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I’d love to hear more about why this issue is more important to you than any other reason to vote. Is the time shift causing you serious problems, or do you hav

by dahart 6y ago

I’d love to hear more about why this issue is more important to you than any other reason to vote. Is the time shift causing you serious problems, or do you have a business that is hurt by it, or anything like that?

mantas 6y ago
Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. Source: wife is a teacher. Effect on adults is less pronounced, but it still puts a strain on us to shift our schedule by an hour. ... yet for what? Original reasons why this practice was started barely apply today. Light bulbs are efficient and we waste much more electricity in other ways. Let alone that many offices are lit up all day anyway.
- vishnugupta 6y ago
  > Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. FWIW, my kids (~8yo, ~5yo) didn't even notice the time shift in the Netherlands let alone be affected by it. For adults, (me and my wife), it was a mild surprise. We first suspected that clock had gone bonkers only for me to realise the DST change. We were moving to a DST country from a non-DST one so the net effect for us was amusing, at best. Otherwise I don't remember any disruption to our schedule at all. Maybe it's a big enough of disruption in the North America?
  - jay_kyburz 6y ago
    Yes, I've noticed my kids start time shifting themselves leading up to daylight savings. Similar ages.
  - toyg 6y ago
    Preteens are bombproof, they will adapt to anything. The problem is teenagers and up.
  - bluefirebrand 6y ago
    > Maybe it's a big enough of disruption in the North America? It's a huge disruption everywhere. www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-deadly-2018-3
- goodcanadian 6y ago
  The "original reasons" barely applied when the practice was started. It was meant to save energy, but study after study has shown that, on average, it makes little or no difference.
- watwut 6y ago
  > Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. Source: wife is a teacher. That is some serious overstatement. I have kids.
csydas 6y ago
Not the GP, but I sense a bit of facetiousness from them. They do care about it, but not as much as they propose, I think they simply mean to express their annoyance with DST. I now live in a country that doesn't honor DST, and I have to say, it is a convenient thing, and my only annoyance is coordinating with countries that do honor it. The idea of 'more /less' daylight is not the factor people make it out to be and it is adjusted to fast.
- eru 6y ago
  I've lived in quite a few countries around the globe. I prefer an absence of DST shenanigans, too. (The worst is when you are living in Australia and are trying to coordinate with someone in the norther hemisphere like Europe or the US, then you have to deal with double the DST shenanigans.)
ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago
Sunlight affects the quality of life directly: 1 hour of more/less natural light can be felt immediately. Moreover, our society structured in a way where most of the social life happens after work or school, the transition from light to dark falls on personal time in most cases. This is why people have such strong opinions on the matter. Speaking for myself, having lived through summer time/winter time schedule around the year in the same location, I vastly prefer more light in the evenings. The effect on my well-being is so pronounced, that it overshadows most of the concerns and points against it.
- arethuza 6y ago
  "I vastly prefer more light in the evenings" Strong agreement - the clocks going forward in the spring pretty much marks the time here in Scotland where you can start doing things outdoors in the evenings during the week - also helps that the weather usually starts being less miserable about this time as well.
  - bloak 6y ago
    This comment perhaps illustrates the most likely explanation of why people keep on suggesting we should have permanent "summer time" rather than permanent "winter time": they genuinely believe or subsconsciously imagine that the government can legislate for better weather. Unfortunately, here in England, there is no flexibility for adjusting our timetables in the winter: the length of the school day is roughly equal to the duration of daylight. There is therefore no point in changing the offset from UTC in the winter. That's the theory, anyway. But perhaps some kind of magic happens if you change the time to UTC+1 in the winter? Unfortunately, no: they tried it around 1970 and it was a disaster just as rational people said it would be. In Scotland the duration of winter daylight is shorter than the school day. Perhaps it's still better to have twilight for travelling in both directions rather than light in one direction and total darkness in the other? In any case, the Scots were not happy with the 1968-1971 experiment of having UTC+1 in the winter. So let's just have UTC all year in England and Scotland, please.
    - eru 6y ago

by dahart 6y ago

mantas 6y ago

Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. Source: wife is a teacher. Effect on adults is less pronounced, but it still puts a strain on us to shift our schedule by an hour. ... yet for what? Original reasons why this practice was started barely apply today. Light bulbs are efficient and we waste much more electricity in other ways. Let alone that many offices are lit up all day anyway.

