Scrapping Daylight Saving time

Fian

magicbastarder wrote: »

well, there is. in the sense that midday or noon is at 12, so when the sun should be directly overhead.
not too far off today, from what i can see the actual time of midday was 12:14pm.

><

so there is, fair enough.

even so I would definitely prefer sunrise to be later and evenings to be longer, than for sunrise to be earlier and evenings shorter. Irrespective of how far off noon 12:00 moves.

And since life is built around nine o'clock starts, for myself, my kids, my wife and most other people, the easiest way to facilitte this is to change teh clock as is being proposed.

ford2600

Fian wrote: »

><

so there is, fair enough.

even so I would definitely prefer sunrise to be later and evenings to be longer, than for sunrise to be earlier and evenings shorter. Irrespective of how far off noon 12:00 moves.

And since life is built around nine o'clock starts, for myself, my kids, my wife and most other people, the easiest way to facilitte this is to change teh clock as is being proposed.

Your are in a long line of humanity struggling with syncing calendar time with sun time

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1346931.The_Calendar

Even wonder why there are 7 days in a week? Where those names came from, 24hr clock, why the 11th month is called the 9th? February''s 28 days etc etc

Brilliant read, although maybe not if you have never wondered about any of that stuff!

magicbastarder

don't forget, it's only about 10 days before the evenings start getting brighter again.

Alun

magicbastarder wrote: »

don't forget, it's only about 10 days before the evenings start getting brighter again.

A bit longer than that ... the winter solstice is on the 21st December.

magicbastarder

That is true, but the evenings start getting longer around the 14th. The mornings continue getting darker after the solstice for about a week too.

magicbastarder

The overall effect is that the solstice is the shortest day, but that does not correspond to the latest sunrise and earliest sunset.

CrowdedHouse

Alun wrote: »

A bit longer than that ... the winter solstice is on the 21st December.

Well...am...not really the earliest sunset in Dublin is on the 9h December at 1606, kinda stalls then and starts to get later on the 19th.

The actual day keeps getting shorter til the 21st though

Alun

Sorry, misread the post I was replying to.

Pedro deNada

More example of Leo 'caring' a monkey's for the people who get up early in the morning! Sunrise 08.40hrs this am, so would nearly be 10am in winter.

With the obesity epidemic more kids should walk or cycle to school, we're way behind in environmental pollution targets, so more cars on the roads to ferry kids to school in the dark mornings hardly seems a solution?

Hurrache

You might need to read the thread again, even just the first post, and you'll see it hasn't originated from our government.

no.8

Pedro deNada wrote:

More example of Leo 'caring' a monkey's for the people who get up early in the morning! Sunrise 08.40hrs this am, so would nearly be 10am in winter.

Pedro deNada wrote:

With the obesity epidemic more kids should walk or cycle to school, we're way behind in environmental pollution targets, so more cars on the roads to ferry kids to school in the dark mornings hardly seems a solution?

Oh dear, a very weak argument here. As the previous poster wrote, please read through the thread again. Kids would also have ample time to cycle in the late afternoon should we switch. Besides, with the amount of laziness currently out there (e.g. the # of kids being dropped to schools 5mims away - with footpaths all the way), I can't see any change affecting this hugely.

plodder

Meant to come back to this before, but I didn't realise a decision has just been made in the EU parliament and we have to decide by next April whether to switch to Summer or Winter time permanently. I think we've made a mistake here and we should have agreed to at least try it out, but we should have got a derogation to switch back to DST if it doesn't work out. There's plenty of precedent for territories within the same country, never mind international blocs like the EU, to have different rules in different places. At the end of the day, it doesn't actually matter to the rest of the EU if Ireland were to have a different system.

The experience of Portugal (mentioned above) indicates to me what is likely to happen here if we switch to Summer time. It's interesting that the people here who influenced this decision seem to be generally in favour of Summer time, but it's likely that those who will be worst affected by the downside (the dark Winter mornings) might not even know about it, and/or haven't expressed an opinion, one way or the other. Certainly, the process that led to the "overwhelming" decision by people in the EU to make this change, was unscientific and biased, with the vast majority of opinions coming from only one country.

And if we were to decide that the downside of dark Winter mornings would be too great then switching to Winter time would mean losing the benefit we will get next week of the extra hour in the evenings (for a period).

I also just listened to Pat Kenny there this morning and thankfully, finally, someone shows up who is prepared to predict the downsides of permanent Summer time. Apparently we tried it here before in the late 60's and it wasn't popular. It was also tried in the US and Russia at different times and was changed back. Most compelling though is scientific evidence of a significant increase in incidence of some cancers found in the Western parts of US timezones which is attributed to darker mornings affecting the circadian rhythm. Someone made the point that cows get up whenever the sun does. Maybe humans are supposed to as well.

