British Summer Time 2014: Why do Clocks Change?

[Archived-1]

British Summer Time is set to begin on the last Sunday in March, as clocks move an hour forward on 30th March.
Read more
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/british-summer-time-2014-why-do-clocks-change-1442335

 

[sonnetpete]

Interesting that near the end of the article it says that people with SAD will benefit from an extra hour of sunlight. No one gets 'an extra hour', all you have to do is get up earlier and go to bed later, it's more than likely what our ancestors did before they were constrained by the working day.

My ladyfriend in South Africa has no such bother, as their time remains constant. Their sunrise and sunset time remains a lot more constant for sure. The main advantage for me is that by the clocks advancing I'm on the same time as her, which makes an online chat a little easier to fit in with her working day.

 

[timo_w2s]

I remember when I had satellite TV in South Africa the European based channels would shift by an hour during these clock changes so they have to have announcements reminding viewers of the changes between the ad breaks (which where blanked out and local content added).

Personally I'd like to see Europe scrap winter/summer time and get the UK on CET too while we're at it but then I don't have to get up early or commute so it's easy for me.

 

[2cvbloke]

For someone like me who has a sleep disorder, the clock change has no meaning (aside from everything opening an hour later which is a nuisance), as the sun comes up and goes down at the same rate it has done for billions of years, and claiming health benefits is rubbish as people just need to be more disciplined with their sleeping & waking habits if they want to benefit from the "extra hour" in the morning...

I just see it as a pointless endeavour, in the modern age we live in, we have no real need to switch back and forth, the original reasoning was so that farmers could get up earlier to start work earlier before the days of halogen floodlights and alarm clocks, these days we're a 24hr society, and changing our perception of time is meaningless...

Personally I'd like to see Europe scrap winter/summer time and get the UK on CET too while we're at it but then I don't have to get up early or commute so it's easy for me.

Problem is, while CET is great for europe, it's not so great for us as we're further west, therefore the sun comes up later than europe, so in the winter, people will be starting work at 9am while it's still dark outside, even though the rest of europe is in full daylight...

What would be great is if the entire world ran on one time (UTC), so we don't have to keep adjusting clocks, only locally adjusting the hours in which we operate, so if it's 6am in the UK, it's 6am everywhere, as most humans pretty much wake when the sun's up and sleep when it's down, time is just something to regulate how we operate in a day, that way you don't have to guess what time it is in say Canada or Australia, and if you're pre-informed of their waking hours, then you don't end up bugging people in the middle of the night or calling too late in the day...

Scrap summer/winter time changes, change to UTC (no plus or minus anything) worldwide, and that's that...

 

[sonnetpete]

Problem is, while CET is great for europe, it's not so great for us as we're further west, therefore the sun comes up later than europe, so in the winter, people will be starting work at 9am while it's still dark outside, even though the rest of europe is in full daylight...

But.......Portugal is in Europe and therefore on CET, yet it's further west than the UK (Lisbon is 10 degrees further West than the Scilly Isles). The main problem is that Europe is such a large place. Sunrise in Warsaw today was 05.18 and in Lisbon 06.26

 

[Piltdownpaul]

I remember when I had satellite TV in South Africa the European based channels would shift by an hour during these clock changes so they have to have announcements reminding viewers of the changes between the ad breaks (which where blanked out and local content added).

Personally I'd like to see Europe scrap winter/summer time and get the UK on CET too while we're at it but then I don't have to get up early or commute so it's easy for me.

Here,here (as the MP's would say!)

 

[timo_w2s]

But.......Portugal is in Europe and therefore on CET, yet it's further west than the UK (Lisbon is 10 degrees further West than the Scilly Isles). The main problem is that Europe is such a large place. Sunrise in Warsaw today was 05.18 and in Lisbon 06.26

Actually I think Portugal is GMT and whatever their BST equivalent is called.

 

[Lazarus]

Europe is such a large place.

Steps are being taken to shrink it a bit.

 

[Piltdownpaul]

Britain has already started shrinking after the wash earlier in the year, you ask them in Somerset.

 

[timo_w2s]

Problem is, while CET is great for europe, it's not so great for us as we're further west, therefore the sun comes up later than europe, so in the winter, people will be starting work at 9am while it's still dark outside, even though the rest of europe is in full daylight...

Although not on CET, Finland can still be in darkness at 9am in the winter across most of the country. People tend to go to work and school earlier than the UK so it's even darker too, but they get out earlier too, rush hour starts at 4pm in Helsinki. It took a while to get used to going to school in the dark after living in the UK but after a while it's just normal.

 

[Piltdownpaul]

The argument about sending kids to school in the darkness here in the UK is wearing thin i feel. When i was 8ish i walked to school every morning but we all know how the times have changed here with mothers dropping the kids off before going work.(or even home)

 

[sonnetpete]

Actually I think Portugal is GMT and whatever their BST equivalent is called.

Yes, I stand corrected...Portugal is on WET time (Western Europe Time).....maybe this is an appropriate time zone for the UK to adopt.....

 

[2cvbloke]

Yes, I stand corrected...Portugal is on WET time (Western Europe Time).....maybe this is an appropriate time zone for the UK to adopt.....

We already have one thanks, it's called Greenwich Mean Time...

 

[Channel Hopper]

Britain has already started shrinking after the wash earlier in the year, you ask them in Somerset.

Not at all, they are simply ramping up some options for the tourist season.

 

[sonnetpete]

We already have one thanks, it's called Greenwich Mean Time...

Was actually thinking that WET would be appropriate....

 

[2cvbloke]

Was actually thinking that WET would be appropriate....

For Europe maybe, for the UK, we have GMT, especially as we were the first to mark standard time thanks to a Canadian born engineer who came up with standard time (later agreed worldwide to be UTC), therefore, GMT is british time, for britain, WET is for mainland europe, which we're not bound to...

 

[sonnetpete]

.....and some fell on stony ground...

 

[2cvbloke]

.....and some fell on stony ground...

Well, without getting too political, if the UK were to leave the EU, then adopting a timezone that is a part of the EU would not benefit us, so whether it would "suit" us or not, it's a wasted effort, the majority of the population would still refer to it as GMT, we've already aligned summer time to the EU's summertime, what else are we going to lose that is a part of the british identity?

 

[PaulR]

Nobody's mentioned Eastern European Time (think it's called that) that is used in Romania and Bulgaria to my knowledge. Makes more sense for them when it can be dark at 9pm just across the border in Hungary in late summer.

 

[timo_w2s]

Nobody's mentioned Eastern European Time (think it's called that) that is used in Romania and Bulgaria to my knowledge. Makes more sense for them when it can be dark at 9pm just across the border in Hungary in late summer.

Finland is on EET even though it's Nordic not Eastern. Makes watching live UK TV at night annoying, it's amazing how 2 hours difference throws things out a lot, which is probably one of the reasons I tend to watch catch up services a lot more.