Why do we inflict daylight saving time on ourselves?

[katstar]

yes we would all like it to be darker in a morning

[Jeffrey Shaw]

daylight from 3am to 9pm in summer is a bit of a hard sell

Why so? It'd make getting-up in the morning (at one's usual time) much easier; and who wants/needs daylight after 2100hrs?

[Cyclone]

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

 

They don't alter the length of the day, they adjust our clocks so as not to drift comparative to the length of the day. Duh.

[Cyclone]

Why so? It'd make getting-up in the morning (at one's usual time) much easier; and who wants/needs daylight after 2100hrs?

 

It'd make staying asleep until a reasonable time quite difficult, and lots of people are still doing things that benefit from light after 2100.

[fake]

The UK is too big for 1 timezone,

 

The UK did have several time zones in the past and due to the railways spreading it was decided to make just one time-zone.

 

Jeffrey Archer? I think it was, tried to get it changed back but obviously failed.

 

Another snippet from QI..

[HeadingNorth]

They don't alter the length of the day, they adjust our clocks so as not to drift comparative to the length of the day. Duh.

 

If he wants to be really pedantic, they do alter the length of the day by one second, on the very rare occasions that they occur. It's ridiculous to claim that as "lengthening the day" unless you're desperate to win a debating point.

 

Incidentally, there's a growing movement to have them abolished, because so many things rely on computer timing and computers don't handle them very well. So far, though, nobody's thought of a better alternative.

[Cyclone]

It doesn't alter the amount of daylight or the length of time it takes the earth to complete one rotation though.

I suppose the pedant needs to be clear on what they mean when they say the length of the day, I meant the length of time that a fixed point on the earths surface is in daylight. We can do what we like to our clocks, it won't alter that duration.

If by day someone meant a 24 hr period then their argument is circular anyway isn't it?

 

All things to do with date/time changes are a pain in the neck. We've just had problems in a live system due to the BST->GMT change.

[HeadingNorth]

It doesn't alter the amount of daylight or the length of time it takes the earth to complete one rotation though.

I suppose the pedant needs to be clear on what they mean when they say the length of the day, I meant the length of time that a fixed point on the earths surface is in daylight. We can do what we like to our clocks, it won't alter that duration.

 

Quite right. A leap second makes the 24-hour day one second longer, but it has precisely damn-all effect on how much of that day is sunlit.

[Cyclone]

Or on how long it takes the earth to rotate on that 'day'. A day should be defined as the time it takes the earth to make one full rotation, not as '24 hours'.

[Tradescanthia]

If people were to get up at 4am, work from 6 until 2 and go to bed at 8pm, that would work.

 

Any government trying to pass a law to make people do that would find itself in serious trouble. The only way you can make people do it, is to lie about what time it is by introducing daylight savings time.

 

Spot on mate, its a form of social control.........