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EU Backs Ending Daylight Saving Time (theguardian.com)

Posted by msmash on from the about-time dept.

New submitter Zarhan writes: Earlier this summer, European Commission conducted a poll on whether EU citizens would like to abolish adjusting their clocks twice a year. The results are now in: 80% of the respondents want to get rid of the changes every spring and autumn. EU Commission is planning to follow through and abolish the practice. In EU, individual countries decide what timezone they belong in, but the clock adjustment is an EU-level decision. The recommendation for now is to stick to summer time year-round, although individual countries will make those decisions. More from DW. The changes are known to affect sleep patterns and causes loss in productivity and even heart attacks, especially when you lose one hour of sleep during the spring change. "I will recommend to the commission that, if you ask the citizens, then you have to do what the citizens say," said Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission's president. "We will decide on this today, and then it will be the turn of the member states and the European parliament."

12 of 260 comments (clear)

  1. well now ... by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "I will recommend to the commission that, if you ask the citizens, then you have to do what the citizens say," said Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission's president.

    Well now, don't be hasty; this is the EU ... that "do what the citizens say" stuff sounds dangerously like democracy or something.

    1. Re:well now ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      No need to be concerned, look at the conditional. "If you ask the citizens," this just means that they will not to ask the citizens about anything that isn't trivial.

    2. Re:well now ... by Dorianny · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The EU commissioners are chosen by the elected governments of each State just like U.S Senators were before the 13th amendment. Any proposed law has to be approved by the EU parliament which is directly elected. The big problem with the EU is that politicians have found it very easy to blame their failures on the "faceless EU technocrats" instead of owning up to them. Italian politicians even blamed the EU for the recent bridge collapse in Genoa

    3. Re:well now ... by dremon · · Score: 2, Insightful

      > While Communism is the government having direct control of everyone's lives.

      Where did you get that? Communism by definition is the lack of supreme authority and state. The fact that some states where thought of being 'communistic' doesn't make them so, it's oxymoron to be a 'communistic state', it's like a 'humanistic nazism'.

    4. Re:well now ... by Sique · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Permanent Daylight savings time is nothing else than moving your time zones by one, or renaming 12 o'clock into 1 o'clock. In the end, it's the same with another name. Why not just get up one hour early? That's exactly what "permanent Daylight savings time" means.

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      .sig: Sique *sigh*
    5. Re:well now ... by balbeir · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I live in a "socialist" country and things aren't that bad.

      The problem with socialism is that at some point, the government will run out of other people's money to spend.

      When you run out of good arguments, there is always Thatcher to quote...

    6. Re:well now ... by MisterSquid · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why not just get up one hour early? That's exactly what "permanent Daylight savings time" means.

      That is not what permanent Daylight Saving Time means.

      For one, Daylight Saving Time (not SavingS) is when clocks move one hour forward, not backward, which means getting up one hour early is in the wrong direction. Daylight Saving Time has people waking up one hour later.

      Second, and more importantly, Daylight Saving Time is when an entire geographic region coordinates its entire sociopolitical, economic, and manufacturing infrastructure (and their interdependencies) to shift production to be one hour later for a period of about 8 months. When Daylight Saving Time ends, all that infrastructure is then shifts its production to one hour earlier.

      Saying "set your individual clock to be one hour later is the same as Daylight Saving Time" is like saying you can catch a plane earlier by simply moving your watch to be one hour later. Do that and you're going to miss your plane.

      If you go in the other direction, you're going to end up wasting an hour at every single appointment you make, which I suppose is better than missing your plane..

      In any case changing your personal clock ain't Daylight Saving Time. Daylight Saving Time is delaying an entire geographical area's political, social, and economic productivity by one hour.

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      blog
  2. Re:Enough already! Have DST, don't have DST ... by Anubis+IV · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The endless debate isn't wasting as much time as we've already wasted on my work project, trying to answer the question of "if someone schedules a field test to happen every day, do they mean every 24 hours, or at the same time each day?" We've probably had a half dozen meetings so far to try dealing with timezone and Daylight Saving Time issues.

  3. Re:Enough already! Have DST, don't have DST ... by mccalli · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's literally what this is doing. I commented in favour of scrapping changing - I'm in the UK, so by the time this happens it won't automatically apply to me. I do hope we follow suite here though.

  4. Boondoggle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Daylight savings time is a classic government boondoggle: a completely useless (at best) project that only got off the ground because (1) they weren't spending their own time or money on it, so there was nothing to lose, and (2) somebody identified a chance to engineer their own legacy.

    Get rid of it. I personally am in favor of staying permanently on standard time, since where I live DST means getting up in the dark and going to bed in the light (which is ass backwards according to human nature).

  5. Re:Ditch DST, no "permanent" DST by Squeak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Being permanently on summer time means, of course, that Greenwich will never be on Greenwich Mean Time. Something sounds a little wrong with that to me.

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    This sig is a figment of your imagination.
  6. Re:Kick it while it's down! by nitehawk214 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The problem is if you live north of 35 degrees, like most of Europe, it doesn't matter if there is DST or not, there is simply too many hours of daytime in the summer and not enough in the winter.

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    I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust