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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."
"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.
Just pick one and stay with it. This endless debate is wasting too much time --- time which could be far better spent trying to understand why we park cars on driveways.
Or it will be about time in an hour if we abandon summer time and wait the extra hour til it reaches the current time properly.
I lived most of my life without DST. I was able to tell the time by the shadows things made, summer or winter! But with DST, I'm always off, and for some reason not by just an hour. Not to mention other problems like sunlight until 10PM. DST is stupid.
As an EU citizen I commented on this and argued for abolishing the DST and keep standard time.
Staying in permanent "summer time" just means you are in another timezone than you claim. So that is plain stupid. Now you don't only have to know which time zone a country is in, you also have to know if they decided to be in permanent summer time or use the normal time associated with the time zone.
So, ditch the DST and let the countries decide what time zone they want to be in. NO SUMMER TIME ALLOWED! The effect is the same but it will be a heck lot easier for travelers or people communicating across time zones.
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.
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.
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).
stuff sounds dangerously like democracy or something
Rest assured. These polls are not known to the average European citizen. Only lobby groups check them, or mobilize others to check them. At no point was there a referendum or something like that.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
I dunno, maybe I'm just being pedantic, but isn't the sun supposed to be directly overhead at noon? It just seems wrong to me to intentionally pick a clock setting which makes that never the case.
All DST really changes for me is that I come to work an hour later during Summer.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Here in Canada there is a push in some regions to abolish daylight saving time. Parts of the country (e.g. Saskatchewan) are already sane about this. Ditto the northeast corner of B.C.
Even at my relatively southerly latitude (49 degrees north) summers are light regardless of our nominal time zone. Winters are dark, again, regardless of our time zone. If we stayed on PST (UTC-8) all year the sun would set at 2030 in the summer. What more do people want? And on PDT all year (UTC-7) the sun would still set at 1700 in December. What good is that? It wouldn't rise until 0900. Ugh.
...laura
Let's completely forget about high noon being a real thing at some point in time. But yes lettuce start the day based on something that changes every day like dawn. Btw DST is stupid in this modern world where standard work hours of 9 to 5 are hardly a thing to care about anymore.
While many believe DST was started for farming, in fact, most farmers don't like it. Historically, DST began in 1916, when the German Empire and its World War I ally Austria-Hungary introduced it as a way to conserve coal during wartime. Britain, most of its allies, and many European neutrals soon followed suit. Russia and a few other countries waited until the next year, and the United States adopted daylight saving in 1918. Broadly speaking, most jurisdictions abandoned daylight saving time in the years after the war ended in 1918 (with some notable exceptions including Canada, the UK, France, and Ireland). However, many different places adopted it for periods of time during the following decades and it became common during World War II. It became widely adopted, particularly in North America and Europe, starting in the 1970s as a result of the 1970s energy crisis.
Just be glad that you don't get polar nights (probably).
Ezekiel 23:20
They aren't scrapping DST, they're making it permanent. Which is only marginally less retarded than changing the clocks. Noon should align with the position of the sun.
..."if someone schedules a field test to happen every day, do they mean every 24 hours, or at the same time each day?" ...
Ask the person specifying "every day" what he or she means by that expression.
>"The recommendation for now is to stick to summer time year-round"
BINGO. Nearly all of us want EXACTLY THAT and have for many, many years now. Go on summer time and just LEAVE IT THERE PERMANENTLY. PLEASE DO IT.... then maybe the USA can follow...
That's who the meetings were with. Clients can't always make up their own minds. They just want it to work.
Wait until you find out about leap seconds.
It's not like removing DST from one set of countries is going to make date handling any easier.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I want permanent DST all year long. And I voted for Trump.
Did I just melt your snowflake mind?
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
...Clients can't always make up their own minds....
Yeah... been there. :(
DST is an anachronism that just needs to go! There are no benefits too it. In fact, when the clocks get pushed ahead one hour, there are studies showing a correlation between this and increased heart attacks.
I want permanent DST all year long. And I voted for Trump.
Did I just melt your snowflake mind?
Proof that you can't fix stupid.
