Latest article I could find is this one: https://www.thejournal.ie/eu-plans-to-abolish-clock-changes-6024800-Mar2023/
I know the EU can be a bit slow, but the vote was held in 2019, seems like enough time elapsed since then.
I’ve been waiting for years for this to finally be approved. I can’t stand Daylight Saving Time, only serves to make me tired for the next month while I adjust, twice per year. It’s a relic from the past and many countries are moving towards removing it or have removed it already altogether.
More info:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2023-000550_EN.html
I can’t stand winter time, would love DST all year long. Its so depressing to have the sun set before I finish work and come home when its pitch black…
It clearly seems like something designed by people who get up at 04:00 and are asleep by 20:00.
It was, but also we have the same time in most EU, so at the west or east extremities either winter or summer time is quite wrong (or even both). Synchronized time is handy for international relations, though.
The US have several timezones, seems okay for them
Mainly it is just Arizona that is totally weird there with its nested levels of ‘no DST/DST’ (7 levels deep I think).
Honestly, just give me one time for everything world-wide and then have - gasp - people get up at different times. It would make things so much easier.
Aweful idea: do you want to plan a meeting at 16:00 with colleagues in the US? It is very hard to tell if this makes sense without timezones. Is this in their working day? Or the equivalent of midnight? Or something else? There are no timezones, so there is no way of telling without looking at some shady website how many hours you are shifted - which is basically the concept of timezones anyway, but shittier.
I regularly do have to work with and also have friends in other time zones. Despite doing so for the better part of two decades and not being bad at mental maths most of the calculations involved, especially with DST at different start and end dates, are a total headache. It would be much easier to have a list of “person x is available from global time y to z” data and check where that overlaps. Not to mention all the issues around “meeting at the same time every week” when “the same time” has no meaning between two time zones with different DST.
without looking at some shady website
On Gnome and on Windows you can add multiple clocks so when you click the time it shows the differences.
But not if there are no timezones! Probably someone would find a way to display the shift anyway, but this is basically the old timezone system again, but without a (more-or-less) universal standard.
Doesn’t the whole of China have like one single time zone and they do exactly this?
In China the vast vast majority of people live in a single timezone at the coast, so this is not really comparable.
this just shifts the problem around though. so instead of debating when 8am and everyone getting to work is relative to the suns cycle you have to figure out which time should be getting to work time. But it still faces the same problems: Different people have different biological clocks and we were not made to deal with people being a thousamd kilometres or more away regularly.
But you have that problem even in the same office. Some start at 7 and leave at 3, others start at 9 and work until 5, some work half of the day only, others are in meetings. Why screw with the clock and inconvenience literally everyone even for the simple task of figuring out what is the same time, what is earlier and what is later just to not really solve anything?
Ask your employer if you can move hours -1 or +1, if that’s possible in your case. I know some people that were able to improve their efficiency through that, it’s a win-win situation
It’s worth a try for sure. But for many people it’s not possible because they work in a team and/or are reliant on a common schedule with externals. So either everyone starts an hour later or noone does which is really hard to coordinate.
The same applies for activities outside of work too. You might be able to get up an hour early to work earlier to go home before it gets dark in winter but then you never get to see your friends because you have to go to bed early too.
Thank you for this! I had a look at the first link, it seems like they didn’t answer anything more than 2020, which is this one: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2020-005617-ASW_EN.html
Basically, more paperwork to do before going on…
It takes you a whole month to adjust one hour?
Indeed it does. To clarify it takes a couple of days or a week max, but I can feel an effect linger on for almost a month. I guess I’m getting old.
You’re not alone in taking a while to adjust. Circadian rhythms are kind of important to proper functioning. One study found that heart attacks increased coinciding with switches to and from DST. Of course this is only one study. Would need quite a few more before I could draw conclusions.
https://www.franciscanhealth.org/community/blog/daylight-saving-time-heart
There have also been studies on car accidents and similar events around lack of focus and being unable to concentrate rising after a DST change.
