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

These days it's to preven children from walking to school in the dark when they are more likely to get run over.

They leave school before the evening rush hour so it doesn't affect them then.

Also, the continent also change their clocks (as I discovered without warning one day in Italy) backwards and forwards so it's not just us

That's what I understand about it anyway. The original reason was for cattle milking reasons I think.

There is tons of info here about it:
http://greenwichmeantime.com/info/daylightsaving.htm

It was Scottish school kids, not farmers. I doubt BST will be abandoned any time soon...

Something else that struck me this weekend just past while listening to the charts...

The experience of listening to the radio and having the station fade as night fell, or driving down the motorway and having to retune the radio as you pass through places where it's on a different "band". Radios fading out every time you went under a bridge, and crackling when the windscreen wipers were on. Or, slightly later, retuning to FM once a week when Radio 1 was allowed stereo for the chart show... which played about half the records in the charts because it only lasted a couple of hours.

Come to that, tuning in a radio by physically turning a dial rather than simply pressing a button and having the radio find the station for you.

In short, all the effects of the most popular and listened to radio station in the country being broadcast in glorious crackly monophonic sound on medium wave AM, instead of 24 hours a day stereo FM we get now, and having radios be devices you could knock up yourself with 50p's worth of electronics supplies and a soldering iron in about ten minutes, instead of being about 0.1p worth of integrated circuit manufactured in a clean room somewhere in the far east, like Norwich.

For that authentic crackly radio experience, connect to bbc.co.uk via a dialup connection and try listening to live radio - you can, and it reproduces the... reproduction of the 70s really rather well.

H.

The clocks going back in autumn *is* largely driven by Scotland, and it *is* largely driven by the farming community. In the far north of Scotland it wouldn't get light until mid-morning otherwise. As there is a devolved parliament there now I don't see why they can't have a devolved time zone to go with it.

It's definitely not for kids. They are more likely to get run down in the dark evenings than the dark mornings. In the late 1960s ('69 I think, maybe 1970) there was an experiment whereby the clocks didn't go back for a couple of years. The number of road accidents went down in the evenings, but there was no parallel rise in the mornings.

It would suit me if we went forward an hour all year round - BST in the winter, double BST in the summer, which is what was done during World War 2, to make the most of daylight hours. I'd be happy not to pass on the current system to our children - I get fed up of living in the dark.

It's the concept of daylight "saving" that gets me - there is the same amount of daylight - if you want to make use of it just shift your own work patterns, don't expect the rest of us to change for you - stick with GMT all year round I say.

CH

And very good idea it is too. It gets dark enough when it is cloudy at 2 pm never mind when hte sun goes down about 4.

Erm, which side you on, Demon Drawer?

Captain Kebab - in favour of dark mornings and light evenings. Actually in favour of light mornings and light evenings, but then he'd have to move.

IN favopur of the clocks going back. we need it in the mornings for the kids

i'm never awake in the mornings, so i'd prefer light evenings
although that's not true when i'm at school
^. .^
= ' =

It is certainly easier to get up for work if it is light in the morning - it is almost light now, but it won't last much longer anyway, so back to getting up in the dark and getting home in the dark. I miss the sunshine, or at least daylight

I think with the 24/7 society, flexitime, shift working it is all getting pointless - where I used to work (a very large Gov QANGO) they have just moved the flexi period to allow people to leave at 3 - I can leave at 4 in my new job - I think if you are that hung up about travelling in to work in the light just get to work later.

OK not everyone has this flexibility, but then not everyone works during the old , typical 9-5. As it looks like in the next 10 years we will all be working (speaking about the UK here) in 24/7 call centres anyway, seeing daylight may be a luxury we will lose.

CH

Currently doing 7.30-4.45 days to try to avoid the traffic on my (if I'm lucky) 1 hour commute. It is really a struggle to drag myself up when it is dark, cold, and rainy out.

Not having a 24/7 society is a good one actually, like trying to explain what it was like when all the shops shut early on a saturday and didn't open until monday morning. Or half day closing on a wednesday (to make up the time the staff worked on saturday mornings). Or not findinf any kind of shop except an off licence open after about 6pm.

Wow - neatly brought back on topic, and with a goody - although similar to the lack of instant access to stuff, but Sunday and half day closing (is that still the case in any towns?) were on the original "list" my girlfriiend and I came up when we started this.



CH

Small shops in Burton still have half day closing- only the chains stay open on Wednesday.

For some reason, all the chippies are also closed on a Monday- but all other types of take-away are open

My memory of the time in the late 60's when they left the clocks on BST through the winter is that it was awful in the mornings, walking to school in the dark. There were accidents where children were hit by cars, although I don't remember anybody being killed. There was no corresponding difference in the evening because we always came home in daylight, whatever way the clocks were.

Betamax vidoes. My dad bought a Betamax machine when it was no less popular than VHS. I consequently have loads of teenage Top of the Pops, Not the Nine O'clock News sketches and a few films that can't be played. I'm sure you could get them converted (anyone help on how ?)It was a shame because Betamax were actually more compact. The video shop we went to originally had equal amounts of each type of video for hire.

How about the good old days when the radio stations only played songs once they have been released. None of this beng able to plug it for 6 weeks before it's even available, then consequently everyone buying it first day, winning awards for most sales in week of release, then disappearing down the charts just as fast as other tunes do the same. Top of the Pops having to show songs that are sliding down the charts months after we first heard them.

Reel-to-reel tape recorders in the home - never mind cassettes! (New-fangled things. I knew they'd never catch on!)

KerrAvon - as a hater of chips I never knew that Fish n chip shops shut on Mondays until recently when my girlfriend wanted some chips but it was a Monday and she said they'd be shut, stating the reason as the fishing boats don't go out on Sundays.

Now I simply didn't believe this as boats these days go out whenever they are allowed to by the EU (I think the latest plans is to allow them to fish on Feb 29th only) and we went to my nearest shop, and Lo! it was open

CH

Chippies always used to be closed on Sundays, not Mondays, but that was more to do with the laws on what food could be sold on Sunday (I think). I was once told that they weren't *allowed* to sell fish on Sundays, so there was no point in them being open.

C Hawke, your girlfriend obviously needs some things explained to her. A chippie makes does his fish with *fresh* fish, i.e. fish caught *that day*. So Monday's battered fish was caught on Monday, not on Sunday. I have *never* known a chippie to be closed on a Monday.

Neither had I, until I moved to Burton