Time change & quote of the week

[The Drain]

In the UK and the Republic of Ireland the clocks go back to winter time (GMT) this weekend.

The debate about whether England & Wales (but not necessarily Scotland) should abandon GMT altogether and go with continental European time has raised its head again.

In making his case to the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8321809.stm), 'prominent historian' Sir Alistair Horne has made a couple of hilarious bloopers.

Sir Alistair says that it's "absolutely crazy" for Britain to be the only country in Europe to have a different time zone. (Well, here in Ireland...)

He then compounds this by saying: "...and the only country which is on Portuguese time is Britain."

So what time is Portugal on?!

But what does interest me, and is a debatable point, is why shouldn't an entire politically cohesive continent - whether the European Union, Australia or North America - each have its own unified time zone?

Isn't human time just an arbitrary number on a clock? Does it really matter if I get up an hour before dawn to milk the cows and prepare the children's breakfast whether the number on my bedside clock says 5 or 6 or 7 or 8? It's still an hour before local sunrise at this time of year, and I still have to get up.

Thoughts?

[Professor Yaffle]

Even though I have SAD and dark mornings are a particular problem for me, I would still much rather have the debated hour of daylight in the afternoon/evening, so the kids can play out for longer in the autumn.

[A.A. Alfie]

In the UK and the Republic of Ireland the clocks go back to winter time (GMT) this weekend.

The debate about whether England & Wales (but not necessarily Scotland) should abandon GMT altogether and go with continental European time has raised its head again.

In making his case to the BBC (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/8321809.stm), 'prominent historian' Sir Alistair Horne has made a couple of hilarious bloopers.

Sir Alistair says that it's "absolutely crazy" for Britain to be the only country in Europe to have a different time zone. (Well, here in Ireland...)

He then compounds this by saying: "...and the only country which is on Portuguese time is Britain."

So what time is Portugal on?!

But what does interest me, and is a debatable point, is why shouldn't an entire politically cohesive continent - whether the European Union, Australia or North America - each have its own unified time zone?

Isn't human time just an arbitrary number on a clock? Does it really matter if I get up an hour before dawn to milk the cows and prepare the children's breakfast whether the number on my bedside clock says 5 or 6 or 7 or 8? It's still an hour before local sunrise at this time of year, and I still have to get up.

Thoughts?



In Australia there is a two hour difference between the East coast and the West.
I like your efforts to be lateral in having one time zone for each continent but it hardly seems workable. The curtains will fade more for those living on one side of the continent and not the other, given the greater hours of sunlight.
Also, how will the roosters adjust on the farms - they wont know what time dawn really is.

Doesn't make sense to me - like daylight savings.

[The Drain]

Even though I have SAD and dark mornings are a particular problem for me, I would still much rather have the debated hour of daylight in the afternoon/evening, so the kids can play out for longer in the autumn.


In the autumn, my children play outside until it's dark. That's the case this week (summer time) and will remain true next week (winter time).

The youngest ones can't tell the time yet, but they can tell when it gets dark. To them the number on a clock is purely arbitrary - an invention by grown-ups.

[Professor Yaffle]

In the autumn, my children play outside until it's dark. That's the case this week (summer time) and will remain true next week (winter time).



Exactly, and when the clocks go back they get an hour less play after school.

[Jeff Corey]

In Australia there is a two hour difference between the East coast and the West.
I like your efforts to be lateral in having one time zone for each continent but it hardly seems workable. The curtains will fade more for those living on one side of the continent and not the other, given the greater hours of sunlight.
Also, how will the roosters adjust on the farms - they wont know what time dawn really is.

Doesn't make sense to me - like daylight savings.
Exactly why some farmers here object to daylight savings time. Having sunrise an hour later is bad for the crops.

[Mojo]

Even though I have SAD and dark mornings are a particular problem for me, I would still much rather have the debated hour of daylight in the afternoon/evening, so the kids can play out for longer in the autumn.

But won't that extra hour of daylight cause GLOBAL WARMING? :jaw-dropp

(I have actually seen this suggested seriously, although I can't remember where)

[The Drain]

Exactly, and when the clocks go back they get an hour less play after school.

Fair point.

I think what I'm trying to say is that it should not matter what we call the time; i.e., local midday does not have to be called "12". (I think the Romans called it "VI", but that's a diversion).