How hard is it to adjust. My clock on my phone updates itself, my alarm shifts accordingly, I don’t even realise it happens until I look at the coffee machine or microwave, I reset them and then forget it happens for another six months. If one hours shift effects you that much it seems like a medical issue.
getting up an hour earliet or pushing yourself to go to bed an hour earlier can be quite difficult if you have a tight schedule, e.g. having no flexibility about when you start working.
Surely your job also shifts with the clock change in a country that does DST, you don’t suddenly have to start work an hour earlier.
in Spring i have to. i need to be at work at 8 and when 8 is shifted by an hour i have to be a zombie for a week until my ritzm can adjust.
But everything else shifts by an hour too? I literally don’t even notice the clocks change these days until I look at a non-connected clock, everything connected to the internet just shifts automatically, alarms and all. An hours difference shouldn’t put a healthy human out so much.
yes it does because a healthy human has a well established circadian rhythm that is adjusted to the cycle of day and night.
Humans adaptability is what makes us different from animals who treat this stuff as second nature and are straight into their warrens, dens, etc the moment the sun goes down. A circadian rhythm in a human should allow for an hour’s shift either way. Otherwise we would never have been able to migrate and spread around so many different parts of the world with different daylight cycles to begin with.
It’s not man, really. Work and the stress that comes from my responsibilities at it, kids that make my sleep irregular, sleep deprivation because I want to do more than I have possibly time to do, slightly overweight, etc. overall I don’t have a significant amount of consecutive good nights of sleep enough to feel rested in general, and this makes me very sensitive to time changes. There was a time I also didn’t care or noticed, but when my nights started to become short, it started making a difference.
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The public poll was extremely skewed, mostly Germans voted.
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Biologists argue against permanent summer time, people are in favor of summer time. But most people haven’t looked into the issue enough. Do you like to get up early? Then summer time is indeed better for you. But for most people it’s not. But summer is nice and it’s really complicated to think about time and the sun and how one changes when we move the clocks, so most people think they prefer summer time. Public health and public opinion run opposite in this case.
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At the moment we have one time zone all the way from Spain to like Poland. Poland doesn’t want to give up summer time, Spain doesn’t want to give up standard time. (Or was it the other way around?). They are on the fringes of the time zone, geographically speaking and feel the negative effects the most. Obviously neither country wants to make the situation worse for its citizens, so no agreement has been reached.
(I’m an American so I’m not immediately in the discussion about whether Europe does DST or not but I do have opinions on DST itself)
I prefer Summer time, but I honestly don’t care which one “we” stick to as long as we quit fucking with the goddamn clocks. I don’t care if we split the difference, set the clocks to a half-hour between, and leave them there.
I HATE the logic of actually moving the clocks back and forth.
I care which one we stick to because going home at 5pm in the dark is depressing for a whole month in the northern half of the US. I’d much rather go to work in the dark then go home with the last bit of light and do something fun before the sun sets.
See if I was in charge that would be managed by “our company opens at 8AM” vs “our company opens at 7PM.” Not the dumbass 20th century idea cancer where you reset every clock everywhere.
I think the USA already tried the permanent summer time thing. They stopped after two years, because it was bad.
If you actually would like to get up earlier for work or school, then yes, summer time is indeed better for you. You are also part of a small minority that sees it that way. Most would like to get up and show up to work later instead.
Arizona and Hawaii don’t switch their clocks to this day, I don’t know if they’re aligned with “DST” or “Standard” time which I can never keep track of which is which so I call them “summer” and “winter” time.
Standard time is winter time. I never remember what daylight savings time is either. In German it’s just summer time and normal time/winter time. You’re not actually saving any daylight by moving the clocks around!
There is a bit of leeway which time zone to choose. I mean Spain and Poland are doing fine too. But 1 hour offset from normal seems to be the limit of what is reasonable.