Like in China, where you have to go to work at 9am and it is still dark outside for at least 4 hours - or you adjust it so some people get to work at 9am, some get to work at 2pm. Not confusing at all!
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The boundaries are like that to follow national/state/provincial borders so that you don't have 90% of a country (or whatever) in one timezone and 10% in another. In fact, there are even a few places where the International Dateline jogs to avoid that kind of issues.
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Simple solution is just to ignore leap seconds.
Noon should align with the position of the sun.
I agree. But as we need to average that out somehow over Europe, I propose Warschau in the east and Paris in the west as the two measuring points. That would mean Berlin time is noon for Europe. Somehow I like that idea.
(Actually I voted keep summer time for ever, because actually I like to sit out in June on a terrace in Paris, sipping a wine and enjoying the aftermath of the sunset, glowing sky, a few high clouds illuminated by the sun "from below". Or having a late 22:00 sunset in Brittany)
In other words: I Napoleon Angelo, Imperator of Europe, with here in decree: 12:00, aka noon, shall be when the Sun is the highest above Porto, Portugal, the finest city in the world! And the rest of Europe has to adjust its time accordingly. Except Greece of course.
So, as this is finished, bring me some oysters!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yeah, a friend of mine did that. Having a watch on UTC.
He was always late, regardless if DST or ST ... and he never flew to a country some time zones away, I think some co workers stole his watch ... there was no other way to show him the foolishness of his way.
Oh, he once was on Madeira ... perhaps he realized the foolishness of his way there ... hm. At least he is no longer wearing a watch set to UTC (since a decade).
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Only white man, would cut bottom of blanket, sew on top and think they have longer blanket. GET RID OF IT and leave the $#(%*^ clocks alone. But but but kids would go to school in the dark and come home in the dark bla bla bla. Give them a flashlight. People in Barrow Alaska have 24 hours of dark a month or two a year, and 24 hours of light a couple months a year. Don't see them complaining.
Just pick one and stay with it. This endless debate is wasting too much time --- time which could be far better spent trying to understand why we park cars on driveways.
And then we drive cars on parkways! Madness!
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I don't care if I go to work at 0600 hours or 1700 hours. Timezones are stupid. The military figured this out years ago.
Zoid.com
Most industrial equipment just ignores DST in my experience.
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The worst part is having to rotate all my heavy stone sundials twice a year!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
"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,
This is almost fun, given the amount of referendum results the EU has ignored. Mr Junker was probably drunk again.
Let's say I go to work at 9 AM in California and my Swiss coworker goes to work at 11 AM. We'd like to meet over VC for 15 minutes. What time should the meeting be?
Now try to schedule a recurring weekly meeting between us. Can you schedule one that doesn't shift around throughout the year? Keep in mind both Switzerland and the US has DST, but change clocks on different days.
Compare that to a world where I go to work at 4 PM GMT, and he goes to work at 9 AM GMT. A bit of simple math is all you need. No need to check the calendar and no need to know each country's DST rules.
That is today. In the winter Urumqi's daylight starts at 9:45, "noon" is at 14:00 and sunset is ~19:00. If you have an 'average' office job, you have to wake up in the middle of the night. Kashgar is ~30 minutes further off so their daylight starts at 10:15 in the morning and it doesn't get dark in winter until ~21:30 and it doesn't get dark in summer until ~midnight.
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I was scheduled to do an extended shift on a day where daylight savings changed. It took a committee to try and figure out if I would breach the contractual limits on the number of hours I was allowed to work without a break.
I like the "fall back" enough that I do it 25 days in a row.
Would you rather the sun was in the sky from 5am to 7pm or 6am to 8pm? and so on.
Hell, that would be great. Instead, what I get at 40N is 4:30am -> 10pm in July and 7:30am -> 5pm in December.
No amount of DST is going to make either of those comfortable. Though I am in the "EDT all the time" camp. I think people living closer to the equator would not appreciate this.
The only real fix is to move south. Full astronomical twilight at around 7pm year round? Hell yeah! The problem is you need to live in Colombia, Ecuador, an African Rainforest, or Malaysia.
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