Let's say I lived on the far western edge of a unified continental time zone - the Azores, for example, or maybe Easter Island or Perth. When it's "12" in the middle of those time zones in Berne or Asuncion or Alice Springs, most office workers will stop for lunch because it's near enough the middle of the day. Out here on the western edge we too will take our lunchbreak in the middle of the local day - it's just that according to our digital watch the time will read "15.00" or "16.00", and we will have been at work since maybe "11.00" or "12.00" (that's still only an hour after local sunrise).

So we would still eat work and sleep with 'natural' or 'bodyclock' time - it's just that the numbers we call that time might vary to suit local sunset/sunrise.

In fact, never mind continental time zones - the entire human world could use a 24-hour UTC. Local societies decide what time office and school hours are to coincide with local daylight, but it's all nominated under UTC (or GMT if you're British!).

[A.A. Alfie]

[QUOTE=Mojo;5235066]But won't that extra hour of daylight cause GLOBAL WARMING?QUOTE]

Oh that's just great!
Now we have to factor in the additional heat as well as sunlight. That means the air conditioners will be running more causing more problems.

And what about the roosters?
Cock-a-doodle-melt.
Fried chicken anyone?

[Careyp74]

Fair point.

I think what I'm trying to say is that it should not matter what we call the time; i.e., local midday does not have to be called "12". (I think the Romans called it "VI", but that's a diversion).

Let's say I lived on the far western edge of a unified continental time zone - the Azores, for example, or maybe Easter Island or Perth. When it's "12" in the middle of those time zones in Berne or Asuncion or Alice Springs, most office workers will stop for lunch because it's near enough the middle of the day. Out here on the western edge we too will take our lunchbreak in the middle of the local day - it's just that according to our digital watch the time will read "15.00" or "16.00", and we will have been at work since maybe "11.00" or "12.00" (that's still only an hour after local sunrise).

So we would still eat work and sleep with 'natural' or 'bodyclock' time - it's just that the numbers we call that time might vary to suit local sunset/sunrise.

In fact, never mind continental time zones - the entire human world could use a 24-hour UTC. Local societies decide what time office and school hours are to coincide with local daylight, but it's all nominated under UTC (or GMT if you're British!).

So your idea is that everybody works at the same time, but can decide to sleep when they want to. Well, I think that would clear up the whole confusing TV scheduling, and everyone will be at work around the same time, but it would mess with allowing kids to play after school on one side of the continent.

I think nowadays the daylight savings is more to conserve energy. We are up when the light is out, and asleep when the light is gone.

[Professor Yaffle]

Fair point.

I think what I'm trying to say is that it should not matter what we call the time; i.e., local midday does not have to be called "12". (I think the Romans called it "VI", but that's a diversion).

Let's say I lived on the far western edge of a unified continental time zone - the Azores, for example, or maybe Easter Island or Perth. When it's "12" in the middle of those time zones in Berne or Asuncion or Alice Springs, most office workers will stop for lunch because it's near enough the middle of the day. Out here on the western edge we too will take our lunchbreak in the middle of the local day - it's just that according to our digital watch the time will read "15.00" or "16.00", and we will have been at work since maybe "11.00" or "12.00" (that's still only an hour after local sunrise).

So we would still eat work and sleep with 'natural' or 'bodyclock' time - it's just that the numbers we call that time might vary to suit local sunset/sunrise.

In fact, never mind continental time zones - the entire human world could use a 24-hour UTC. Local societies decide what time office and school hours are to coincide with local daylight, but it's all nominated under UTC (or GMT if you're British!).

But most people cannot choose what time they go to work/school etc. So then you have a choice between having the sparse daylight hours earlier or later compared to what time you are forced to do other things.

[McHrozni]

So what time is Portugal on?!

CET, even though it's actually indeed west of UK.

Isn't human time just an arbitrary number on a clock? Does it really matter if I get up an hour before dawn to milk the cows and prepare the children's breakfast whether the number on my bedside clock says 5 or 6 or 7 or 8? It's still an hour before local sunrise at this time of year, and I still have to get up.

Thoughts?

It matters if you're going to have the same working hours, which will then see some people work before dawn, but others will work from almost lunchtime (which would be the case in China).

McHrozni

[Careyp74]

Exactly why some farmers here object to daylight savings time. Having sunrise an hour later is bad for the crops.

