EU To Stop Changing the Clocks in October 2019 (dw.com) 211
European Commissioner for Transport Violeta Bulc last week announced that the EU will stop the twice-yearly changing of clocks across the continent in October 2019. From a report: The practice, which was used as a means to conserve energy during the World Wars as well as the oil crises of the 1970s, became law across the bloc in 1996. All EU countries are required to move forward by an hour on the last Sunday of March and back by an hour on the final Sunday in October. Bulc said EU member states would have until April 2019 to decide whether they would permanently remain on summer or winter time. [...] "In order to maintain a harmonised approach we are encouraging consultations at national levels to ensure a coordinated approach of all member states," Bulc said.
The decision to tackle the issue was prompted after the Commission launched an online survey. Some 4.6 million Europeans answered the survey -- three million of those respondents were from Germany -- with 80 percent of them voting to scrap the practice .
Per the Car Talk guys (Score:3)
Let's go for Double-Dutch Daylight Savings - permanently!!
(RIP Tommy)
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About time! (heh) (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:About time! (heh) (Score:5, Funny)
DST is a waste of time. Now it is time for the U.S. to do the same.
Now that the EU has got rid of it, the US will start changing the clocks four time times a year just to be contrary.
Re: About time! (heh) (Score:3)
We should change to a single time zone for the entire contiguous U.S. and call it "freedom time"
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Personally, I'd be cool with just splitting the difference, and making "Eastern" time UTC-4.5 year-round (and presumably, making "Central" time UTC-5.5, "Mountain" time UTC-6.5, and "Pacific" time UTC-7.5). There's no international law that says timezones HAVE to be limited to whole-hour offsets from UTC.
But yeah, where all the "abolish clock-changing" proposals (besides Florida's) have historically dropped the ball was in their attempt to drop "summer" time, rather than stay on it all year. People hate cha
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Re: About time! (heh) (Score:2)
The practical logic that recognizes that ~94% of people have close to zero autonomy over their working hours, but employers blindly follow the clock. It's politically easier to change the clock than it is to convince individual HR departments to deviate from their blindly-followed norms.
Re:About time! (heh) (Score:5, Interesting)
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DST is a poor substitute for deregulation of work hours.
No it's not, it's a work around to a problem that can't be solved without creating some other major problems. You want to deregulate work hours, sounds good individually. The econonmy is not you, individually going home. The economy is an interconnected mass that relies heavily on localised coordination in order to minimise waste.
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I can't trust the government to get off their ass and do it, but I would love to see it on ballots so the people can tell the government that we want this to happen.
Personally I'd like to see us finally move to metric, but I think I'll die before I see that happen.
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Daylight saving time (DST) is nice. Keep it FOREVER. Don't go back to standard time! ;)
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Don't have any kids young enough to be coming home from school, but if I did where I live it would have to get dark at 14:00 for them to be coming home in the dark.
Now at the present time with DST and EST they end up standing in the dark in the morning waiting fro the bus, typically at 0600.
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Actually, it would make more sense for them to not have to go to school in the dark, since that's when all the groggy drivers will be out.
Though as someone else pointed out, days in the winter are short enough that you don't really have a choice in the matter. They either go to school in the dark, come home in the dark, or you can try and straddle it so they'd be coming home and going in during twilight.
Damn - one year too late (Score:5, Funny)
I responded to the survey voting for 'stop changing', so I'm happy with this.
Re:Damn - one year too late (Score:4, Funny)
According to Daily Mail, this change is only introduced to drive a wedge between UK and Ireland.
Based on their reasoning, the UK will not be following EU on this matter.
Re:Damn - one year too late (Score:4, Informative)
Since when did the Daily Mail ever do 'reasoning' ?
All they care about is twisting things to make nice click-baity headlines to sell more papers to people who need to be told what they should be offended by today.
TBH, I'm suprised they didn't make it out to be some Islamic plot to drive down house prices and cause cancer.
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The Daily Mail is basically
- 5 Minutes Hate
- Everything gives you cancer
- Cute animals
- Any excuse to show a sexy girl, even if she is 14
Just that, relentlessly day after day, until your mind is corrupted.
