British Summer Time question

[Hazell B]

Would you rather have the clocks go back now or not? If you live in the UK, of course .... :

I honestly don't get what the problem is with them staying as they are now, with a little more darkness in the morning. Remember, I work by the sunlight's clock myself, unlike most, and people like me seem to be the ones mooted as wanting light mornings.

Your opinions?

[Daniel]

I hate daylight savings. Why screw around with time?

[Mark]

There is a big campaign going on at the moment called "Lighter Later" http://www.lighterlater.org/
They are campaigning for the UK to switch to Central European time, which would put our clocks 1 hour forward of where we are all year round, i.e. GMT+1 in winter and GMT+2 in summer.

Their argument is that light is less useful to us in the mornings when all we tend to do is just make our way to work, it has a bigger affect having it light longer into the evening.

I do agree with their premise that having lighter evenings is better than lighter mornings as I'm travelling to work in the dark most of the time anyway. But as it stands the clocks are designed so that it's always light at 8am, if we go to CET that won't be the case.

Plus using CET would be an advantage to be on the same time as most of the rest of Europe I should imagine.

[slorydn1]

There is a big campaign going on at the moment called "Lighter Later" http://www.lighterlater.org/
They are campaigning for the UK to switch to Central European time, which would put our clocks 1 hour forward of where we are all year round, i.e. GMT+1 in winter and GMT+2 in summer.

Their argument is that light is less useful to us in the mornings when all we tend to do is just make our way to work, it has a bigger affect having it light longer into the evening.

I do agree with their premise that having lighter evenings is better than lighter mornings as I'm travelling to work in the dark most of the time anyway. But as it stands the clocks are designed so that it's always light at 8am, if we go to CET that won't be the case.

Plus using CET would be an advantage to be on the same time as most of the rest of Europe I should imagine.

Being as far west as you are as opposed to the rest of Europe does kinda put you in a unique position.

Living about as far east as I can in North Carolina, it really doesn't seem to make much of difference here between EDT and EST, except that when we first switch to EDT in the spring that pretty much has the children waiting for the school bus in the dark for a few weeks; that can be problematical what with the way most of the idiots drive around here, I always worry about the children getting run over by a moron.

Other than that, I really don't notice much of a difference. I work 6-6 (2 weeks of days, 2 weeks of nights) so I pretty much go the whole winter only seeing darkness, and only seeing sunlight during the summer.

Now, when I was a little kid in western Michigan, Daylight Savings was a BIG deal in the summer....It would still be twilight as late as 10pm during the summer, and it would take for ever to get the fireworks started on the 4th of July...

Yet, when we moved to Chicago were it is Central Time, it was more like here in NC....pretty much as far east one could be in the time zone, and the switch from standard time to daylight savings just didn't make much of a difference...

[Daniel]

They also want to make it so BST is gmt+ 2 hours

[Ghostwalker]

There is a big campaign going on at the moment called "Lighter Later" http://www.lighterlater.org/
They are campaigning for the UK to switch to Central European time, which would put our clocks 1 hour forward of where we are all year round, i.e. GMT+1 in winter and GMT+2 in summer.

Their argument is that light is less useful to us in the mornings when all we tend to do is just make our way to work, it has a bigger affect having it light longer into the evening.

I do agree with their premise that having lighter evenings is better than lighter mornings as I'm travelling to work in the dark most of the time anyway. But as it stands the clocks are designed so that it's always light at 8am, if we go to CET that won't be the case.

Plus using CET would be an advantage to be on the same time as most of the rest of Europe I should imagine.

Yeah especially since Spain is about as far west as GB and Ireland and despite that Spain is using CET.

http://www.worldtimezone.com/time-europe12.php

[Dave B]

The argument against having sensible timezones appears to be that Scottish farmers would "have to" work in darkness. But however we choose to measure time, the actual amount of daylight will not change! Let's just get this over and done with, once and for all, then not faff around with clocks twice a year.

[Daniel]

The argument against having sensible timezones appears to be that Scottish farmers would "have to" work in darkness. But however we choose to measure time, the actual amount of daylight will not change! Let's just get this over and done with, once and for all, then not faff around with clocks twice a year.

I've always found daylight savings slightly pointless. In the UK there is already more than enough sun in the winter, if anything more winter sunshine would be better. If they put the clocks forward an hour in the winter that would make much more sense.

[Eki]

Would you rather have the clocks go back now or not? If you live in the UK, of course .... :

I honestly don't get what the problem is with them staying as they are now, with a little more darkness in the morning.

You mean that once you go black, you shouldn't go back?

For one reason it's good that mornings are darker is that now my cat let's me sleep easily until 10 o'clock. In the summer she started waking me up already before 5 o'clock.

[fandango]

I prefer having more light in the morning, but I'm a morning person. My feeling is that driving is safer in the morning in daylight, as people are half asleep at the best of times anyway. I have no studies to back that up, it's just a feeling.

I couldn't see the UK changing to be on the same time as central Europe. It just seems like a very un-British thing to do, for better or worse. Portugal is on the same time as Britain, and so are the Canaries, so it's not 100% accurate to say Spain is on CET time.