EU Parliament Votes To End Daylight Savings (dw.com)

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EU Parliament Votes To End Daylight Savings (dw.com)

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Tuesday March 26, 2019 @02:40AM from the about-time dept.

The European Parliament on Tuesday voted with a large majority to end daylight savings time in the EU by 2021. From a report: Under the proposals, each member state would decide whether to continue with twice-a-year clock changes or stick permanently to summer or winter time. All 28 member states would need to inform the European Commission of their choice ahead of the proposed switch, by April 2020. They would then coordinate with the bloc's executive so that their decisions do not disrupt the functioning of the single market.

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Yay but nay by bjoeg · 2019-03-26 02:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

So we might finally end this, but only repeat history and head back into the chaos.
One Thing was that DST was created to save energy, but was not adopted by all countries in the beginning. It was only back in 1996 whole of EU got DST standardized so all member would change clocks on the same dates.

But now we are heading back into the chaos, where each member can decide which ever time they will implement. So we are back to pre-1996.
1. Re:Yay but nay by Shaitan · 2019-03-26 03:01 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yes, get rid of daylight savings by all means but whatever the choice is make it uniform!
2. Re:Yay but nay by angel'o'sphere · 2019-03-26 03:08 · Score: 2
  
  The EU is to big to have on timezone, if you mean that with "uniform".
  
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  Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
3. Re:Yay but nay by dunkelfalke · 2019-03-26 03:15 · Score: 2
  
  They tried though, with the Central European Time zone, which is, indeed, too large - France and Spain should be in the Western European Time zone.
  
  --
  "It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
4. Re:Yay but nay by Sique · 2019-03-26 03:17 · Score: 2
  
  It does make sense. The idea was to optimize the daily schedule so most work will be done during daylight. But as it gets hot in summer, it was necessary to rest a little in the afternoon, and continue to work afterwards, extending the schedule for one or two hours. In winter, you don't need to avoid the heat in the afternoon, but as it gets dark early, extending the work schedule too late doesn't make sense.
  
  --
  .sig: Sique *sigh*
5. Re:Yay but nay by rossdee · 2019-03-26 03:45 · Score: 2
  
  It may have made sense in the past, when lighting was the main use of electricity.
  Nowdays with efficient LAD and fluorescent lights and many more uses for electric power, it doesn't save anything.
  And you can add in the fact that a lesser proportion of the people these days work 9-5
6. Re:Yay but nay by Wycliffe · 2019-03-26 03:47 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Time zones make sense as you don't want my clock to be 5 minutes different than your time but the time itself should be set based on some concept of sunrise, sunset, or high noon. What you are really asking is "what time of day is it in X?" or even "will so-in-so be awake / at work?" If we just set people's timezone where 7am is always the approximate time of sunrise then this would answer this question fine and businesses can set schedules appropriately. Many businesses already have summer and winter hours so daylight savings time does nothing but complicates the communication.
  The different lengths of days doesn't really matter that much either as people still tend to be awake for the same number of hours regardless of season and if we are talking international, Australia has short days during the same time that Europe has long days. Better to just pick the timezone where your true sunrise is the closest to 7am and be done with it.
7. Re:Yay but nay by religionofpeas · 2019-03-26 04:11 · Score: 2
  
  Using UTC doesn't fix anything, because everybody will still have totally different schedules and office hours. And without official timezones, every business can decide for itself, which will cause a lot more confusion and chaos.
8. Re:Yay but nay by gizmo71 · 2019-03-26 04:23 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  The problem is not the times you do stuff - it's that for half the worl, the date would suddenly change in the middle of the day. "It's my birthday! But only from 1pm today to 1pm the next day" fails a basic sanity check - the notion of 'today' becomes bunk.
9. Re:Yay but nay by msauve · 2019-03-26 04:34 · Score: 2
  
  "The problem is that, were I to follow this time, I'd be getting up at 1am local time (6am UTC), working from 3am to 11am local time (8am to 4pm UTC), and going to sleep at 6pm local time (11pm UTC). "
  
  You're obviously not clear on the concept. If you currently work 8-16 local time, which is offset -5 from UTC, a change to UTC simply means you would work 13-20 UTC.
  
  How can you possibly argue that you'd work 8-16 UTC when you don't now?
  