This whole discussion would be useless if we just introduce flexible working hours and have school start an hour late. Instead of 9-5 you’d have 10-6 and people won’t have to get up as early.
Well, they could get the timezones, that actually fit to their geography.
This is an option. I think it is not a very popular one though, because it makes cooperation and trade a tiny bit more complicated.
I would add to this the compounding effect of northern places. If one were to keep summer time all year round, the sun would rise at 9.30 am in the winter.
On the other hand, if one keeps standard time all year round, it rises at around 2 am in the summer.
(I still hate daylight savings though.)
The medical/biology side is pretty clear, standard time is better than summer time if we keep our current workday schedule. Getting up in the dark is much more detrimental than going to bed a long time after sunset.
You can always make arguments based on the extreme summer/winter solstice daylight time. If you have four hours of daylight, the time zone doesn’t really matter, it will suck either way. I consider such arguments to be in bad faith.
I don’t understand what you consider as bad faith here. You presented and east-west perspective over a single time zone and I presented the northern situation as well (since the phenomenon in question - length of day vs time of day - gets amplified the higher north you go), and not sure where you saw any disagreement.
I find dismissing it as ‘four hours of daylight would suck either way’ to be in bad faith.
Now, had I wanted to nitpick your argument, I could have said that Spain should not be counted because they should probably be on the same time zone as the UK and Ireland by their actual geographic location, so the issue there would stem more from the fact that they chose the wrong time zone to begin with. The sun rose in Madrid today at 8.13. In Rome it was at 7.09. Same time zone.
Notice the subtle difference?
I consider it bad faith, because it’s a few months in the year which suck either way. Yes, having the sun rise at 2am is bad. But is 3am a noticeable difference? Or alternatively is it really that much better or worse to have the sun set at 11pm instead of 10pm?
It is much more honest to talk about the timings around equinox, because there we have 12h days and when to get up in relation to daily life (mostly in relation to when work starts) is a much more relevant question then.Someone else also mentioned the “wrong time zone” problem. Yes that is true. I believe the current state was preferred, because it makes interaction with France and Germany easier. Changing the time zone would be a reasonable improvement as well,at the cost of a bit more complexity in trading and daily international cooperation.
(Not sure what you mean with the “subtle difference”, maybe it was to subtle for me. I would disagree with the “Spain should not be counted”, because they are obviously affected. But yes, changing time zones would be a valid solution to the sunrise/sunset problem and I do not consider that line of reasoning to be in bad faith because it is a valid solution to the problem with its own tradeoffs that can be discussed.)
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I thought global warming was how we were abolishing winter time. I’ll see myself out
They couldn’t agree, so it went back for each state to decide, but even domestically it can be difficult to reach an agreement… so we all continue doing the worst solution.
I much prefer more light in the evening than the morning. I really hope eventually we snap to our senses and put an end to the time change. It sucks so hard in the winter.
The whole reason it exists is for what you say you prefer.
What I prefer is the opposite of what is about to happen in the fall time change. Setting the clock back means the sun sets an hour earlier. That shit is miserable in the Netherlands it’s practically dark by 4pm in December.
The sun naturally does what you’re saying. The time change is to make up for it and allow more sun in the day. It’s why it was created. Where I am right now where the sun was rising around 6:30am or so it’s now not rising until ~7:30 and will be after 8 soon in November and it will be setting around 5pm. When it was setting at 9pm. This isn’t due to setting the time back an hour. The earlier you get up with a later rising and early setting sun, the more sunlight you have in the day.
All this said I just would like it to go back indefinitely so at some point in my 3rd shift job I’M on the day shift. Muahaha
So by shifting the clock, it would get dark at 5pm, the time the majority of people leave work anyway (later for retail workers). Seems like your best solution is to move to southern Europe if you want more sunlight.
Your condescending reply ignores that fact that there’s a big chunk of the rest of that half of the year where the sun doesn’t set at its earliest but still sets early.
Not shifting the time back in the fall would mean people getting home from work still get more evening daylight hours for part of the fall and winter.