Not only that, but the sun going in an hour earlier would cause more frost.

I think they should just come up with exclusions, like if you are on a farm you don't have to follow DST.

[A.A. Alfie]

Not only that, but the sun going in an hour earlier would cause more frost.

I think they should just come up with exclusions, like if you are on a farm you don't have to follow DST.

My heads spinning!
Now the world is cooling because of the change in time zones.

Oh, Oh, OMG!
We could fix the global warming problem with this. I wonder if the scientists have thought about it?

What time will the roosters get up?

[The Drain]

Alright then. Besides global warming and frosty wheat there's one other factor that's been overlooked. When the clocks go back one hour this weekend in this part of the Northern Hemisphere, people who don't milk cows will get an extra hour in bed.

Clearly the answer is for the clocks to go back an hour every weekend, making Mondays that little bit more bearable...

[A.A. Alfie]

Alright then. Besides global warming and frosty wheat there's one other factor that's been overlooked. When the clocks go back one hour this weekend in this part of the Northern Hemisphere, people who don't milk cows will get an extra hour in bed.

Clearly the answer is for the clocks to go back an hour every weekend, making Mondays that little bit more bearable...

I love it!

Um, but wont we have gone backwards a full day after 24 weeks.

Worse, after 12 weeks I will have been shifted from Melbourne Australia to the Tristan da Canha group of islands in the South Atlantic by virtue of the time marching back an hour a week: I will be on the other side of the world.
I don't want to live on any old volcanic islands in any part of the Atlantic.

[The Drain]

Yes, but after 24 weeks you'll be back on track - that'll happen twice a year and then it's almost Christmas.

Now - about you Aussies having Christmas in the middle of summer...

[A.A. Alfie]

Yes, but after 24 weeks you'll be back on track - that'll happen twice a year and then it's almost Christmas.

Now - about you Aussies having Christmas in the middle of summer...

Thank goodness.

Gotta tell you, x-mas in Australia rocks.

The day runs from about 5.30am to 9.00pm
The kids are up at the crack of dawn, tearing like rats at the presents.

It's usually swimming weather so we will spend our day in the sun next to the pool. We don't go in for the northern meal (roast meat and other oven cooked foods). My family will tuck into fresh seafood - crayfish, prawn, morton bay bugs etc along with some red meats (steak, kebabs and snags) on the BBQ and the usual side salads.
Dessert is pavlova, seasonal fruits (I love the berries), ice creams (we usually go the gourmet stuff) and mum will do a chocolate ripple dipple cake and a big x-mas pudding with brandy sauce and custard.

You can put your white x-masses where the sun dont shine (i.e. the northern hemisphere), like I say Christmas in Australia ROCKS.

[Mojo]

I'd get an extra hour in bed on Sunday morning if only I could figure out how to set the cat back by an hour.

[Careyp74]

My heads spinning!
Now the world is cooling because of the change in time zones.

Oh, Oh, OMG!
We could fix the global warming problem with this. I wonder if the scientists have thought about it?

What time will the roosters get up?

wow, I never thought of that. OK, so, we know the sun is hot, so the less of it we get, the cooler the Earth will be. Now, what do we do to get it to stay away longer, set the clock ahead, or behind? I am always confusing the two.

[RenaissanceBiker]

I'd get an extra hour in bed on Sunday morning if only I could figure out how to set the cat back by an hour.

A good taxidermist can do that for you.

[Matthew Best]

I'd get an extra hour in bed on Sunday morning if only I could figure out how to set the cat back by an hour.

Bah. I am working a night shift on Saturday night, so I get an extra hour at work - I now have to do a 13-hour shift instead of a 12-hour shift.

What makes this worse is that I was working the day shift when the clocks went forward so I had an hour's less sleep that night while some other lucky sods got to work an 11-hour shift.

What makes it even worse is that exactly the same thing happened last year!

[The Drain]

Matthew, that's a bummer. Do you get paid extra/by the hour?


My OP is not a criticism of summer/winter-time; rather it's asking why can't we all - at least at a continental level if not at a global level - keep to the same time zone.

All of us in Europe can have the same time zone, but not necessarily the same working/school hours. Those would be set at whatever is suitable locally.

