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Daylight Saving Time is Super Unpopular. Here Are the Countries Trying To Ditch It. (washingtonpost.com)
Daylight Saving Time ended in the United States on Sunday, bumping the clocks back an hour. The change happened in Europe a week earlier, meaning the time difference between the continents was momentarily smaller. It's another confusing wrinkle in a confusing temporal process that confounds the world. From a story: Today, 70 countries change their clocks midyear for Daylight Saving Time, including most of North America, Europe and parts of South America and New Zealand. China, Japan, India and most countries near the equator don't fall back or jump ahead. In much of Asia and South America, the Daylight Saving Time shift was adopted, but then abandoned. It has never been observed in most of Africa. While the United States extended its Daylight Saving Time in 2005 and Florida wants to make it its standard time, other countries are moving to ditch the practice.
The European Union is weighing a plan to abandon shifting from daylight saving time midyear. "Millions ... believe that summertime should be all the time," the European Union's chief executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, told German reporters in August. Juncker was referring, in part, to an online poll conducted by the E.U., which found that changing clocks is tremendously unpopular. (As my colleague Rick Noack pointed out, however, there are methodological problems: "The largest share of participants came from one country -- Germany -- where the time switch has been a somewhat odd front-page topic for years. But any E.U. decision would also impact the 27 other member states.")
The European Union is weighing a plan to abandon shifting from daylight saving time midyear. "Millions ... believe that summertime should be all the time," the European Union's chief executive, Jean-Claude Juncker, told German reporters in August. Juncker was referring, in part, to an online poll conducted by the E.U., which found that changing clocks is tremendously unpopular. (As my colleague Rick Noack pointed out, however, there are methodological problems: "The largest share of participants came from one country -- Germany -- where the time switch has been a somewhat odd front-page topic for years. But any E.U. decision would also impact the 27 other member states.")
It's easier to change the clock to determine everybody to adapt the new time than to make everybody change their schedule. Don't believe me, try to change your business schedule, then think about the effort to do that for all the business all sync at the same time... guess what they easiest and sane solution is to change the official hour.
Two points:
1. The online survey was open to everyone. Most participants came from Germany. (BTW I took part and I'm not German or living in Germany.)
2. The EU will de-regulate DST. If an EU country wants to keep DST they'll be free to do so.
I'd be happy to hear what's the problem with the EU regarding this.
"The largest share of participants came from one country -- Germany -- where the time switch has been a somewhat odd front-page topic for years. But any E.U. decision would also impact the 27 other member states.")
So what if a majority comes from the largest country? Looking at the results by country reveals that abolishing the switch is the more popular choice in all but two countries: Greece and Cyprus. In the rest of the EU, the preference was to ditch the switch, mostly by overwheling majorities, up to 95%.
Lemon curry???