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EU Polls The Public About Abandoning Daylight Savings Time (europa.eu)
"Following a number of requests from citizens, from the European Parliament, and from certain EU Member States, the Commission has decided to investigate the functioning of the current EU summertime arrangements and to assess whether or not they should be changed."
The EU has launched an official "online consultation" seeking input from the public. Long-time Slashdot reader mitch0 writes: The consultation was started after some member states expressed the opinion that the daylight saving time should be abolished within the EU. There were some local motions in member countries as well, but these cannot really proceed without full coordination with all member states.
So far it seems that most of those wanting to end the daylight-saving change would stick to summer time all-year round, but the questionnaire has a specific question about this issue so a more representative result is expected after the survey is closed in the middle of August...
Citizens can express their opinion about the summer time change by filling out a short online survey.
The EU has launched an official "online consultation" seeking input from the public. Long-time Slashdot reader mitch0 writes: The consultation was started after some member states expressed the opinion that the daylight saving time should be abolished within the EU. There were some local motions in member countries as well, but these cannot really proceed without full coordination with all member states.
So far it seems that most of those wanting to end the daylight-saving change would stick to summer time all-year round, but the questionnaire has a specific question about this issue so a more representative result is expected after the survey is closed in the middle of August...
Citizens can express their opinion about the summer time change by filling out a short online survey.
Daylight Saving Time is a pain in the butt. There is no rational reason why we have to fool around with our clocks twice a year.
I'd imagine there's going to be quite a marked geographic divide on this. Southern Europe probably DGAF as they don't get the sort of seasonal variation in daylight hours you get in the north, and the very far north of Europe they have such extremes of variation in daylight hours that fudging the clocks by an hour makes no real difference. However there's going to be a band across the middle (UK, France, Germany, etc) where there exists the right balance between having a problem, and being able to somewhat remedy it by moving your clocks for a few months.
The problem of course is that whatever is decided is going to be foist onto everyone regardless of need or want, because that's how the EU rolls
The submission may have been a bit misleading, but it is not DST that is proposed to get abolished, but the DST change. So, each country is free to chose the timezone they'd like to remain in after the DST change is ended. There is a specific question for this in the poll as well (keep summer time, keep winter time or "don't care").
I sure as hell hope the DST change will be ended, and we'll stick to summer time.
// "If human beings don't keep exercising their lips,
// their brains start working." -- Ford Prefect
The sun is already up too early during summer, another half hour would make it a lot worse...
We should just accept that winter sucks, the nights are long no matter how we play with the clocks...
Just stick to summer time, that way at least the change to the sucky part of the year is gradual, and not a sudden one-hour shift a lot of people hate.
Not to mention that the one hour shift this way and that still causes issues in most IT systems that need to be cleaned up each year after the change... (mostly when the same time "repeats").
// "If human beings don't keep exercising their lips,
// their brains start working." -- Ford Prefect
There's little point in me getting to school an hour before the prof, or to the supermarket before the staff.
And I hear there are these things called jobs where it's sometimes necessary for several people to be there together.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
How much light you have on a day depends on how close to a pole you live, and if it is summer or winter.
Judging from your username I suppose you are in Southern USA. Well, southern Europe is about as far north as northern USA.
For me in Stockholm in Northern Europe, the sun sets today at 10 pm and rises at 03:47 am CET. One hour forwards or backwards would not matter because it is TOO BRIGHT anyway.
BTW, in the middle of winter, if the day is cloudy it may only get as bright as the summer nights are darkest. But then we don't have DST.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
When they started the questionnaire their servers where quickly hammered, and not reachable anymore. Probably says a thing or two, ...
This has already been tried several times over the years and always with the same result: People discover that they don't like it being dark longer in the morning during the winter.
...which you can also compensate by changing working hours.
And several business have different opening hours during the seasons anyway (e.g.: due to reduced work force due to vacations in summer).
So giving summer-specific opening hours that also happen to take into account the variation of sun time isn't that far fetched.