So for example, in Ireland (on the western edge of Europe) we currently have nominal school hours of 9-3 Irish time. My proposal would have us keeping, say, Central European Time, but we would not have to keep German school hours. Instead Irish school hours would be 10-4 CET. In the winter those school hours would go 'back'; but instead of moving the hands on our clocks, it is simply announced that from next Monday schools and offices will now open at 11am CET (or whatever is locally convenient).

This system would allow northerly Scottish schools to set whatever hours are locally convenient, depending on the season, while still keeping the same clock-time as the rest of Europe. Just because Scotland is on CET would not necessarily mean schools having to open hours before sunrise.

And cows all over Europe can carry on getting milked at times convenient to them and their farmer, not Brussels.

I would have thought this would have been especially relevant in Australia, where your central time zone is half-an-hour out of kilter with the rest of continent. Seriously bizarre.

[Eskarina]

CET, even though it's actually indeed west of UK.

Wrong. A quick look at this (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/) tells me that Lisbon is on GMT.

I'm looking forward to finally getting back the hour THEY stole from me this March.

[Matthew Best]

Matthew, that's a bummer. Do you get paid extra/by the hour?

No! We just have to lump it.

And I can confirm that Portugal is actually not on GMT, though they will be after this weekend. Right now they're on BST (which they probably have some other abbreviation for).

[Rolfe]

It's not just schools though. I was at school when they tried having BST all winter last time, and it was horrible. I didn't like leaving the house with the stars still bright in a sky without a hint of dawn then, and I don't expect I'd like it now either.

I don't imagine the schoolchildren would hugely appreciate missing the TV programmes their net-friends were watching either.

For goodness sake, we're going home in the dark either way, it's worth it just to see some light in the sky when it's theoretically morning. We get this bitching every year, and two days later it's forgotten about. Hardly sounds like a problem to me. In contrast, I've never forgotten the two years we didn't change the clocks. Horrible.

What I would like to see is the spring change happening a month earlier. It's quite light enough in the mornings by early March to move to BST, and the lighter evenings would be appreciated - especially in the Easter holidays, if Easter falls early. This would actually match with the October change, which seems to be timed about right to me.

Rolfe.

[Amapola]

I never did understand why you can't just get up an hour earlier or later. As far as I am concerned, when the sun is at it's highest point in the sky, that's noon. If the other ends of the day don't work out well, then adjust! I could never figure out why people figured the sun was wrong, and changed the time. Now of course we are going back to "real time" or "sun time". (At least here in the USA.)

As far as milking cows (or goats) - ideally, they are milked every 12 hours. What the time is has no bearing on it. I was told this had more to do with school children. Whatever. I still think it's a goofy idea.

[AvalonXQ]

I never did understand why you can't just get up an hour earlier or later. As far as I am concerned, when the sun is at it's highest point in the sky, that's noon. If the other ends of the day don't work out well, then adjust!

The main function of the clock is to have a consensus of when businesses will operate. The whole world could go to a universal time if we de-aggregated the business-operation consensus from any specific numbers (e.g., "Business hours in New York City are 0400 to 1200"), but the result of that would be to eliminate one of the main purposes of the clock (letting us know, easily, when a business will likely be open).
The main purpose of Daylight Saving Time is to reduce electricity usage by lining things up so that daylight can be used in place of artificial light as much as possible.

[GlennB]

Spare a thought for poor Delhi. They have a 30 minute time zone differential thingummy. I think there's a small boulder in Oz that has the same issue.

[GlennB]

(e.g., "Business hours in New York City are 0400 to 1200"), but the result of that would be to eliminate one of the main purposes of the clock (letting us know, easily, when a business will likely be open)

Ah now you've gone and been all logical over us.

Yes. If I fly to NY I'd like to be confident the shops open at 9 a.m.
Resetting my watch to local time is a one-off. All happy. Resetting my brain to shops opening at 4 p.m. isn't going to work (well, not quickly anyway).

[KoihimeNakamura]

Also scheduling is another reason we have time zones.

[Starthinker]

Can't we just add an hour at both sunrise and sunset?

[Toke]

Think of sailing across the pacific, I recall it as 9 hours in 11 days.
At the same time we were hearing about the horrific health problems/disturbances
caused by DST.:D

[The Drain]

Toke, I've a similar story. The first time we drove across Africa, west to east, we kept our own 'truck time' completely independent of official local time zones. As very people we met had watches our own personal time zone was the only one that mattered.