Daylight Savings - why?
Discussion
Saddle bum said:
Without taking a swipe at anyone, this subject brings forth more uninformed opinion than almost any other.
Daylight Saving is about making the best use of the available daylight, more so during the Winter months.
Economic benefits, enhanced safety,and better well-being (reduced SAD) all come from having lighter evenings, this being the outcome of shifting our clock time in relation to the natural day. GMT+1 in Winter and GMT+2 in summer are Central European time. Most agree that adopting that would benefit the UK, but Scotland has customarily resisted it. As Norway and Sweden use CET, that attitude seems illogical.
Sweden at least is dead centre in the CET time zone, with Norway a bit further towards us?Daylight Saving is about making the best use of the available daylight, more so during the Winter months.
Economic benefits, enhanced safety,and better well-being (reduced SAD) all come from having lighter evenings, this being the outcome of shifting our clock time in relation to the natural day. GMT+1 in Winter and GMT+2 in summer are Central European time. Most agree that adopting that would benefit the UK, but Scotland has customarily resisted it. As Norway and Sweden use CET, that attitude seems illogical.
By your argument both should be CET+1
JagLover said:
Saddle bum said:
Without taking a swipe at anyone, this subject brings forth more uninformed opinion than almost any other.
Daylight Saving is about making the best use of the available daylight, more so during the Winter months.
Economic benefits, enhanced safety,and better well-being (reduced SAD) all come from having lighter evenings, this being the outcome of shifting our clock time in relation to the natural day. GMT+1 in Winter and GMT+2 in summer are Central European time. Most agree that adopting that would benefit the UK, but Scotland has customarily resisted it. As Norway and Sweden use CET, that attitude seems illogical.
Sweden at least is dead centre in the CET time zone, with Norway a bit further towards us?Daylight Saving is about making the best use of the available daylight, more so during the Winter months.
Economic benefits, enhanced safety,and better well-being (reduced SAD) all come from having lighter evenings, this being the outcome of shifting our clock time in relation to the natural day. GMT+1 in Winter and GMT+2 in summer are Central European time. Most agree that adopting that would benefit the UK, but Scotland has customarily resisted it. As Norway and Sweden use CET, that attitude seems illogical.
By your argument both should be CET+1
MrsMiggins said:
I don't understand it, and the talk about the farmers needing it makes no sense to me either. Do the cows on the dairy farm look at their watches to decide when they need to be milked?
Well, in a word, yes, they do!Because the cows are milked early, normally at dawn they know roughly when to start to get up. The last few weeks before the clocks change you have to spend much longer getting the cows to come in and they are restless. Also, before we had to milk as early as we do now (we start at 5:30) the cows would normally be milked at dawn, and therefore it would be too early or late if the clocks didn't change.
Also, it's horrible when you start milking in the dark and finish the morning milking before it gets light too.
Pints said:
groucho said:
Keep the clocks as they are now. GMT!!! Does it really need to be light at 10pm in the summer?
Does it really need to be light at 3am in the summer?This topic comes around every year, with many people ignoring or failing to realise one basic fact - we no longer live our lives according to sunrise and sunset, and we haven't been doing it essentially since gas and electricity were invented, producing reliable artificial lighting.
The vast majority of the population get up between 6am and 8am, and go to bed between 10pm and 1am. During the depths of winter, a good half of that time it is going to be dark out anyway, so in truth it doesn't matter if we are on GMT or BST - there's still only going to be about 8 hours daylight in December, and you can take your pick which end of the day you prefer it to be dark out. My preference is for dark mornings, but that's just me (and I suspect about 50% of the rest of the population).
Our time zone actually makes a lot less sense in the height of summer, when in the south of the country it gets light before 4am (when most people are still happily snoring) and gets dark at 10pm, when most people are still up. If it got dark at 11pm in the height of summer then we would save an impressive amount in not switching the lights on until later - to misquote Toney Hancock, perhaps very nearly half a power station.