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Re:Damn - one year too late (Score:4, Informative)
They have to have the other stuff to justify the photos of girls and women. A lot of it is "health" stories that are basically body shaming and anxiety inducing crap where they write about the 5 year old children of celebrities wearing designer clothes and eating sweets like any normal 5 year old would.
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Re:Damn - one year too late (Score:4, Insightful)
It's worse than that because the UK will never be able to do this now without appearing to be following the EU lead which the brexiteers will deem completely unacceptable.
Well, without following the EU lead, the UK could hold a referendum and ask its people what they want.
A referendum was how the UK decided to brexit() in the first place.
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That went really well.
Oh, wait, it was a complete disaster.
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It's an economic disadvantage for the UK if it doesn't stop using DST.
Every time that change happens there is a cost. Stuff breaks, time and effort has to be put in to making sure stuff doesn't break, every system has to be set up to allow that cha
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It's an economic disadvantage for the UK if it doesn't stop using DST.
It's a massive economic disadvantage for the UK if it doesn't stop Brexit. There is no sign of that happening and I doubt the effect of DST will be noticeable on top of that.
Re:Damn - one year too late (Score:5, Interesting)
From what I've heard, the problem in Britain is that almost everyone prefers BST to GMT, but there's an equally-strong nostalgic draw to being on GMT for at least a few months per year... an enduring reminder that Britain was once the literal center and reference point of the civilized world, and everyone *else* defined their local time relative to London's time.
I suspect France will have a similar national dilemma. It didn't get to name GMT, but it DID get to name UTC (or at least, SI did). Europe's geopolitical center might have shifted eastward after Germany reunified and the EU grew... but as long as France gets to have UTC for a few months per year, it can still feel smugly superior and regard itself as the world's timekeeping reference point. Moving to CET year-round would be yet another psychological concession that continental Europe no longer revolves around Paris.
Predictions:
1. France will stick with UTC for the sake of national pride initially, decide it hates early sunsets, and join the rest of Europe in UTC+1 within a couple of years.
2. Britain will come up with a solution worthy of a Terry Pratchett novel... UTC+1 year-round, except on Boxing Day. On Boxing Day, clocks will be turned back an hour sometime early in the morning, solar noon will occur at 12:00 GMT somewhere in Britain (often in London, occasionally near the site of the Greenwich Observatory itself (or at least, somewhere above its parking lot, since the actual meridian is a few hundred feet away from the "ceremonial" meridian's painted line), then clocks will skip from 22:59:59 GMT to 00:00:00 UTC+1, ensuring that the madness & confusion persist for only a single calendar day.
The first year, everyone will think it's cute in the days leading up to it, the day itself will end with thousands of people missing flights and trains due to mass confusion about whether or not the time change is a joke, and a few weeks later Parliament will quietly pass a law making Britain UTC+1 year-round, except for the literal sites of the Greenwich Observatory and Stonehenge (which will be GMT year-round... preserving the symbolism, while sparing 99.999% of Britain's population from having to deal with its consequences).
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UTC was a compromise between the French and British. The French wanted CTU (temps universel coordonné) and the British wanted CUT (coordinated universal time), so they settled on UTC that doesn't stand for anything.
If the UK gets a deal then presumably it will make the switch too as part of the brexit transition period. If not... Well, they will be too busy trying to save their economy from a massive recession and huge layoffs to care.
Maybe not all of europe (Score:1)
Every European country will decide whether they do it or not. Some countries are still hesitating.
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I hate people saying "I prefer day light savings time because <reasons>."
Why?
Because the clock already have a definition which make sense.
12 is the middle of the day. Sun as near zenith as it can be.
00 is the complete opposite. Sun as far away as possible.
As soon as the clock pass 00:00:00 you're moving towards the brighter part instead of the darker part.
It's symmetrical and make logical sense.
I totally understand if some people wish they had more light hours after work or if current schedules are se
Re:Maybe not all of europe (Score:4, Insightful)
You might want to (a) realise that not everyone gets to choose their work hours and (b) 1200 is not solar maximum in any timezone for the entire year for any location. Do try harder.
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If you're on the edge of the time zone, the solar maximum will almost always be at 11:30 or 12:30, not "more or less around 12:00".
