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This comment perhaps illustrates the most likely explanation of why people keep on suggesting we should have permanent "summer time" rather than permanent "wint
by 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 agoSounds like someone should run some randomized trials of shorter school days in winter.
- arethuza 6y ago"that the government can legislate for better weather" That's not what I meant at all! I want that extra hour of light in the evenings - which makes a big difference here in April. The fact that this happens to occur at the time when the weather starts improving adds to the desire to actually get outside more in the evenings. Nobody thinks that the change to BST causes the better weather :-| Edit: And anyway - I actually prefer the system as it currently is.
- rjmunro 6y agoThe clock time that schools start and end at doesn't have to be fixed for the whole year. The clock time could stay at GMT, and schools could open earlier, maybe also slightly longer for some parts of the year. Businesses could follow school opening times.
- jacobr1 6y agoRight, plenty of places around the world have seasonal hours anyway, regardless of the DST changes. There is no reason you couldn't have more a of tradition of making similar changes when needed. The benefit of having your regional government declare the change at the time-level rather than the business/school/organization level is universal coordination. But the downside is that you necessarily live with a one-size fits all solution that organizations will work around to suit anyway.