On the border aspect, apparently there was an experiment once which meant there was an hour difference at the border and people got used to it. Someone also joked that one way to deal with it now, might be to ensure that border crossing formalities take exactly an hour to complete.

No problem with me trying this out, but I think we should be able to switch back to using DST if we want to.

magicbastarder

plodder wrote: »

we should have got a derogation to switch back to DST if it doesn't work out.

AFAIK what the MEPs voted on was to remove the requirement to have the clock change - until now, it has been mandated that the clocks should change,
they have not mandated that the clocks *shouldn't* change, only that the mandate itself has been lifted.

so, if i understand correctly, it's up to each country to decide what to do locally.

plodder

magicbastarder wrote: »

AFAIK what the MEPs voted on was to remove the requirement to have the clock change - until now, it has been mandated that the clocks should change,
they have not mandated that the clocks *shouldn't* change, only that the mandate itself has been lifted.

so, if i understand correctly, it's up to each country to decide what to do locally.

Would be good to get an official position on that, but the way it's being presented in the media is that DST is gone and we have to make a choice.

Hurrache

plodder wrote: »

but it's likely that those who will be worst affected by the downside (the dark Winter mornings) might not even know about it, and/or haven't expressed an opinion, one way or the other.

Why are they more likely not to know about it, and if they did, sure it's nobodies fault but their own not to make a submission.

Weepsie

Can't we just start things later during the winter and do away with a rigid 9-5.

CramCycle

I may be the only one but I'd prefer to keep the winter time hours, get up and do more stuff before work during the summer.

Ardent

I think it's nuts to get rid of DST. It was a brilliant invention by a brilliant guy. We get an extra hour of daylight that would otherwise be lost as we sleep.

plodder

Ardent wrote: »

I think it's nuts to get rid of DST. It was a brilliant invention by a brilliant guy. We get an extra hour of daylight that would otherwise be lost as we sleep.

I think the fact it has persisted this long, and even long past the original reason for its existence, and previous attempts to get rid of it, signifies something.

Hurrache wrote:

Why are they more likely not to know about it, and if they did, sure it's nobodies fault but their own not to make a submission.

Children for one. But, you can't decide public policy just on the basis of who heard about a public consultation, and who didn't. The percentage who replied to the EU survey was pretty low in most countries (less than 1% in all bar Germany, Austria and Luxembourg). Yet they claim that 84% of the population of the EU are in favour of change. That's a fairly outlandish claim.

https://www.dw.com/en/eu-parliament-votes-to-end-daylight-savings/a-48064185

Russia switched to permanent summer time in 2011 in an attempt to improve citizens' well-being but shifted to permanent winter time three years later after public complaints.

Be careful what you wish for.

Hurrache

There's no comparison with the situation in Russia.

hesker

I think it’s a good idea. I encounter more traffic on my commute home than I do going to work. This would mean for me my commute home would nearly always be in daylight when there’s more traffic.

plodder

Hurrache wrote: »

There's no comparison with the situation in Russia.

Why not?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-28423647

This ends an experiment that began under former president and Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev. In 2011 he switched the clocks to year-round "summer time". The change was initially popular, but a survey last year showed less than a third of Russians wanted to keep the clocks forward all year.

MPs say permanent summer time created stress and health problems, especially for people in northern Russia where the mornings would remain darker for longer during the harsh winter months. They cited medical reports of increased morning road accidents in 2012 compared to previous years, and blamed them firmly on the 2011 time change.

magicbastarder

They cited medical reports of increased morning road accidents in 2012 compared to previous years, and blamed them firmly on the 2011 time change.

this information is meaningless without information on any change in evening accident rates.

Hurrache

plodder wrote: »

Why not?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-28423647

Look at the scale of Russia, particularly it's north and south extremes.

plodder

Hurrache wrote: »

Look at the scale of Russia, particularly it's north and south extremes.

Most of Russia's population lives at similar latitude to us, in the GMT+3 zone. Hardly anyone lives in the far north.

magicbastarder

the article you posted specifically mentioned northern russia though.

plodder

magicbastarder wrote: »

the article you posted specifically mentioned northern russia though.

The most significant point was that over two thirds of the population wanted to switch back to Winter time, which doesn't contradict the point that it's probably worse for people in the North than the South.

CramCycle

Am I really the only person who wants it stuck to winter time hours if it goes ahead. It just makes more sense to me. Days are long enough from now till November, an hour one way or the other makes no difference.

Plastik

As I said earlier in the thread, late evening sunshine when I'm not in work, trumps everything for me. And it is essential for any and all cyclists that partake in any sort of mid-week club racing leagues. On the east coast, sunset for the summer solstice would be 9pm give or take if we stayed on winter time. Sunrise would be 4am. 4am? D'fcuk use is that to anyone!

CramCycle

Training, I could get up, get out, and be back in bed before anyone even knew, in daylight. Forgot about the club league to be honest.