As far as "for the entire year", look up the Analemma, linked below. Essentially, the location of the sun at 12:00 at any given point on the Earth shifts East and West throughout the year, such that even in the middle of the time zone, 12:00 is the solar maximum only twice a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Set the clocks where ever it makes people happy, just stop changing them. The idea that there's some objective reason to have 12 be at some particular time of day is nonsense.
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Set the clocks where ever it makes people happy, just stop changing them.
Great -- let's set all of the clocks to 5PM local time and never let them change again!
(WD40 for when is should move, and Duck Tape for when it shouldn't.)
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How is it nonsense?
Any convention we humans adopt to enumerate time is arbitrary. There's no first principles here. There's no goal to be satisfied beyond human happiness. Making a few time nerds with OCD happy is fine, but making the bulk of humanity happy is better.
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For a long time now, our days haven't been in phase with the solar day. The time we are awake extends far more into the PM than the AM. Following this convention (as the DST-always folks propose) makes at least as much sense as trying to synchronize our clocks with a variable phenomenon like solar apex.
Social convention is a powerful thing, and now that we don't depend on the Sun to calculate time, we can choose a time standard that suits our lives, instead of the other way round.
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[...metric time...]
Easier to throw out hours and minutes entirely and just use the official metric base unit for time as it is. One kilosecond (16.7 minutes) would be the primary interval for scheduling purposes; 7 AM would become 25ks, 1:30 PM would be 50ks, and 9 PM would be 75ks. The 8-5 workday would run from 30-60ks. Tenths (0.1ks = 100s) would take the place of minutes.
The length of the day varies anyway depending on leap seconds and the like. Approximately 86.4ks is good enough IMHO.
One interesting variation would be t
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12 is the middle of the day. Sun as near zenith as it can be.
I call bullshit.
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They only get to decide between permanent summer or winter time, they don't get to keep the daylight savings system.
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Actually the article s false.
Obviously.
As long as the european parliament has not decided on it: nothing is going to happen.
And the "european commission" did not even file a bill yet ... so if there will be a change, it will be in 4 or 8 years or further in future.
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All the power in Europe comes from the European Parliament.
No idea why you believe otherwise.
The question is... Why is this change being pushed so hard now, although they have their "poll" almost zero publicity?
It is not pushed, it is only in the news, for what ever reason. Most people don't like the time shift, but as you correctly point out, we have more important things that matter, e.g. BREXIT, the greek crisis, Portugal also still has trouble, and Italy has an absurd unemployment rate which they fake
" stop the twice-yearly changing of clocks" (Score:3)
How hard is it to use the phrase "daylight saving"?
Re:" stop the twice-yearly changing of clocks" (Score:4, Insightful)
Very hard, since it's a lie and does not save daylight at all.
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Very hard, since it's a lie and does not save daylight at all.
That's why you use phrases like "so-called" or "quaintly referred to as" to note your usage of inaccurate terminology that somehow happens to be what everyone calls it.
As it's titled it's bizarre since lots of folks know what "daylight savings" "spring forward" and "fall back" means but are confused about what "changing the clocks" may indicate - is it upgrade time?
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Some of us don't want to dignify the lie by using the label intended to brain-wash.
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Maybe we should compromise, only change the clocks once a year.
Re:" stop the twice-yearly changing of clocks" (Score:5, Informative)
"Daylight saving" is also primarily an Americanism, with most of Europe referring to the local equivalent as "summer time".
summer time versus DST (Score:2)
It is called daylight saving time in the US because it avoids confusion with the similarly-named "summertime" (referring to the time between spring and autumn). This may not be an issue with other languages.
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You are right, it is not an issue in other languages, because the time between spring and autumn/fall is just called "summer", an not "summertime".
It's not daylight saving (Score:2)
Since they take the hour away from us in the middle of the night, they are saving nighttime---not daylight.
Changing the clocks? (Score:2)
Oh, this is about daylight savings time. I thought they wanted to dial them back to 1941.
Never mind.
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Nothing unique about Luxembourg or Benelux. Britain has numerous overseas territories (Cayman Islands, Channel Islands) that are autonomous enough that, although they depend on the home country for their continued existence, there just doesn't seem to be anything anyone can do pierce banking privacy laws and tax shelters. France has Monaco. The USA has Delaware and Texas.
