Slashdot Mirror
EU Backs Ending Daylight Saving Time (theguardian.com)
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."
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.
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.
This sig is a figment of your imagination.
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
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.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
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.
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...