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European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

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171–180 of 266 posts

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#171
Most of the people that I hear complaining about it are old people and by that I mean people who are retired and time only tells them if it's the time for their favorite TV drama or medicine. IMHO daylight saving time helps both mentally (less gloomy dark winter) and energy-wise.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#172
post #156

So many people, including a lot of comments here, seem to think that it’s designed around the winter. It’s not, it’s to move an hour of sunlight from the start of the day (say, 4am) to the end of the day (say, 9pm) so that you use less energy in the summer (hence the ‘savings’), and then you can enjoy that rather than being asleep. Moving to summer time year-round means that the mornings in the winter will be darker.…

Year-round summer time sounds horrifying, is there anything I can do to prevent it?

Ask your boss if you can come to the office hour later in winter time.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#173
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe the reason is that it costs less to move the hands of a clock than to print and distribute new timetables for trains, buses, etc. That could cost less today because we use much less paper, but updating web sites and databases is still a large amount of work. It's far easier to communicate to all the country when to move the clock and keep everything else the same.

It actually costs in an entirely different way, when you screw with everybody's sleeping schedules, cause accidents with wildlife getting surprised by brisk changes in traffic peaks. Personally, I never dealt well with the change, either, so this means I have one less thing to worry about in pollinosis season. Good riddance.

Do you have any credible sources that say wildlife is affected in any way by daylight savings?

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there is federal law on this that affects their decisions. [0] I wish we would at least call it "summer time" instead of the lie "daylight savings time." There's no daylight "saved." [0] http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/usc.html

The ‘savings’ refers to the energy saved, not the daylight.

1. Various studies of energy savings have reached mixed conclusions. Energy savings from DST is not necessarily true. [0]

2. The 'saving' in the older form 'daylight saving time' certainly referred to 'saving daylight' for use in the evening and not 'saving energy.

In either case, the use of the word 'saving' or 'savings' is, at best, deceptive, and some would say a great example of Orwellian language. Why not call it "We're going to force everyone to change their schedules by an hour" time?

[0] https://www.livescience.com/56725-does-daylight-saving-time-...

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#176
post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "I like having a bit of daylight in the mornings in the winter" I am the opposite. For me, the early morning winter sunrise is an annoyance, and just feels a waste of daylight if it's bright outside when I'm asleep. Sometimes in mid-winter it seems like its already starting to get dark when I'm just getting started with my day. Awful!

I am with you. I enjoy long summer evenings when it is till some light at 11pm and you can be swimming, camping, whatever. Winter time would mean sun rising ~3:30 in the morning. I have no desire do get up that early.

Unless you desire to get up at 4:30 in the morning, you're going to have to invest in some curtains either way. At that point, the exact time of sunrise doesn't really matter.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#177

Lets also try and spread working times from (mostly) 9-5 to 6-2, 7-3, 8-4, 9-5 and 10-6 so we can solve the traffic congestion problem, all while enabling people to work when they work best.

Couldn't agree more. I see it already happening on some companies that allow employees to arrive anytime between 7am and 11am and leave once they do their daily hours. In my job I'd say somewhere between 10 and 20% of the people arrive before 8am or after 10am. I suppose it could be even better if there was an actual policy of organising it so as to improve spreading as much as possible.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except there is federal law on this that affects their decisions. [0] I wish we would at least call it "summer time" instead of the lie "daylight savings time." There's no daylight "saved." [0] http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/usc.html

It affects their decisions in some nominal capacity, but it is still up to the states and territories. Federal laws don't have the authority to supersede local laws whenever they want. "As of 2014, the following states and territories are not observing DST: Arizona, Hawaii, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.[7]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_Un...

I thought that winter time was the default and summer time was opt-in by the states. But that both California and Florida when seeking to change to summer time all year round had to get approval from congress.

Re: European Parliament set to end EU-wide daylight savings

#180
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I see why countries in northern Europe have little use for daylight savings: they have darkness in the morning in winter and sun well before everybody's awake in summer whenever they use daylight savings or not. In southern Europe it's different (I live there), especially because those countries tend to center their day not around noon but to later hours: lunch starting between 13:00/15:00 and dinner between…

> Spain basically lives with a double summer time. Spain uses the wrong timezone. It should use UTC instead of UTC+1. The map in the article shows that pretty clearly. That's at least partially the reason people have dinner so late in Spain. It's not them that are wrong it's the clock!

Yes - it used to be GMT. Franco changed it in 1940s to be in line with the German occupied Europe and it was never changed it back.
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