  --
  "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
10. Re:Yay but nay by houghi · 2019-03-26 04:36 · Score: 2
  
  That would be a bad idea economically. Gaving different timezones between France and Belgium or Germany would not be a good thing.
  For me the timezones should be:
  Ireland, UK, Spain and Portugal
  The rest of Westen Europe.
  The rest of eastern Europe.
  Just because the imaginary hour lines are deviding France and Belgium/Netherlands does not mean we can not move that imaginary line.
  Stop thinking that we somehow need to regulate our clocks to that yellow thing. We are long way past that. Look at what makes the most sense economically and politically.
  Now if Spain decides to take the same time as France, so should Portugal. And I do not care if this is wintertime, summertime or a whole new time.
  
  --
  Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
11. Re:Yay but nay by Shaitan · 2019-03-26 04:48 · Score: 2
  
  Why not? It's just a number. Everyone just switch to a 24hr UTC clock... it isn't like you don't have the existing offsets as a guide to get started. It would be an annoying transition but it is still consistent from day to day so you'd adjust pretty quickly.
  There are advantages and downsides but the advantages of all having the same clock are pretty substantial especially given how globally connected everyone is. Arranging a meeting with someone in the UK or France? You just set a time and everyone will automatically know if its a reasonable hour. No more missed meetings improper timing because of timezone conversion, no more ambiguity about which time zone was meant when someone says "we'll meet back up at 5 tomorrow"
12. Re:Yay but nay by lgw · 2019-03-26 04:53 · Score: 2
  
  How ironic, since this area of the world is where we find the Coordinated Universal Time zone, also known as Zulu time.
  "Zulu time"? Thas raysis! Surely for this politically correct world we need to abbreviate Coordinated UNiversal Time with an acronym, instead!
  
  --
  Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
13. Re: Yay but nay by c6gunner · 2019-03-26 04:57 · Score: 2
  
  If we are going to move to just one time coordinate, I would seriously hope we would get rid of that am/pm bullshit too. A 24 hour clock is way more logical than two 12 hour clocks.
14. Re:Yay but nay by bob4u2c · 2019-03-26 05:00 · Score: 2
  
  but the time itself should be set based on some concept of sunrise, sunset, or high noon.
  But that is exactly the problem. Unless you live exactly on the equator the sun doesn't rise/set at the same time each day. For example where I live we are now heading into spring/summer, so the sun comes up about 1 minute earlier than the day before. After a month, sun rise is a whole 30 minutes ahead. By the time this pattern shifts and I start loosing a minute (when heading into fall and winter) the sun is coming up at least an hour and a half earlier than it did before. So unless you reset your clock every morning, your hosed. Let's not even get started how you would make this work for business. You would need logic to add/subtract a minute each day to find out how many hours have passed since some event. And then based upon your location, it isn't even a minute, it could be more, it could be less. The math hurts my head just thinking about it.
  
  You want a real solution, wake up and realize the sun does not revolve around you! A 24 hour day is based on how long it takes the earth to turn one full revolution. This has nothing to do with the sun, so stop basing the whole thing on the sun. Instead, pick some point, GMT is fine with me. Call that 0:00 when the sun first rises on January 1st at that point. All times in the world would then use that as the same starting point, all areas in the world would have the exact same time, no time zones.
  
  Now that means your whole concept of I get up at 7:00 when the sun rises and go to bed at 10:00 when the sun goes down is shot. Depending upon where you are on the earth the sun may come up at 3:00, it may come up at 14:00, who cares its just a number. Your employer sets the work day, and if you work from 4:00 to 13:00 in one place thats fine; in another it may be that you work from 15:00 to 0:00, those are just numbers and you don't need an act from congress (or the EU) to change it. If your employer wants to shift the time you start in the summer or winter, again they can do so.
  