Nobody is stupid enough to actually strangle the classes that create wealth by not giving them a foot out of the tax door, so to speak.
Re:They already have. (Score:4, Insightful)
Nobody is stupid enough to actually strangle the classes that create wealth by not giving them a foot out of the tax door, so to speak.
Nitpick - they don't create wealth, they're merely major redistributors of wealth. They're the pumps, not the sources.
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Nobody is stupid enough to actually strangle the classes that create wealth by not giving them a foot out of the tax door, so to speak.
If you're rich, paying taxes is the equivalent of 'being strangled', it follows that in order to avoid the life threatening injury of having slightly less money, the rich must do what they have to in order to survive. They have to evade taxes, otherwise they wouldn't be able to keep breathing.
Whereas, if you are middle or working class, you are used to living with little to no money (and a lot of debt), therefore paying taxes is totally safe for you, it won't hurt you in any way.
Can you even imagine a
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in order to avoid the life threatening injury of having slightly less money
Rich people will always be able to afford the dues at Mar-a-Lago. That comes out of discretionary income. What they can't afford is some local taxing authority shaving just enough off their businesses bottom line to make relocation to a cheaper jurisdiction beneficial.
Whereas, if you are middle or working class
You are stuck here behind an economic Iron Curtain. You can't move your income and you must shop at the company store. That being the market segment created by regulations, supposedly to protect you. But actually put in place to keep you from
Compromise: UK to set back to 1939, EU to 2019 (Score:2)
Problem solved.
In Scotland they'll be set to Scotch Time and in NI they'll be set to Whiskey Time, of course.
Re:Compromise: UK to set back to 1939, EU to 2019 (Score:4, Funny)
In Scotland they'll be set to Scotch Time and in NI they'll be set to Whiskey Time, of course.
Why would you set your time to 'All the time'?
Can you just STOP .... (Score:1)
Sun sets "later" but also rises "later". (Score:2)
And in the middle of winter, when you go far enough north, the sun sets early enough that even with an extra hour of daylight at the end of it, it will still be after sunset by the time most people might need to go home from work.
And if the sun is rising that much later in the winter, the lack of any sunlight in the morning almost certainly badly affect melatonin cycles and probably worsen seasonal depression disorder.
I can sympathize with wanting an extra hour of daylight in the evenings, but as soon
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I can sympathize with wanting an extra hour of daylight in the evenings, but as soon as you get more than about 45 degrees away from the equator or so, the sun is already rising late enough as it is in the winter months, and in practice, one wouldn't be able to enjoy the extra hour of daylight at the end of the day in the winter either, because they would probably be at work until sunset anyways.
No. That's not why.
I don't get to enjoy my extra hour of sunlight because I have to shovel all that goddamn snow!!
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Best piece of advice, buy a snowblower. The older you get the more you appreciate it, especially when the sun is just coming up at 8am and is setting at 4:30pm. I sure don't miss living further north, I mean the summers were great, the sun really doesn't go down at all and at best you've got 1.5h of twilight, but the whole 5hrs of daylight in the winter gets to be kinda annoying after awhile. Especially since the roads are closer to "plowed, and coated with sand and gravel" and the next nearest city is 5
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Hahaha funny you'd say that. I recently bought a house and one of the conditions was to get their snowblower with the purchase. Bring on the snow!!
Standard Time forever! (Score:2, Interesting)
I consider myself a "purist" and wish that we'd just stop using DST completely and just go with "winter" time year-round.
The more south you go, the less "saving" daylight is needed since there's less daylight variance between the seasons.
The more north you go the more "extreme" sunrises would get if you use "summer" time (DST) in the winter. Once you get into longitude 40N range (NYC, Detroit, Toronto), if you use 'summer time' in the winter you get sunrise at 8:30. Sunsets will be at 5:30 instead of 4:30,
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Sadly it seems that many people prefer to stay in "summer time", which is also supported by "stop changing clocks in October" statement.
