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They are also saying that each country then can choose if they want to keep winter or summer time... That's going to be chaotic! Imho the summertime should be

• mpweiher 8y ago
  Nah...summertime is actually the better one. You get more light in the evening, rather than at 4 in the morning.
  • hrktb 8y ago
    In the end does it matter though? I mean, if it had a proven benefit for kids, schools could start at different hours depending on the seasons. Companies can decide to start at 10 or 8 instead of 9, etc. More light in the evening doesn’t seem to make sense to me as we are the ones deciding when is “evening”
    • dtech 8y ago
      Apparently it's easier for our collective society to agree that what was 9:00 yesterday is now 10:00, rather than allowing companies to start at 10:00 instead of 9:00. I fully agree with you, but in many people do not agree with your argument. Interestingly in my experience whether people agree with this is different depending on whether that person has a STEM/non-STEM study or job, STEM people tend to agree.
    • masklinn 8y ago
      > In the end does it matter though? Yes. > More light in the evening doesn’t seem to make sense to me as we are the ones deciding when is “evening” Western society has pretty much embedded the idea that the day is centered around 16:00 (4PM) and "night" around 03:00~04:00. Lights out being when the vast majority of people are asleep with no light when they're actually up is stupid.
      • leereeves 8y ago
        > Western society has pretty much embedded the idea that the day is centered around 16:00 (4PM) and "night" around 03:00~04:00. Where I'm from, 4PM is late in the day, just a few hours from bedtime, and 4AM is nearly time to wake up.
        • pmontra 8y ago
          You're ok. There are at least 4 or 5 hours in difference between dinner time in western societies. From 6 PM in some Anglosaxon countries to 8/10 PM in Italy (North / South) to 10/11 in Spain.
          • leereeves 8y ago
            Dinner is at 10pm in Spain, and 11pm in the summer? Interesting.
            • pmontra 8y ago
              You might find this article interesting http://spanishsabores.com/2015/06/17/spain-dining-guide-when-are-spanish-mealtimes/ http://spanishsabores.com/2015/06/17/spain-dining-guide-when... But remember that they are in the wrong time zone, so they always get one extra hour of light in the evening and one less in morning. This could account for the one hour of difference with comparable latitudes in Italy.
    • aninhumer 8y ago
      Humans have a sleep cycle driven by circadian rhythms, and most jobs in a country work similar clock hours in order to coordinate with other companies more easily. So in fact, it's much easier to change what the clocks say than it is to change either of these.
    • VLM 8y ago
      Serious question: In other parts of the country or world, do "companies" all open at the same time? They certainly do not, anywhere I've ever lived. If that is the case, that must be an interesting lifestyle. How does anyone get anything done if there's never a non-overlapping interval of "the bank is open but my employer is closed" type of problem? I've also lived almost all my life in a "recreational paradise" state far from the coasts where its totally normal for there to be at least one, often many, "in-season" work hours vs "out-season" work hour thru the year. Much like agonizing over average temperatures is heard but isn't an issue, its not a problem for the millions who live around here.
      • StavrosK 8y ago
        Yes they do. Plus nothing is open on Sundays. You get to work a bit later, or duck out for a bit to go to the bank, or go while you're doing outside work anyway.
      • hrktb 8y ago
        In my experience smaller companies tend to adjust to the rhythm of their biggest clients. If one of the behemoth decides to start working at 11am -> 9pm, a lot of contractors and related services will move to the same time tables.
      • thaumasiotes 8y ago
        > How does anyone get anything done if there's never a non-overlapping interval of "the bank is open but my employer is closed" type of problem? This is a fairly big problem in modern life, as far as I can see. Traditionally, I assume what happened was that you worked at your employer, and your wife went to the bank.
  • masklinn 8y ago
    Winter time is definitely crap for western europe, but I don't know how good or bad it is for eastern: CET is used from poland to france to spain so it covers a fair bit of territory, and the difference between solar and standard time is already negative: http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTimeV2.png http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTimeV... FWIW remaining on summer time is the recommendation.
    • ginko 8y ago
      It's the other way round. Implementing daylight savings time ("summer time") moves the effective timezone 1 hour to the East. It's worse for Western European countries. Even CET normal time is already very lopsided. France and Spain should really be part of GMT.
      • madcaptenor 8y ago
        I'd guess that if permanent summer time were instituted, France and Spain would drop back an hour (to permanent GMT+1 instead of permanent GMT+2).
        • mirages 8y ago
          Reverse way for France Summer time is equivalent of UTC+2 Winter time is equivalent of UTC+1
          • madcaptenor 8y ago
            That's right. But I can't imagine France would want to be on +2 year-round. (Paris mean time is only nine minutes ahead of GMT.)