  No daylight savings, no timezones! Next we need to tackle this whole year thing or we will never make it off this rock and our limited understanding of time!
15. Re:Yay but nay by religionofpeas · 2019-03-26 05:17 · Score: 3, Funny
  
  Stop thinking that we somehow need to regulate our clocks to that yellow thing
  Right, we should all work 9-5 on UTC time, and if that means you work and play in the dark, and go to sleep in the light, so be it. Stop thinking that you need the sun to enjoy a nice day on the beach, or a hike in the mountains, when you can simply bring some flashlights with you.
16. Re:Yay but nay by religionofpeas · 2019-03-26 05:24 · Score: 2
  
  No more missed meetings improper timing because of timezone conversion
  But instead you'll have missed meeting because you scheduled it at a time the other party wasn't in the office.
17. Re:Yay but nay by gmack · 2019-03-26 05:33 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Keep in mind that Spain is entirely in the wrong timezone It is south of the UK so it should be on the same timezone as the UK but instead it's on Central European time so 10-18 is actually 9-17. Also it's mainly only government offices that take 3h lunch breaks. At least in the Madrid area, the people who actually work for a living mainly get a 1h lunch break.
18. Re: Yay but nay by Miamicanes · 2019-03-26 05:34 · Score: 5, Informative
  
  Technically, GMT is NOT the same as UTC. There are actually three different standards... GMT, UTC, and TAI.
  They differ because the precise length of an orbital & rotational year is neither 100% consistent nor predictable.
  GMT is defined by solar noon at the Greenwich Observatory in London. If observation reveals that we've wobbled by a few milliseconds, GMT changes to reflect that. It sounds nice in theory, but 99.999% of use cases honestly don't give a fuck whether solar noon at Greenwich happens a few hundred milliseconds (or entire seconds) early or late.
  TAI is kind of like Unix time, except it has much greater precision. It defines a second as a precise number of cesium-137 decay periods, a year as a precise number of seconds, and counts both as an offset from its starting point. TAI currently deviates from GMT by ~32 seconds.
  UTC was envisioned as a compromise between GMT and TAI. It adds and removes seconds to ensure that UTC's noon falls within a half second of Greenwich solar noon. It's also a royal pain in the ass to deal with, because unlike TAI, UTC is a historical moving target. 9:47:42 July 18, 1997 UTC is NOT precisely 8 years before 9:47:42 July 18, 2005 UTC (even accounting for leap year gymnastics), because a couple of seconds were added as well
  UTC makes a mess of things like timestamped logs, the same way DST does... but worse, because most people using UTC for timestamps are doing it PRECISELY to avoid the DST timestamp problem, and have no idea that "leap seconds" even EXIST until the first time they get burned by it.
  UTC-vs-TAI was exacerbated by the sudden popularity of using internet time protocol (NTP) to automatically set clocks on computers. In the past, people set the time, and let it go until they manually updated it at their own convenience. Leap seconds were rare to begin with during that era, and a second or two gain or loss when the computer got rebooted was lost in the greater disruption of the reboot itself.
  Fast forward to sometime around 2006, when UTC-via-NTP had become commonplace, and a leap second occurred, Linux computers all automatically observed it, and all hell broke loose when software that assumed that "UTC" behaved like TAI found itself with 2 seconds' worth of logged activity bearing the same timestamp (and often, undefined weirdness if computations involving milliseconds were involved on computers that did 64-bit timekeeping).
  As I understand the "Linux" problem, programmers want TAI-like behavior, but POSIX compliance explicitly requires UTC... switching Linux to TAI would require changes to POSIX to allow timestamps to unambiguously indicate whether they're UTC or TAI, and the current 32-second difference is too big to just sweep under a rug and ignore. So instead, we have a complicated system where computers use NTP to sync up to TAI, then the OS converts TAI to UTC and adds/removes leap seconds before exposing it as the leap-second-mangled offset from midnight January 1, 1970 for consumption by programs that don't actually CARE about the precise moment of solar noon @ Greenwich.
  The proposed solution is almost worse... ending leap seconds in UTC (to avoid rewriting POSIX & everything it dictates, causing YEARS of insidious bugs in the process), and inventing a FOURTH standard to do what UTC currently does & keep astronomers happy.
  Compounding matters even more is disagreement about how to handle the leap seconds we already have. If UTC retroactively wipes them out, we're back to the problem of ambiguity with "UTC" timestamps between the 1980s and present... no way to indicate whether it's a "legacy" UTC timestamp or a "revised" one. If it doesn't, we'll still have to deal with those legacy timestamps in perpetuity.
  The net result is that we're likely stuck with UTC and dealing with leap seconds in Linux for at least another decade or two. My guess is that POSIX will be left alone, UTC will eventually stop adding leap seconds (but leave the existing ones as-is), and they'll come up with a new standard for Astronomers to take the place of UTC.
19. Re:Yay but nay by Gavagai80 · 2019-03-26 05:50 · Score: 3, Informative
  
