In the last vote 80% peoppe wanted to stay at summer time permanently to have more aunlight after work. Wtf is this?
Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
111–120 of 264 posts
Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is to correct those locales that have gone way too far in the direction of summer time. Spain in particular is almost 3 hours off of solar time. There's a societal pull in the direction of earlier time, even aside from anything about sunlight. Nobody wants to be "late" compared to their economic neighbors so they gravitate towards earlier time zones. This is correcting for that.
> Spain in particular is almost 3 hours off of solar time. I suppose if you squint right at the western edge in summer time you could get there. But the prime meridian runs straight through the country. I think a sensible reckoning would say that it's 1 hour off as a baseline and 1 extra hour during summer.
Despite the prime meridian crossing the country, Spain is the same timezone as Berlin. One hour more than London.
If you are interested, look for the historical reasons for that.
Edit: OK, a good source.
> On March 16th 1940, the clocks jumped from 23:00h to 00:00h to display the same time as Nazi Germany and other Nazi-occupied countries such as France and the Netherlands. This was an entirely politically motivated move to show support to the fascist government of Germany and showed no consideration for the natural cycle of the sun in Spain. According to the original 24-hour division of the world, Spain’s latitudinal position meant that GMT was the most natural time-zone for it to follow.
From: https://theculturetrip.com/europe/spain/articles/heres-why-s...
Spanish civil war was won by the fascists and Franco's dictatorship followed.
Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
#113I find it kind of absurd that people claim that clock alignment has negative impact on their health. Studies show that but: You do it only twice per year. But how often do you stay late up because of an event or whatever. And how often do you travel to another time zone, sometimes even >6 hours. I think the latter effects outweigh the health impact of clock alignment significantly.
- Clock alignment has a negative impact on health for some people
- Waking up before sunrise has a negative impact on health for some people
- Going to sleep before (or just after) sunset has a negative impact on health for some people
We do not all have the same sleep cycles. Early birds and night owls are a real thing, and any solution will be an improvement for some, and a degradation for others. Health-wise, I think the best solution would be to abolish office hours. Don't look at the clock, look at the sun, and let people work at different times. Of course, economically, it would be a mess.
So yeah, no good solution, only compromises. The most we can ask for is fairness. I don't know what is the most fair, but I think the current situation (with DST) is close, as it is what people have settled with.
Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
#114Time zones are geopolitical artifacts just like borders, laws, currencies, etc. They can't really be "permanent"...
They can be "more permanent" than changing twice a year.
Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never seen anyone propose moving in the opposite direction of summer time before. That seems needlessly awkward to me.
The idea would be to move Spain, France and Benelux to UTC. Currently all of Western Europe is on UTC+1/UTC+2, which is much wider than it "should" be. I have no opinion on the idea, just relaying what they are proposing.
Ireland is on GMT/-1, and we're already pretty far west in the 15 degrees centered on 0.
Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
#116here's an idea - UTC everywhere
Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't really care any longer having a pretty flexible schedule and no commute. But living in relatively northern New England, the timezone tweaks for summer and winter really were pretty welcome. I suspect that most of those ranting about timezone changes wouldn't actually want sunrise at 4am or sunset at 3pm.
I feel the opposite way. I too have a flexible schedule and no commute, and I'd prefer not having to change time zones twice a year. It's annoying and doesn't serve any useful benefit to me. I don't care when the sunrise or sunset is in wall-clock time, I can get up later/earlier and go to bed later/earlier if I want. Yes, there are things that need to be done during normal business hours, but I have a full 8 of thos…
In my case, I don't have kids, I don't have a consistent schedule, and I travel enough than a one hour timezone shift isn't something I even notice--the early airport pickup is far more likely to affect my rhythms. My preference is probably year-round DST in the Boston area. (We're basically in the wrong timezone.) But I understand being in sync with the rest of the east coast.
I'd also pretty much be fine with year-round standard time at this point but the time shift just isn't really on my radar.
Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
#118I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: switching to UTC+0:30 will put a large number of countries in a common time zone without them deviating from their solar time too much.
And make converting time between different time zones/countries even more confusing.
But more work for programmers
Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
#119+1 for this proposal. It is just unhealthy to permanently live in a wrong time zone and this proposal would fix that at least in europe.
Re: Proposal on implementing permanent time zones in the European Union
#120Apart from the specific location issues highlighted in the comments here, the entire site can be summed up to "everything is better, just trust us". Zero arguments for any claim. Terrible.
Indeed, there is none. There is a FAQ though, but it is not supportive of any advantage. It just contains a handful of "But won't it ..." with rather shallow dismissals, but nothing to show an advantage of the proposed change.
And it contains "debatable" statements, such as "For most people, it is not a problem to sleep beyond sunrise." That's not my experience, and they don't offer evidence. It's followed by a worse one: "Having to get up an hour earlier due to DST the next morning, unable to finish your sleep, is what causes sleep deprivation." Yeah, that's one day, perhaps two. Very early sunrise is 2 months.
But if you shout loud enough, you get influence.