You also seem to forget many buildings people work in have these things called windows through which sunlight can enter.
Old people were against it and they seem to be the only ones with a voice that is actually heard.
Or not everyone lives in the same latitude and changing the time effects you a lot more the further from the equator you get.
messing with boomers is always a bad idea
Not just old people are against it. I think a lot of people would be against permanent winter time, me included, since it’d mean shorter evenings in the summer and sunrise very early in the morning. Likewise, keeping Summertime all the time would mean extremely dark mornings in the winter. From what I gathered summer time only would also be unhealthy according to sleep experts. The changes are not ideal either, but imo it’s a fine solution. I’d rather have this than wintertime only
I’m strongly opposing the idea of abolishing summer time and not even 60 years old.
This topic (and all previous discussions around this question) is the exact example why it hasn’t been changed and likely never will be changed: People cannot agree to either of the solutions.
A good solution for your place is a bad solution at some other place.
It’s just a popular topic for politicians to talk about - and then not doing anything about it.
How did people do before the oil crash and the reinstating of the daylight saving time?
Different countries could have different timezones, the US work with different timezones
Timezones solve an entirely different problem.
Timezones solve the east west problem, while daylight saving time solves the “sun rises later in winter”-problem. So more like a north south problem - because seasons.
If you want to suggest to create more “north south” timezones, you’d only make it more complicated than it is already. After all one of the more sane arguments is to remove complexity by removing DST. You’d bring complexity to a whole new level instead.
I wasn’t introducing north south timezones, just reacting to the common issue that is that some countries prefer summer time, while others prefer winter time. The issue seems to be there because we want countries as far apart as Spain and Poland to share the same timezone.
An article that addresses that issue, with an interesting proposition (4 timezones instead of 3)
the US work with different timezones
Timezones solve an entirely different problem.
I think that technically, time zones may include whether-or-not DST is supported, not just the “bands”. But, okay, yeah, that’s semantics.
That being said, the US also doesn’t entirely use daylight savings time, so @[email protected]’s point still stands.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_United_States
Most of the United States observes daylight saving time, the practice of setting the clock forward by one hour when there is longer daylight during the day, so that evenings have more daylight and mornings have less. Exceptions include Arizona (except for the Navajo, who do observe daylight saving time in Navajo Nation),[1] Hawaii,[2] and the overseas territories of American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the United States Virgin Islands.
North south timezones also dont work all that well really. the further you go both morning and evening move. so you just end up having to got to work in the middle of the night and come back in daylight or the other way round
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Relevant “Why is this still a thing?”
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The Britons didn’t care and it was mostly done to spite them
Day time is just a number, with no inherent meaning. Yes, 12 and 0 are special times, but all the rest shrinks and grows with the seasons. Is 7 too early to be in office, is 11 too late?
My point is, how about we stick to the time switching, since a large scale agreement (LSA) seems impossible, and focus on small scale agreements (SSA)? We could make the SSAs so to exactly cancel out the negative impacts from the LSA.
For example, office hours (a SSA) can make the inverse switch so that employees don’t have to change their schedule in practice. Your clock is one hour early for the next six months? Who cares, just come to office an hour late for the same period. For some teams with flexible times this would hardly be noticable.
This idea apparently has some flaws because I haven’t seen a grocery store with different opening times for winter and summer. Or maybe they just change the whole display twice a year so I never notice.
Anyways, fire away and tell me what’s wrong about this approach.
What’s wrong with it is that for life to keep going the same, everyone has to make the same agreement. Your office now has different hours but childcare doesn’t so you need to get there one hour earlier and any service might do or do not so now you’re juggling a bunch of +1/-1 in your head to make sense of it.
Office hours are not the only schedule in people’s lives.
That’s why it gets moved forward/backward at the European level.
Anyways, fire away and tell me what’s wrong about this approach.
Nothing really, also the whole of Europe could switch to one zone but have different office hours.
