-term appointment, say tenure at a University.
You're completely retarded for thinking the fact social media got so much power and bans us is actually an argument against us or their point.
I don't know how it works there or for you but here in Sweden the party need 4+% of the votes and the lock the lists so really the only thing you CAN do is vote for THEM.
Also we have a minority government. The EU is even worse. We have no clue there. Plus it's not all that democratic in the first place.
Sweden is a democrature but democracy risk just being socialism and lack of freedom anyway. That suck. It's shit regardless.
As for time if I could had mine be 24 / 10 hours per day and then just be awake whenever the fuck I wanted that would be nice.
Well it's sure as fuck easier to just change the time for work than to change the middle of night and day (especially when the time of the day changes with them.)
Go with DST and the system no longer make any sense.
Just start everything one hour earlier if you want too. Make sense since people doesn't sleep 20-04 as is.
But could we please also switch to 10 hours and 100 minutes?
Counting hours at 24 hour clocks is some sort of work. Because of analog clocks I guess. 7-4 is simpler than 17-9.
Sleep 9-2 if you want to ;)
Since Sweden and the US doesn't change at the same dates (maybe also hours?) It mess up for me anywat because things happening at 20:00 CET suddenly happen at 19:00 CET for instance since its American time.
In most cases the reason is simply inertia...
Customers *expect* to reach you 8-5, but many would often like to be able to contact you at other times, and it might even be easier for them.
You don't need to be in an office for customers to reach you, have you heard of this modern invention known as the cellular telephone?
The world is far more connected now, many companies now have customers in different countries. If you insist on working 8-5 in the uk and your client insists on working 8-5 in australia then your working hours never overlap, so when can you talk to them?
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We've seen a decent number of politically educated people pushing for leaving the EU. It's a good thing is economic stability is your goal, and don't get me wrong - economic stability is a good thing; but it's not the only thing that matters.
Trump was a response to a really bad choice essentially between the highly unpopular Hillary Clinton, and Trump; who is extremely unpopular to his opponents, but appeals to some people because of his brashness. It's not really a democratic process.
The discussion in this subthread was not about the article but about adopting DST for the whole year. Read the context before hitting the reply button.
Have you heard of not wanting to be on call with customers 24x7?
It's hard enough to get kids to bed anytime. It's twice as hard when it's still light outside. And don't even get me started on getting up while it's still dark.
I am a parent and that is among the weakest and dumbest arguments I've ever heard. Suck it up buttercup. Make the room dark and deal with it. You chose to have a kid so I'm not sympathetic at all. I don't ask anyone else to compensate for my kid.
Let's have our daylight evenly spread both sides of noon, please.
No thank you. My day isn't schedule like that so I'd prefer my daylight match what we actually do. Having the majority of daylight when most people are stuck inside at work or school is a stupid idea. Arrange the day so that most people receive the most advantage. Since it's difficult to get everyone to change their company and school hours all at once, change the clock instead.
That's what "noon" is supposed to mean.
That argument is nothing more than "that's the way we've always done it" which is ALWAYS a stupid argument. Continuing to do something stupid because that's the way it was done in the past is the very definition of insanity.
While it's sensible for your assembly line workers to arrive at the same time every day, there is no reason why that time needs to be 9am.
Who said anything about 9am? Most non retail businesses are open well before 9am these days. Most open at 7 or 8am. There IS a reason why we chose the times we do. Two reasons actually in my company's case. 1) it ensures our deliveries get to our customers at the time in the afternoon when our customers require them and 2) it avoids rush hour which ensures our staff can be on time reliably and not have to waste their lives sitting in pointless traffic jams. It also keeps us on a similar schedule with our suppliers maximizing our ability to work closely with them because most of them keep similar hours. Plus we employ a lot of parents who appreciate being able to go pick up their kids after school.
Hospitals are typically 24/7 operations, the staff don't all show up at 9am and leave at 5pm, you have various shifts and staff who remain there over night etc.
Missing the point. The point is that those "fixed standard work times" didn't evolve by accident. There certainly are cases where they don't make sense but for the most part they exist for a variety of rather sensible reasons. People have children and lives outside of work. People need to be able to communicate with other businesses while they are open. Having schedules that don't mesh well with other people's schedules can be a huge problem.