vishnugupta 6y ago
> Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. FWIW, my kids (~8yo, ~5yo) didn't even notice the time shift in the Netherlands let alone be affected by it. For adults, (me and my wife), it was a mild surprise. We first suspected that clock had gone bonkers only for me to realise the DST change. We were moving to a DST country from a non-DST one so the net effect for us was amusing, at best. Otherwise I don't remember any disruption to our schedule at all. Maybe it's a big enough of disruption in the North America?
- jay_kyburz 6y ago
  Yes, I've noticed my kids start time shifting themselves leading up to daylight savings. Similar ages.
- toyg 6y ago
  Preteens are bombproof, they will adapt to anything. The problem is teenagers and up.
- bluefirebrand 6y ago
  > Maybe it's a big enough of disruption in the North America? It's a huge disruption everywhere. www.businessinsider.com/daylight-saving-time-is-deadly-2018-3
goodcanadian 6y ago
The "original reasons" barely applied when the practice was started. It was meant to save energy, but study after study has shown that, on average, it makes little or no difference.
watwut 6y ago
> Turning clocks back is terrible for kids. A week of schooling is next to lost. Source: wife is a teacher. That is some serious overstatement. I have kids.

csydas 6y ago

Not the GP, but I sense a bit of facetiousness from them. They do care about it, but not as much as they propose, I think they simply mean to express their annoyance with DST. I now live in a country that doesn't honor DST, and I have to say, it is a convenient thing, and my only annoyance is coordinating with countries that do honor it. The idea of 'more /less' daylight is not the factor people make it out to be and it is adjusted to fast.

eru 6y ago
I've lived in quite a few countries around the globe. I prefer an absence of DST shenanigans, too. (The worst is when you are living in Australia and are trying to coordinate with someone in the norther hemisphere like Europe or the US, then you have to deal with double the DST shenanigans.)

ZoomZoomZoom 6y ago

Sunlight affects the quality of life directly: 1 hour of more/less natural light can be felt immediately. Moreover, our society structured in a way where most of the social life happens after work or school, the transition from light to dark falls on personal time in most cases. This is why people have such strong opinions on the matter. Speaking for myself, having lived through summer time/winter time schedule around the year in the same location, I vastly prefer more light in the evenings. The effect on my well-being is so pronounced, that it overshadows most of the concerns and points against it.

arethuza 6y ago
"I vastly prefer more light in the evenings" Strong agreement - the clocks going forward in the spring pretty much marks the time here in Scotland where you can start doing things outdoors in the evenings during the week - also helps that the weather usually starts being less miserable about this time as well.
- bloak 6y ago
  This comment perhaps illustrates the most likely explanation of why people keep on suggesting we should have permanent "summer time" rather than permanent "winter time": they genuinely believe or subsconsciously imagine that the government can legislate for better weather. Unfortunately, here in England, there is no flexibility for adjusting our timetables in the winter: the length of the school day is roughly equal to the duration of daylight. There is therefore no point in changing the offset from UTC in the winter. That's the theory, anyway. But perhaps some kind of magic happens if you change the time to UTC+1 in the winter? Unfortunately, no: they tried it around 1970 and it was a disaster just as rational people said it would be. In Scotland the duration of winter daylight is shorter than the school day. Perhaps it's still better to have twilight for travelling in both directions rather than light in one direction and total darkness in the other? In any case, the Scots were not happy with the 1968-1971 experiment of having UTC+1 in the winter. So let's just have UTC all year in England and Scotland, please.
  - eru 6y ago