  And without official timezones, every business can decide for itself, which will cause a lot more confusion and chaos.
  If you were right, it would cause the end of all rush hour traffic congestion, which would be wonderful.
  But back in the real world, most businesses are going to set their hours to be daylight hours since that's when their customers and employees will want to be awake. And back in the real world every business already decides for themselves what their hours are. Many people start work at 7, 8, 9am with no real dominant standard starting time. People talk as "9 to 5" were a standard, but the mean work start time is actually 8:18 (in USA+Europe, source). Which is why it's really more like rush 3 hours instead of rush hour. Clock time really has zilch current influence on when employers set their working hours right now, it would not change if we went to UTC.
  
  --
  This space intentionally left blank
20. Re:Yay but nay by Calydor · 2019-03-26 06:25 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Yeah, let's abolish time zones so we have no way of knowing whether the guys in the offices in California, New York, London, and Tokyo are at work or not! That will fix ALL the chaos in our global community!
  
  --
  -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
21. Re:Yay but nay by bob4u2c · 2019-03-26 07:34 · Score: 2
  
  California, New York, London, and Tokyo are at work or not!
  
  Each office has posted hours, those hours would be the same as the ones on your watch, no matter where you were in the world. No more having to think, well it's 5:00pm here in California right now, so that's -7GMT (standard time zone rules apply, -8GMT a month ago), Tokyo is +9GMT, so that means Tokyo is 16 hours ahead. 5:00pm is really 17:00; and 17:00 + 16 hours = 33:00; 33:00 is tomorrow; so subtract 24:00 to get 9:00. So it's 9:00am tomorrow in Tokyo, so yes they probably just opened there because I know they open around 8:00am Tokyo time.
  
  Using one timezone the calculation would be like this: business hours in Tokyo are posted from 11:00pm to 8:00am UTC. I'm in California and my watch says its 12:00pm, yep they are open. The "in California" part is a trick question, because it would also be 12:00pm in NY, London, everywhere, no conversion needed. You just need to look up the business hours and call during that time. Take a flight somewhere, get off the plane, your watch is right. Amazing!
  
  Will it take some adjustment, yes.
Permanent DST is a mistake as well. by J.+T.+MacLeod · 2019-03-26 02:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

There is a standard, and it's called solar noon. Aim for that, and then adjust your schedule accordingly rather than pretend that the clock must decide your schedule.
States having inconsistent times across longitude (or even incrementing inconsistently across latitude) will be a bigger mess.
1. Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well. by gaiageek · 2019-03-26 03:16 · Score: 2
  
  Solar noon in Berlin is 12:11 today. In Madrid, it's 1:20. Currently, Germany and Spain (minus the Canary Islands) share the same time zone, along with most of Western Europe. I'm guessing people would rather keep it that way - and most likely on DST (summer) time. Or they could follow your advice, switch to different time zones just to be aligned with solar noon, and Berliners can start enjoying the morning light at 3 am during mid-summer (sunrise would be at 3:43am without DST).
  
  --
  www.gaiageek.com
2. Re: Permanent DST is a mistake as well. by Chris+Mattern · 2019-03-26 03:38 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  3 am or 4 am sunrise hardly makes a difference if you want to sleep until 7 or 8 am. Get some good curtains if the light bothers you.
  The problem isn't so much that the sunlight interfers with your sleep, as you waste daylight hours asleep and then are active after sunset in the dark. It's better if you get up earlier and have more daylight at the end of the day, hence, daylight savings time. I've particularly noticed this advantage as I've gotten older and my night vision has deteriorated; I very much appreciate having daylight to see by in the evenings.
End DST? I think not. by CrimsonAvenger · 2019-03-26 03:12 · Score: 3, Insightful

No, allowing each member State to decide whether to have permanent Standard Time, permanent Summer Time, or continue to switch as always is NOT "ending DST".
If you want to end DST, then you need to find a set of choices that does NOT include "change clocks twice a year"....

