Why do the clocks change?

I think it's crazy. I wish we would stop this outdated British Summertime thing. It isn't winter that is out of step (GMT), but summer(+1).

No doubt Teletext will be having another phone in vote as usual.

I wish we could stop moving the clocks and stick to either BST or GMT as it always screws up my sleeping pattern for a week or so afterwards.

Steve B

Sod Farmers. Sod schoolchildren. Explaining the system to cats is the worst.

throb

Rasher - Move to Arizona - they do not do Daylight Saving Time - Summertime to us -

Daftest or most incongruous thing about the timezones in Europe is that most of Spain is west of London and a lot of Spain is in a similar longitude or to the west of Devon and Cornwall - yet they are one hour in advance of the UK

Derek

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Presumably every country does it no?

I get so confused everyone must do it because we are always an hour behind France no matter what we do.

Most confusing but I think Brussels were on about scraping it

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most of Spain is west of London and a lot of Spain is in a similar longitude or to the west of Devon and Cornwall

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But it doesn't have much to do with longitude, its latitude that's the key factor here as it effects the length of days/nights.

I do agree we should give up on this daft waste of time and effort and stick to one time-zone the year round rather than plunging ourselves into stygian gloom at the end of October. I'd much prefer sticking with BST as I can't bear days when it gets dark at 15:30.

Wont happen though - sadly! Bliar wont want to upset the few Scottish farmers who still vote for him.

Longitude determines when the sun is most vertical - which has traditionally been the definer of midday.

Portugal works on the same time as the UK - so your north south factor is ignored there

I think that political affinities has a greater affect now on the actual clock time used in a region.

Derek

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I dont mind the extra hour in bed... if that is i could have somehow convinced my 4 year old that the clocks had gone back! She wasnt having a bar of it so my votes for binning it..

The average person is too thick to be able to decide when to get up and when to go to bed. If it is getting dark at 15.30 then it was getting light at 8.30, whatever time you label sunrise it will still set 7 hours later.

Paul

Derek,
Sorry if I didn't make myself clear. What I meant was that Latitude defines the need for clock changes because of the variance in the length of day. For example todays sunrise and sunset times vary by 26 minutes from the southern tip of Cornwall (Lizard) to the northern tip of Scotland (C.Wrath), which will therefore see 52mins less daylight. On the winter solstice this rises to 1h38mins less daylight and the sun doesn't come up till after 9am (or 10am on BST). Hence the (perceived) need to change times.

By contrast, Lisbon experiences almost 1h more daylight than London on 31st October rising to nearer 1h40m on the solstice, so they have far less need for daylight saving at that latitude.

We should move to Central European Time (BST in winter, BST+1 in the summer.)

There would be economic advantages in bringing our office opening hours in line with those of most of our European partners - they won't have to wait until 10 am to call us, and we won't have to call them before 4pm, for example.

Then there are the safety advantages. According to RoSPA, Greenwich Mean Time kills around 500 people per year, mostly children. If we adopted BST in the winter our children would go to school in the dark, but as they tend to head straight to school this isn't so much of a problem as on their return journey when they tend to stop and chat with friends, go to the newsagents etc. on the way.

Thus it would be safer if the daylight was at the end of the school day instead of the beginning.

Given that Blair is Scottish (he was born in Edinburgh) he obviously places the interests of a handful of Scottish crofters (who don't want to wait until after 10 pm for the sun to rise) in a nation with a population of 5 million, over the lives of all English schoolchildren in a country with a population of 55 million.

Is that particularly democratic?

Human life (that of our children) is obviously cheap.

As for moving the clocks back and forth, I agree that it's a Pain in the Arse every six months, but if we kept GMT all year we'd still have the abovementioned problem of children being killed on their way home from school in the dark, and in addition we'd have the problem of the sun rising at 3.40 am (to me that's the middle of the night) in June only to set at 8.20 pm just as you were lighting the barbeque...

At least with CET the kids would walk home in the daylight in the winter, and in the summer, the sun would rise at 5.40 am and set at 10.20 pm. Perfect!

Regards,

Steve.

[This message was edited by Steve Toy on Sun 31 October 2004 at 16:26.]

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Originally posted by Steve Toy:
Is that particularly democratic?