This doesn't get rid of DST, it gets rid of time changes, but whether a country is stuck in DST or normal time is a separate matter.
software updates will go well... bureaucracy (Score:2)
so think of all the scheduling software... update it all for 2019... not going to happen
this is just a bureaucracy of consultations... what do you think they will be doing... paying themselves and ?
lets say germany changed and france was delayed by 2 years... do you think business would not suffer ?
it requires all member states to change then updates to all software that keeps the time, no matter how lofty the goal it just is not going to happen.
regards
John Jones
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The last change that we make in the US was implemented in a couple of years, so it's really not a big change.
Here in Arizona we have to deal with everybody else seemingly arbitrarily changing their clocks, so it is possible to deal with it, and it's really not that bad.
The sooner everybody wakes up and realizes that there's not need to change clocks the better IMO.
For you ze DST ist ofer (Score:2)
Hande hoch!
First ze big hand hoch zen ze little hand hoch!
For you ze DST ist ofer.
Daylight Savings Time is Stupid (Score:2)
Why keep DST? (Score:2)
I fully support ending the time changes, but using daylight savings time year-round is idiotic. That is just setting noon to 1PM. If we do this in the US, sunrise in New York will be about 8AM in the winter. Although the name implies it, daylight saving time does not actually make the day longer.
Re:Why keep DST? (Score:4, Funny)
Although the name implies it, daylight saving time does not actually make the day longer.
Hah! Well I guess somebody better tell Mr Sun he can get back to his normal orbit* speed around our Earth during the winter time!
*High Blood Pressure Warning: This comment may cause sudden spikes in blood pressure. If experiencing any chest pains or numbness, please consult a doctor immediately.
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daylight saving time does not actually make the day longer.
Actually it does.
I mean, if you distinguish between day and night, the "day" part of the day and night is longer.
At least for europeans. Only rare professions get up so early in morning that DST makes no difference.
I for my part am rarely at my job before 10:00 ... so even in deep winter there is light outside, and with permanent DST I might even go home in light. And as I half live in Paris, it is quite nice to have a sunset, or the afterglow of it
I must be the odd one out (Score:2)
I would love for Brisbane to have DST. Especially now I have school age kids.
I can be flexible with my work hours. Less so for my kids school hours.
I hope the spaniards get their act together (Score:2)
and move their timezone to GMT. they currently sit on gmt + 2, which does not suit thir geography (it was done on the whim of a dictator to "show support for germany").
That, coupled with their weird times (3 hour lunch break starting at two) wreacks havoc on bussiness with the rest of europe, and the world...
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No Good! I've known too many Spaniards.
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Setting the clock 2 hours forward in summer justifies the 2pm lunch break! (When in reality it's only 12 noon.)
Choice between summer is winter time!? (Score:2)
From the article:
Bulc said EU member states would have until April 2019 to decide whether they would permanently remain on summer or winter time.
Wow. I get ditching DST, but make a call one way or the other across the board. This will get messy..
Re:Choice between summer is winter time!? (Score:4, Interesting)
the revolution is here ! (Score:4, Funny)
Look, it took only a decade of pressure and a public petition with a majority reminiscent of old soviet style elections to strong-arm our politicians into doing one simple thing right.
There may still be hope for this planet. At this speed, somewhere around 2350 they will decide that climate change is actually a bad thing and they ought to do something about it.
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It's not luck that 75% of the respondents were German.
The petition was widely shared on german speaking social media. Other countries may have been less aggressive in that regard.
the Germans see democracy as inefficient and illogical.
"the Germans" includes me and I disagree with that statement. So please be more clear who you mean. The government? The administration? The people? The secret Nazi underground which still runs everything from their Inner Earth hiding spot?
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The secret Nazi underground which still runs everything from their Inner Earth hiding spot?
Typical German, trying to conceal the truth. Everyone knows [imdb.com] the secret Nazi underground is on the Moon.
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Everyone knows the secret Nazi underground is on the Moon.
That, obviously, is the secret Nazi overground. We believe in redundancy.
Good (Score:2)
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oh dear (Score:2)
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I heard about it earlier and had an idea for how I wanted to vote but then I forgot about it until they revealed the result.
With 80% German votes clearly coverage has been bigger in Germany than elsewhere.
4(?) million people, 80% Germans = 3.2 million Germans.
3.9% of German population voted if that's the case.
0.2% of the rest of the EU population.
Yay...
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