        • Someone 8y ago
          Spain could even drop to GMT. Most of it is west of London, and that would align it with Portugal.
  • Aaargh20318 8y ago
    But you don't want more light in the evening, you want it to be dark earlier. Especially with summers getting hotter due to global warming. The past summer was a good example, you can't spend any time outside before the sun goes down because it's just too hot in direct sunlight. If anything we should move the clock back an hour in summer, not an hour forward. It doesn't start being nice to be outside until after dusk.
    • matt4077 8y ago
      This isn’t true for most any location in the EU, except maybe southern Italy.
      • grasshopperpurp 8y ago
        It's not even true of places like Florida, where the vast majority of us prefer daylight savings time. >State Sen. Greg Steube, who sponsored the bill, said that the idea of year-round daylight time has enormous support among Floridians. "I've heard from mayors across the state that it's going to save them money because they don't have to light their softball fields at night," Steube said, according to the Miami Herald. "I can't tell you how many people have come up to me who have said even my high school-age kid, it's hard to get him up in the morning when we fall back the clocks." https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/08/591925587/sunshine-daydream-florida-bill-would-make-daylight-saving-time-year-round https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/08/591925587...
        • Aaargh20318 8y ago
          > It's not even true of places like Florida, where the vast majority of us prefer daylight savings time. Except the sun goes down a LOT earlier in Florida which is much closer to the equator than northern Europe. In summer the sun doesn't go down until after 10PM here. If you want to have a BBQ and not burn alive while doing it, you have to start at 22:30 at the earliest. That's just not a realistic time if you have to work the next day. edit: Also, in Florida the days get shorter during the summer, over here they get longer.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • Broken_Hippo 8y ago
    Not really. I'm too far north for DST to make a difference. Summer nights are light enough I can easily read outside without other illumination. December days are 4 hours or something. The only real reason to be on DST here is make international stuff easier.
• lbriner 8y ago
  Not quite true. It is one of the proposals but really all the article says is that lots of people are in favour, now how are we going to do it? In other words there isn't really any traction because it will depend on the detail and there won't be much agreement.
• Someone 8y ago
  I don’t think that’s unworkable, as long as it is fairly limited. I expect the smaller countries to follow whatever their main trading parties do. The Netherlands would follow Germany, for example. I also expect that, as in the USA, the dates to switch to DST and out of it would be uniform within the EU, just as they are in the USA (if you have DST, switch the second Sunday in March and the first Sunday in November in the USA, last Sunday’s of March and October in the EU) It could get interesting at times, though. My personal record is four time changes in a day, on a trip from Minneapolis to LA with a stop in Phoenix. 1. Switch to DST the night before leaving Minneapolis (triple-checking alarm clock settings) 2. Switch to what I thought would be Phoenix time. 3. Upon learning that (most of; see https://www.timeanddate.com/time/us/arizona-no-dst.html https://www.timeanddate.com/time/us/arizona-no-dst.html) Arizona doesn’t do DST, switch to Phoenix’s non-DST time. 4. Switch to LA time.
  • toyg 8y ago
    > the dates to switch to DST and out of it would be uniform within the EU You misunderstand, the twice-yearly variation is what happens now. The proposal is to do away with it.
    • Someone 8y ago
      I understand, and understood, but, knowing that the EU didn’t historically require that (starting date was uniform from 1981 on, but the ending date was different between continental Europe and (the UK and Ireland) until 1995), wanted to indicate I don’t think this will become a free for all (if one hour is beneficial, wouldn’t moving 10 minutes each month, or 2-ish minutes each Sunday, be more natural? :-) )
  • gpvos 8y ago
    The Netherlands, Belgium and France were actually switched to German time when they were occupied during WW2. They should really switch back[0] to WET/GMT, as their eastern borders coincide pretty well with 7.5° east. Not that they will, though; they'll follow Germany for sure. [0] For the Netherlands that would only be a partial switch back, as they were on GMT+0.20' before that.
• simias 8y ago
  >They are also saying that each country then can choose if they want to keep winter or summer time... That's going to be chaotic! Given that we already have a bunch of timezones within the EU how is that any more chaotic than what we have today?
  • narag 8y ago
    A bunch of three.
  • jobigoud 8y ago
    Most of us are on CET, from westernmost Spain to Poland if my memory serves me correctly.
    • foepys 8y ago
      Which already is an issue because realistically there are over 2 timezones between western Spain and eastern Poland. While people are getting up in bright daylight in Poland, people in Spain won't see the sun for at least another hour.
• astura 8y ago
  The United States is spread across six time zones and has some areas that don't observe DST (Arizona, Hawaii, and most of the territories); we don't have too much chaos in regards to time.