--

"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Why not split the difference? by pollarda · 2019-03-26 03:14 · Score: 3, Interesting

It is interesting that you donâ(TM)t see a proposal to split the difference by adjusting our clocks by only 1/2 hour and leaving them there.
1. Re:Why not split the difference? by Anonymous Coward · 2019-03-26 04:31 · Score: 2, Insightful
  
  I'd like to point out that had DST never been invented in the first place, we would have all gone about our lives, never given it a second thought, and lived happily ever after. But because we spent a few decades clinging to this ridiculous practice, now we have a debate.
Everybody hates it by spaceyhackerlady · 2019-03-26 03:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

What problem does it solve? If any? Ditch it and save the time, money and hassle. I've been to places that have better things to worry about. Not just tropical places where the length of the day doesn't vary anyway, but also Arizona (UTC-7 all year) and Saskatchewan (UTC-6 all year).
Everybody hates it. Why is it taking so long?
...laura
1. Re:Everybody hates it by Sir_Eptishous · 2019-03-26 03:51 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  If we move to permanent DST, my sunrise will be around 10 am in the winter. I'll hate that more than spending a few minutes changing the clocks.
  Too fucking bad.
  I'll take dark mornings over having my body clock changed twice a year.
  
  --
  We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
2. Re:Everybody hates it by omfglearntoplay · 2019-03-26 04:31 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Really, 1 hour is nothing to adjust to... it takes all of a couple of days if anything. If you think adjusting an hour twice a year is bad, I guess you never travel to another timezone. Nothing is more hellish than being 5+ or 10+ hours off your internal clock, yet people do it frequently and the body will adjust soon enough.
Permanent DST is the best choice by sjbe · 2019-03-26 04:40 · Score: 2

There is a standard, and it's called solar noon. Aim for that, and then adjust your schedule accordingly rather than pretend that the clock must decide your schedule.
Evidently you've never had an actual job because companies are mostly quite inflexible about the hours they expect you to work. They aren't going to collectively coordinate to change their hours of operation for your personal convenience. Easier to change the clock than to convince everyone to voluntarily change their hours of operation.
Solar noon is an arbitrary decision about timekeeping. It has no inherent causal relationship to human activity schedules. We can just as easily define 11am or 1pm to be "noon" as 12am and it would be just as valid a choice.
Definitely want permanent DST by sjbe · 2019-03-26 04:42 · Score: 2

Agreed. Permanent DST makes no sense.

Disagree. Permanent standard time makes no sense. I want maximal daylight in the evening when it is actually useful to the most people including myself. That means DST year round makes more sense.
1. Re:Definitely want permanent DST by religionofpeas · 2019-03-26 05:27 · Score: 2
  
  I want maximal daylight in the evening when it is actually useful to the most people including myself
  So, you want daylight between noon and midnight ?
Split the Difference - 30 minutes in the middle !! by ripvlan · 2019-03-26 05:18 · Score: 2

I hate the time change. It does NOT save energy (I never understood that argument). I live near the 45th parallel and it is damn dark in the morning & afternoon during the winter. Around here the excuse is to have light in the morning to make school bus pickup safer - see the reason isn't even universal. Experience says, it don't make much difference. The bus comes around 6:50am and the sun doesn't rise until 7:30. And for those in Seattle or Montreal its even worse(8 am?! holy-moly). But its fast period in the middle of December and January, a big difference is noticed by Feb. Longer nights in the summer promotes business (outdoor events, concerts on the green etc).
And summer time - The sun is up by a bit after 5 and sets around 9, we still have light at 10pm. A plenty long day.
So - why not split the difference by 30 minutes. We get "30" minutes of extra light in the winter. And it doesn't make a difference in the summer. I'd hate to have summer sunset occur before 8pm with a whole-sale switch. Lots of outdoor stuff goes on in the summer evenings - outdoor music, riding bikes.
But we'd all be awake and not have to listen to constant complaining 2 weeks a year.
Re:Good use of public money... by jpaine619 · 2019-03-26 05:23 · Score: 2

You're an idiot if you think absolutely every last piece of legislation needs to be critical. Yeah, sometimes you can fix the small things too.
Re:Your whattaboutism reveals how wrong you are by religionofpeas · 2019-03-26 05:31 · Score: 2

Numerous studies show this causes an increase in accidents, heart attacks, and, yes, even deaths
That's only true if you focus on the couple of days right after the change. If you measure over the whole year, accidents get reduced, and heart attacks stay the same (people who get a heart attack because of a 1 hour time change would get the heart attack anyway, just at a later time)