(E.g.: public transport has different time tables at different time of the year, public services tend to have reduced opening hours due to lots of them going into vacations, hospitals emergencies work in shifts around the clock anyway, movie schedule change each week with new release, work-from-home and artists put their own work hours anyway, university research team tend to have the most WTF work hours specially for PhD students (except for that guy who has Eukaryotik cell cultures. He needs to feed them every 32 hours no matter how out of sync it gets with any rational work schedule), etc. Shops are about the only things which seem to open at a constant timetable.)
It used to make sense to shift clocks back in the industrial era when most of the activities were dictated by fixed time schedules and nearly everybody needed to be in sync (factory working ours).
Nowadays, in our mostly service-sector-based type of work, you need to check (e.g.: online on your smartphone) the opening hours and time schedule for probably around 7 out of 10 business. Supressing DST will simply make you check for the last remaining 3 too, instead of relying on fixed clock times.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I've been saying this same thing for years.
It all started when I was doing astronomy for a bit. Everything was in UT, and once I wrapped my head around that, everything time-related was so much easier.
If you work 9 till 17, and I work 15 till 23, it's damn easy to figure out when to schedule a conference call. If you work 9 to 5 and I work 8 till 4 and we're 5 timezones apart and you're on DST and I'm not, it becomes a hell of a lot harder to to figure out when we can do business.
But we can't even get the US to fully adopt the metric system, so I can't imagine people being OK getting up at 12 and heading to work at 14.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
No more need for time zones, or the dreaded DST, at all! One time zone to rule them all!
You're trying to be funny but actually in China this is exactly what they do. The whole country is on Beijing Time despite being what would normally be a 4 time zone wide country. And they don't bother with DST either.
If you work 9 till 17, and I work 15 till 23, it's damn easy to figure out when to schedule a conference call.
My former boss would have said 4, because that's the time that will inconvenience both the same amount...
... not saving s .
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Only the White Man would cut a foot off the top of a blanket, sew it on the bottom, and proclaim he had a longer blanket.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
A lot of the western European countries (e.g. Spain, France) should abandon Central European Time (CET) of any type.
It doesn't make any sense since since they're in western and not central Europe.
That's one reason people eat so late in Spain, as they're to the west of England.
Instead they should use WET (Western European Time), i.e. essentially follow the UK....
I am an extreme night owl by nature. It's something generic according to the latest research. I try my best to fit in with "normal" people's schedule, and get by OK for most part with a painstakingly maintained bedtime. But twice a year, the time switch throws me off for weeks at a time. It has been a struggle of a lifetime.
If there is one textbook example of the tyranny of the majority, this is it. We need to get rid of it in the states too.
You are an excellent candidate for my sig.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
No, and that's why they're doing a public consultation rather than just telling everyone what's best! I know you Americans love to criticise the EU, but you really should educate yourself on how it works first.
That article has several logical flaws. While there may be benefits to *being on* DST, there are also significant drawbacks to *switching* to and from DST, as mentioned above. The article never admits those, or compares their relative risks.
Assuming it's true that changing clocks twice a year helps match "our modern clockwork-driven world adjust to our ancestral sleep and wake patterns", then wouldn't changing clocks 4 times a year be even better? Or every month? Why not every day? And instead of doing it per-state/country, why not adjust it exactly as optimal per latitude? We've got computers and satellites now.
If you think that the cost of changing clocks is zero, then you should want to change them every day. If you admit that changing clocks has a nonzero cost, then you need to measure and compare the costs and benefits. The current implementation of DST is the worst of both worlds. It's like saying that 60mph is too fast for city driving, therefore everyone exiting the freeway should slam on the brakes as hard as possible. Maybe the premise is true, but this solution is terrible.
> Well, it’s pretty simple: wake up with the sun like our ancestors did.
Great idea, but that's not what DST is. If you're using a daylight alarm clock (or actual daylight), DST is irrelevant at best.
> Congratulations; you just reinvented DST...poorly. Now instead of turning the clock back or forward, you have to add or subtract to the operating hours of every place you do business with twice a year.
I already have to do plenty of mental arithmetic with clocks every year. The public clocks in every transit station in my city don't get set for DST for about a month after each DST change. Half the stores in my city have separate "winter hours" and "summer hours", because even DST isn't good enough for them. Is your goal to stop people from needing to add/subtract times? DST is worse at that, too.