Why do we inflict daylight saving time on ourselves?

[Tony]

Why do farmers have to work to the clock? They can work when it's light and go to bed when it's dark, they don't need a clock.

 

Absolutely. Rather than fiddling with the clocks we should adjust our hours to suit our activity. So in winter, start work / school / JobCentre+ at 10am instead of 9am if that suits the activity.

 

It's as if common sense was never invented.

[HeadingNorth]

Cool, I am willing to concede your point and accept that midday can be determined by society based on what is convenient rather than actual daylight. But it still doesn't shift, and it is delusional to imagine that changing it somehow buys more daylight.

 

And you're absolutely right. The sensible thing to do would be to leave the clocks where they are and change the times that we get up, start work, go to bed - but the general public at large is not sensible.

 

There is a mathematical treatment which actually proves that even if each individual member of the general public is sensible, the group as a whole will not be. (Don't ask me to explain that here.) So anyone who feels insulted by me describing the general public as "not sensible," feel free to accept that you personally are indeed very sensible.

 

 

The altering of the clock is a pragmatic solution, rather than a sensible one - and pragmatic solutions, by definition, are better in practice.

[Jeffrey Shaw]

Yes- as the last post states (whilst I was preparing this one), The sensible thing to do would be to leave the clocks where they are and change the times that we get up, start work, go to bed.

 

Let's stick to GMT all year round, and abolish the clock-alteration introduced as a temporary WW1 measure.

[Cyclone]

Why do we still do this?

 

I can't see any benefit, and the downside of leaving home in the dark and wet mornings and coming home in the dark and wet night is just depressing.

 

We can't actually alter the clocks in any way that would make the day longer you realise...

 

We should stick to BST though, or possibly a system of BST and BST+1 in the summer.

[Cyclone]

This is actually the right time now, British Summer Time was created for the farmers durig the war so they had extra working daylight hours.

By magic somehow I presume?

 

Of course farmers everywhere have always got up when it's light and stopped work when it's dark, the time the clock tells them has little or nothing to do with it.

[Jeffrey Shaw]

We can't actually alter the clocks in any way that would make the day longer you realise.

Wrong- leap seconds, you see! http://www.timeanddate.com/time/leapseconds.html

[Cyclone]

In mid-summer it would be light at 3am and dark at 9pm i.e. an hour earlier than at the moment. There are very few people about at 3am, far fewer than at 9pm. Going onto CET would mean it would be light at 5am in mid-summer and dark at 11pm which would give us the benefit of maximising natural light when people are out and about i.e. there are more people about at 9-11pm than at 3-5am.

 

In winter your change would mean it would be about the same as now - 8am to 4pm.

 

Can't argue with that really can you.

[Cyclone]

Everybody living to the same clock is one of those nice ideas, like everybody living with the same language, currency, and laws, and might actually happen one day.

 

But whose clock do we choose?

 

As our species exists currently, any claims that our clock is the correct one, and everybody else should live by it, is the sort of thing that wars are fought over ... unfortunately.

 

I do think that everybody should drive on the left though.

 

UTC would be the obvious choice, which happens to be the same as GMT.

 

The difficulty would be in actually co-ordinating the working day I suppose.

[Jeffrey Shaw]

This year, Russia (i.e. Mr. Putin) decided not to put its clocks back at all.

[quisquose]

Yes- as the last post states (whilst I was preparing this one), The sensible thing to do would be to leave the clocks where they are and change the times that we get up, start work, go to bed.

 

Let's stick to GMT all year round, and abolish the clock-alteration introduced as a temporary WW1 measure.

 

I have conceded LeMaquis and HeadingNorth's point*, that daylight from 3am to 9pm in summer is a bit of a hard sell, so can see the benefits of BST all year round rather than GMT which has noon as ... well, noon.

 

But yes, let's stick to one time.

 

 

 

* Warning. Discussion on SF can lead to the unintended modification, or even total altering, of opinion.