I never advocated against schedules, i advocate against everyone arbitrarily being on the same schedule for no reason other than it's always been that way.
My least favorite words in the English language are "that's the way we've always done it" so from that perspective I very much agree with you. It's the reason why I think continuing to say 12 noon must coincide with the sun being highest in the sky is rather ridiculous given the realities of modern life.
Yes. That is why all customer service is routed to India.
In fact, I've never lived in a constituency where I was represented by the person I voted for...
So, did you never have the opportunity to vote against them (they're not from your district?), or are you saying you'd always voted against these people? If you just voted against them, they you ARE represented democratically.
Just another day in Paradise
You could get your wish, when the UK experimented with this summer time became the standard. BST went from British Summer Time to British Standard Time. Regrettably after the experimental period they went back to the old system, probably to stay in line with the rest of Europe.
And yet there often are (gasp) reasons as to why things are the way they are. Maybe you need to be in the office 8 to 5 because customers expect to be able to reach you? Or co-workers who want to talk to you can? Or there's an early shift because the UPS truck comes at 4pm to pick up product and producing something at 4:01 is worthless?
Customers expect those hours because tradition--except the question of '9-5 which timezone?' is becoming more and more one your customers may be asking because your customers and you don't as often reside in the same time zone, and more to the point, they expect to be able to reach you so it can very much pay to have your hours not overlap completely with the hours they work. Your coworkers, meanwhile, presumably know how to use a phone, can email, and possibly even one of the many messaging, chat, and VOIP options.
Also, fixed standard work times in the US are the '9-5, M-F,' which is what produces rush hours. You actually do want to depart from that if you're needing an early shift--and if the UPS truck comes by at 4PM to pick up product and something produced at 4:01PM is useless, then you're starting shutting down for the night well before 4PM and departing from fixed standard work hours on both ends.
For the reasons the person cited, we are gradually moving away from the standard workweek--it doesn't really work as well when you're doing business with people in multiple time zones and/or need to be accessible to customers who work during standard office hours. One of the major alternates I've seen is 4 day workweeks where you have 10 hour workdays without necessarily having the same extra day off for everybody--in part because of the effects of travel congestion and the time wasted in it.
Switching to using GMT or UT makes more sense than DST.
We're no longer an industrial/agrarian society where workers have to run home from their jobs to tend to their private victory garden.
I'm sure a few of you out there grow some of your own food, but I doubt you're using it to stave off starvation.
Chances are your job will be slightly accommodating
Nope! US society found out the hard way that it's far far easier to change our conception of dates, to change what "8 am, noon, and 4pm" are than to have businesses change their hours. That last part is not going to happen.
Just because something has always been done a certain way, doesn't mean that is still the best way.
That's what we said when we went to daylight saving time.
However if changing a clock is too hard for some people, I suppose we could stay with one time. Too bad we have to go down to the lowest common denominator all the time. I just showed a guy how to set his clock in his Sebring. He couldn't figure it out for 7 years. Took me like one second.
While we're at it let's go all in. Maybe we should go with that base 10 time as well?
Just in case you wonder why you've been downvoted
Bitztream gets downvoted because he's a troll and a moron.
or basically anything other than a Dilbert-style white-collar office worker
Many of us white-collar office workers don't have flex time either because we're support staff and our shifts have to cover the time periods that the other office workers are actually here. If THEY all left an hour earlier, than our shifts could start and end an hour earlier too. Will this happen? No. It will not.
In the winter, to celebrate London (the glorious capital of the empire, All hail Empress Victoria!) we can have say Greenwich Mean Time
That's a lot of snark to aim towards folks who didn't want to be a part of the empire of Europe, subservient to a foreign government unaccountable to them.
Summer is now named Winter
Winter is now named Summer
Problem solved? :p
That means we're not in Summer and Winter is Coming, again. That blows.
I never said it's not democratic, I was responding to the parent's comment about not being represented by people they haven't voted for.
I've always voted, but the my current MP received more than 50% of the votes, so it's pretty much impossible for him to lose as the remaining vote is split between multiple candidates*. Clearly he had a lot of support, but then my constituency would elect a fox in a pheasant run if it was wearing a blue rosette. Just as my last constituency would have elected a donkey if it was wearing a red rosette. Personally I'd prefer a PR system, but c'est-la-vie.
* Unless he fucks up majorly before the next GE.