h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Hi all,

I'm not sure if this has been discussed here before, and this has grown into rather a monolith of an opening post, but I would be interested in your thoughts...

A lot of you (at least those in Europe, I don't know when other countries change) will have woken up this morning in, effectively, a different time zone, due to what the UK calls 'Summer Time', and other countries know - in a wonderful piece of spin - as 'Daylight Saving Time'.

Now, the best summary of this I know remains a cartoon remembered by Lady Scott † [U189338]: "it's like cutting a foot off one end of the blanket and sewing it on the other end in order to make the blanket longer." The arguments in favour of it all point to things like safety, mood, etc caused by having "more daylight" - but where on earth is this daylight supposed to be coming from?

The Guardian newspaper has several times recently published articles [e.g. 1,2] in favour of "Single Double Summer Time" - a name surely calculated to confuse - which appears to effectively mean putting the UK on the same timezone as [the rest of] Western Europe (GMT+1/GMT+2 instead of GMT/GMT+1). It's interesting that it's rarely described as such - clearly they don't want eurosceptics getting the wrong idea. [3]

[Incidentally, I'm also a bit baffled what the logic would be behind putting Scotland in a different timezone than England - aren't timezones, primarily, about correcting for the sun rising differently with longitude (East-West), not latitude (North-South)? The days further North are just plain shorter, whatever time you get up...]

But the thing that makes this all more than mildly amusing is that the whole thing is, in the words of a site I just came upon [4], "just a cheap parlor trick to convince us to get up an hour earlier in the morning". Clearly, there are benefits to making best use of the hours with most daylight, and sleeping during the hours with least, but evidently no-one (or no government) is brave enough to say "you should all be working different hours", so instead they trick us into *thinking* we work 9 till 5 (or whatever) all year round, and even get us to go around faking all the clocks for them! Genius!

I guess the problem is that we're all so accustomed to the idea that time is what our clocks and calendars say it is, and to the generally very useful conventions of science and bureaucracy, that changing all the clocks in the country seems easier than making our routines more flexible. [5] I try not to be taken in by a lot of the romantic "back to nature" mumbo jumbo out there, but it does strike me as a sign that we're losing sight of the difference between fact, science, convention, and metaphor - 'dawn' and 'dusk' exist, '9 AM' and '5 PM' are convenient but somewhat arbitrary labels.

Besides, what'll we let our leaders do next, alter the length of the minute during the working day to increase productivity? [6]

[IMSoP]


[[== Refs ==]]
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1736392,00.html
[2] http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1804769,00.html
[3] As RoSPA puts it "Single/Double Summertime in Britain would mean that the time would be GMT + 1 hour from October to March and GMT + 2 hours from March to October. This would put Britain into the Central European Time Zone." So why not just call it that!? [http://www.rospa.com/roadsafety/advice/general/summertime_policy.htm]
[4] http://www.phrenopolis.com/custard/index.html
[5] "I'm constantly amazed by how the week leading up to the clocks changing my childrens wake up time reflects the need for the clocks to change. Last week they started wanting to get up at 6.30am, whereas they normally get up at around 7.15am." - does she not realise that her children are still waking up at the same time, even after she's changed the clocks? [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4849050.stm]
[6] OK, maybe not, but one Guardian article does say "In 2001, the Mayor of Mexico City managed to spark a constitutional crisis by arguing with the president over who had the right to decree what the time was."

Not much to say about the content(1), but 10/10 for a well constructed post with footnotes and all.


(1) For a 'con' to be perpetrated, there has to be winners & losers. So far as I can see, we still work 9-5 irrespective of the light. I believe there are energy savings and safety benefits though.

Echoes SWL's remarks, a well constructed post and I loved all the references.

Personally I think we should NOT take the hour off again in October. I see no gain in doing so ,except for the Scots who will remain in the dark for a bit longer.

The arguements re road safety , and the desirabilty of lighter evenings from the points of sociability and possibly criminality seem irrefutable to me. The energy svaing aspect is also a powerful argument.

Lastly, since I go to work in the dark, and return in the dark in the winter months anyway, why return to that situation any earlier than astronimically dictated?

Novo


PS

Not entireley convinced about Double Summer Time.........

I wonder how many people actually work a conventional 9 - 5 day. It strikes me that many folk, especially those with outdoor occupations & those involved in international business already adjust their working hours to suit daylight/avoid peak travel time/co-ordinate with other times zones.

The benefit is pretty short lived anyway, as the daylight hours soon extend well beyond the traditional working day. In the Winter, you might be able to choose either to go to work in the light or come home in the light until it's dark on both journeys.

Yes, I think it's now uneccessary.

It's a crock. The Germans started it in WW1 as an attempt to conserve coal. All other parties to the conflict decided they better try it too. After the war everybody (except the British) did the calculations, found they'd not saved a lump of coal, and then abandoned the idea. Every now and then it got tried again by various countries, including an extended version by the U.S. during the oil 'crisis' in the '70s. The defenders of the energy saving potential of clock adjustment often refer to energy savings in the U.S. at that time but neglect to mention the other conservation measures that were also instituted at that time.

This year the U.S. decided to start it three weeks early and Canada decided to do it too 'to avoid confusion with cross-boarder trade' (between two countries that span about six time zones). Meanwhile, one Canadian province, Saskatchewan, has never and still doesn't bother with daylight saving time. Since that particular province is principally agricultural, the old 'we do it for the farmers' argument is out the window as well.

The only group that benefits from the programme are elected officials who at the moment are desperately searching for a costless policy which can make them appear to be making an effort to reduce their jurisdiction's energy use. Sometimes it's so that they can pretend to be Green. Sometimes it's so they can pretend to be reducing dependence on foreign oil. And sometimes it's in order to pretend that they're getting along with the Americans.


It's a crock. A crock that doesn't really cost us anything, but a crock nonetheless.

I do not mind it, in fact it does something good for me in that it means that, during summer, at two o'clock in the morning it is dark Until later...
BCNU - Crescent

I like Daylight savings time. It means that when I get out from work, the sun is still up, however briefly. And that's really nice after not seeing the sun for a couple months.

I really hate summer time: I know live on Moscow-time (but nowwhere near moscow). When it is two o'clock the sun is at it's highest point here. Actually I would like to live on british winter-time all the time instead of CET, always the sun around the middle of the day. I love the dark of the night, so let it be as much dark when I am awake

Too much information maybe?

http://webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/

turvy

Blimey,

I gave up after page 4.!

Novo