Human life (that of our children) is obviously cheap.

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Steven

My children are as precious to me as anybody else's. Please do not place them in a vulnerable minority just because I live North of the Border and you live "In the Heart of England"

For want of a better phrase : I would prefer my children to live safer than for you to enjoy a fuc*ing barbeque.

You used to write such intelligent posts........

Steve

"There would be economic advantages in bringing our office opening hours in line with those of most of our European partners - they won't have to wait until 10 am to call us, and we won't have to call them before 4pm, for example."

You forget our real partners that live and work in the US, we need to be more in time sync with them.

Derek

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.... also not forgetting that Steven's business partners are never really more than a cab ride away.

"Still pissed off by the arrogance"

Come back Mick and Fritz..............

Does Scotland have to be on the same time as England?

David has described very well how latitude is the factor to consider in determining this, so it makes sense to me for England and Scotland to adopt a system that suits each country best.

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There would be economic advantages in bringing our office opening hours in line with those of most of our European partners

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If you have 'European partners' and you aren't running compatible office hours then you deserve to fail. Just like if you need to talk to Californians you make yourself available.

It's just a name for a time, it doesn't matter. If only we could call 8 o'clock 9 o'clock all the children would be safe....

Paul

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For want of a better phrase : I would prefer my children to live safer than for you to enjoy a fuc*ing barbeque.

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The two are not mutually exclusive. In Scotland in December the kids get it dark at both ends of the day anyway, so if the sun didn't rise until 10 am in Scotland it wouldn't make any difference to the safety of children living there.

Ok the schools' electricity bill may increase in order to light the classrooms for an extra hour, and a few kids who slept through their alarm clocks may not enjoy daylight on their way to school arriving at 9.25 any more than those who arrived on time, but the only people to really suffer would be the farmers.

If you place safety of children first you ought to be in favour of CET - at least for England.

We rarely get the weather for barbeques anyway.

I agree with BrianD that if the Scots hate the idea of it not getting light until after 10 am they could simply go one hour behind England.

Regards,

Steve.

[This message was edited by Steve Toy on Mon 01 November 2004 at 2:49.]

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.... also not forgetting that Steven's business partners are never really more than a cab ride away.

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I was not thinking of myself on this occasion.

The comment about European business partners actually came from my g/f who works on the export desk for an international parcel company.

However, I'll wager that there are more night time taxi drivers than there are farmers in Scotland, so why don't we put the clocks forward (or back) twelve hours so that we can drive around in the middle of the night on empty roads in broad daylight? As we night-time taxi drivers are a bigger minority than Scottish farmers wouldn't this be fairer?

Regards,

Steve.

It was tried in the sixties and deemed a success.

However they still abandoned it after 3 years, probably out of some jingoistic attachment to GMT.

Regards,

Steve.

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probably out of some jingoistic attachment to GMT

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This is the real reason. We Brits are oh so proud of being at position 0 Longitude and having invented time etc (Don't laugh, go to the Greenwich Observatory museum). If we abandon GMT we're giving away that little piece of our history and sense of worth (like giving up Gibraltar would).

Most farmers I know (and I know a few) couldn't give a toss about GMT.

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Scotland is often quoted as "holding back" England when it comes to clock changes. I suspect this is the usual English parochial egocentric bollocks.

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By whom?

Jonathan

Well I live in Greenwich and couldn't give a toss about GMT either.

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Originally posted by Steve Toy:
As we night-time taxi drivers are a bigger minority than

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Steve,

isn't a "bigger minority" a majority?

cheers, Martin

E-mail:- MartinPayne (at) Dial.Pipex.com. Put "Naim" in the title.

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Originally posted by Martin Payne:
isn't a "bigger minority" a majority?

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Not if the two options are bottom and second bottom of a list.................

Well, they'd melt otherwise.

Haven't you seen the Dali pictures?

Herman

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Every year when the clock s go back there are letters in the papers saying that the only reason we go to GMT is to appease the Scots. And if you look above you'll see Toy has just spouted similar nonsense.

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Not in English papers you don't. And if you read Steve Toy's post it isn't actually saying anything negative about the Scottish at all unlike your racist generalising. Its exactly that sort of comment that makes me glad I no longer live in Scotland.

Jonathan