Those who argue that its Greenwich Mean Time - you know GREENWICH - I said GREENWICH - so that's the time we ought to use, I would ask how many of them live their lives by Greenwich Mean tine - up at 4am and in bed at 8pm. Not many? Thought so
I'd go for CET and CET+1 in the summer. It would make a lot more sense.
MarkRSi said:
Seems like that was the original reason. If it was to save lighting/fuel costs later in the day, would it not make more sense to just start work an hour or two earlier? (which is what they were doing anyway??)
Just pick a timezone and stick with it IMO
To do with lighting in certain factories IIRCJust pick a timezone and stick with it IMO
Just had a tour of an old explosive factory site, they said nowadays you'd run it round the clock in time of war, but the chemicals and processes they were using didn't allow lighting
Every building had weak roofs to direct blasts away from the next door building, and most had artificial hills between them for the same reason
MarkRSi said:
Seems like that was the original reason. If it was to save lighting/fuel costs later in the day, would it not make more sense to just start work an hour or two earlier? (which is what they were doing anyway??)
Just pick a timezone and stick with it IMO
To do with lighting in certain factories IIRCJust pick a timezone and stick with it IMO
Just had a tour of an old explosive factory site, they said nowadays you'd run it round the clock in time of war, but the chemicals and processes they were using didn't allow lighting
Every building had weak roofs to direct blasts away from the next door building, and most had artificial hills between them for the same reason
Agrispeed said:
MrsMiggins said:
I don't understand it, and the talk about the farmers needing it makes no sense to me either. Do the cows on the dairy farm look at their watches to decide when they need to be milked?
Well, in a word, yes, they do!Because the cows are milked early, normally at dawn they know roughly when to start to get up. The last few weeks before the clocks change you have to spend much longer getting the cows to come in and they are restless. Also, before we had to milk as early as we do now (we start at 5:30) the cows would normally be milked at dawn, and therefore it would be too early or late if the clocks didn't change.
Also, it's horrible when you start milking in the dark and finish the morning milking before it gets light too.
HoHoHo said:
Don't understand why is this modern age we need to move clocks either way.
I can see no reason whatsoever.
Research appears to indicate that we get up too late and go to bed too late, there would be lots of health, economic and safety benefits from doing this.I can see no reason whatsoever.
Because every contract, working practice, tradition, passtime, hobby, club would have to change the "time" they operate at. The cost of doing this would be immense the number of years it would take would be massive.
You could try persuading everyone to wake up earlier by convincing them of the merits of this and hoping they will chance but in practice it would be very difficult as every institution is interconnected so would be out of step if they changed on their own.
On the other hand the government can just change the clocks which costs bugger all and we would see immediate benefits. What's more this is very easy to do and see what happens.
The problem is that for the 58 million of us who get marginally healthier and 0.5% richer we will barely notice, however a few tens of thousands of people will have some form of disruption (maybe a few places in Scotland will have to change school opening times) and will very vocally object.
Talksteer said:
HoHoHo said:
Don't understand why is this modern age we need to move clocks either way.
I can see no reason whatsoever.
Research appears to indicate that we get up too late and go to bed too late, there would be lots of health, economic and safety benefits from doing this.I can see no reason whatsoever.
Because every contract, working practice, tradition, passtime, hobby, club would have to change the "time" they operate at. The cost of doing this would be immense the number of years it would take would be massive.
You could try persuading everyone to wake up earlier by convincing them of the merits of this and hoping they will chance but in practice it would be very difficult as every institution is interconnected so would be out of step if they changed on their own.
On the other hand the government can just change the clocks which costs bugger all and we would see immediate benefits. What's more this is very easy to do and see what happens.
The problem is that for the 58 million of us who get marginally healthier and 0.5% richer we will barely notice, however a few tens of thousands of people will have some form of disruption (maybe a few places in Scotland will have to change school opening times) and will very vocally object.
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