The changing daylight hours thread

[smithyweather]

Would love it if we stayed on gmt all year. It would reduce the stress from changing clocks.

[Methuselah]

Would love it if we stayed on gmt all year. It would reduce the stress from changing clocks.

The only stress I get is from the backward change that occurs in the Autumn...

[NorthernRab]

The only stress I get is from the backward change that occurs in the Autumn...

 

The only stress I get is from the forward change that occurs in spring...I lose an hour in bed!

[smithyweather]

Yes I hate it. It takes me a couple of weeks to adjust.

[Stargazer]

Stepping back from the heat for a minute...

 

I was around in the late 60s when they experimented with 'British Standard Time'  - i.e. GMT+1 hour - all year round, but was very young at the time.  I remember the school giving us reflective orange arm bands and walking to school in the dark (for years I wondered why I vaguely remembered this, then read about the experiment).  Sunrise in SE England would have been generally just after 9.00 in midwinter.

 

Does anyone slightly older than me remember why the experiment was eventually called off and we went back to GMT/BST?

[Methuselah]

Stepping back from the heat for a minute...

 

I was around in the late 60s when they experimented with 'British Standard Time'  - i.e. GMT+1 hour - all year round, but was very young at the time.  I remember the school giving us reflective orange arm bands and walking to school in the dark (for years I wondered why I vaguely remembered this, then read about the experiment).  Sunrise in SE England would have been generally just after 9.00 in midwinter.

 

Does anyone slightly older than me remember why the experiment was eventually called off and we went back to GMT/BST?

It was claimed that there were more accidents, involving children, in the mornings; but I don't think that they then realized that that was more than offset by a reduction, in the evenings...

[Stargazer]

Yes, thought as much.  Just did a bit of searching - it seems that the small increase in morning accidents got all the press attention and the larger decrease in evening accidents got much less exposure, so from a PR perspective the experiment failed and the government of the day voted to return to GMT/BST in 1971. 

 

The press coverage could be partly because the papers prefer to print bad news (and, as a local journalist I was talking to recently who showed the stats for their web site told me) people just seem to prefer to read bad news stories as well.  So by chance the Daily Mail ended up on the same side as posties and Scottish farmers.

 

[Edit] On a different but related matter - why do we (and the rest of the EU - I know the legislation comes from there, and the UK used to put its clocks forward a week earlier) need to wait until the end of March to put our clocks forward again?  Sunrise in the second week of March (GMT) is about an hour earlier than in the last week of October (BST) so if we can put up with sunrise at around 7.40am in London in October why can't we (and our European neighbours) put up with sunrise at the same time in March?

Edited October 18, 2013 by Stargazer

[cheeky_monkey]

clocks dont go back here until 1st Sunday in November and then go forward on the 1st Sunday of March..which means im an hour closer to home for about 4-5 weeks of the year

[Methuselah]

I've heard all sorts of justifications of why the reversion to BST comes so late...But, it's still a mystery...

[Tony27]

Would love it if we stayed on gmt all year. It would reduce the stress from changing clocks.

stress, yeah tell me about it, it takes hours and hours to change all my clocks the sweat drips off me doing that hard job

 

do the Americans make a fuss of changing their clocks when they are at a more southerly latitude than us

Edited October 18, 2013 by Tony27

[Bottesford]

Yes I hate it. It takes me a couple of weeks to adjust.

 

All I can say is - don't ever fly anywhere! Even when you go to Europe - that 1 hour you do feel it even more so on short trips. And it does confuse at times! 

Try doing an 8 hour timeshift - I did that to LA and its very tough especially when you land late eve one day then next morning you're thrust into work.

 

stress, yeah tell me about it, it takes hours and hours to change all my clocks the sweat drips off me doing that hard job

 

do the Americans make a fuss of changing their clocks when they are at a more southerly latitude than us

 

How many clocks do you own? Computers/phones do themselves, I've got one wall clock, one watch and a bedside clock - takes less than a minute to do 'em all!

 

Definitely agree with others on the need to move to BST earlier in March - a real waste of light having it all pre 7am (and pre 6am just before the clock move here) when its still getting dark early evening when the most people are awake.

I'd suspect 6pm is universally an awake time unless you're on shift work - even for the early to bed folk/kids its too early for bed and the lay in bed half the day lot are up too. Crazy getting dark at that time when it is light when relatively few are awake that early in the morning.

[Tony27]

i was being sarcastic 

[smithyweather]

All I can say is - don't ever fly anywhere! Even when you go to Europe - that 1 hour you do feel it even more so on short trips. And it does confuse at times! 

Try doing an 8 hour timeshift - I did that to LA and its very tough especially when you land late eve one day then next morning you're thrust into work.

 

 

How many clocks do you own? Computers/phones do themselves, I've got one wall clock, one watch and a bedside clock - takes less than a minute to do 'em all!

 

Definitely agree with others on the need to move to BST earlier in March - a real waste of light having it all pre 7am (and pre 6am just before the clock move here) when its still getting dark early evening when the most people are awake.

I'd suspect 6pm is universally an awake time unless you're on shift work - even for the early to bed folk/kids its too early for bed and the lay in bed half the day lot are up too. Crazy getting dark at that time when it is light when relatively few are awake that early in the morning.

Well i'm hoping to goto California this summer. I've only been to america once but when I went there to South Florida it was if there was no time difference. I went to bed at 10 and got up at 9 as normal, I will say though the last two hours it was a real struggle to stay awake. 

It was awful coming back, I didn't get to sleep to about 4am and then i'd wake up at 4pm and this continued for about two weeks afterwards. It was awful. 

 

It was actually funny though because at like 2 in the morning I was as wide awake as dawn and nothing I did would get me to sleep. 

Edited October 18, 2013 by smithyweather

[laserguy]

Bloody hell, try doing rotating days,afters and night shifts! It's 0515 on a Saturday  and there now beckons a 12hr stint. One day off tomorrow then on nights from Monday, then all change the week after. Trust me, the changing of the clocks is a very,very,very tiny inconvenience.

[Relativistic]

Street lamps went off at 7:30 this morning. It's lovely.

[syed2878]

here's what i think will give every1 what they want. 1summer move the clocks another hour forward from bst, from then on every winter just move the clocks an hour back to bst. That then should make every1 happy., as for sleeping paterns i agree it messes up mines for about a week or 2.

[hillbilly]

here's what i think will give every1 what they want. 1summer move the clocks another hour forward from bst, from then on every winter just move the clocks an hour back to bst. That then should make every1 happy., as for sleeping paterns i agree it messes up mines for about a week or 2.

they were going to do that last summer only to change their minds at the last minute,what a mistake.....lots of research has been done and the vast majority of the people will benefit more out of this move .

[smithyweather]

Well we won't.

[laserguy]

Street lamps went off at 7:30 this morning. It's lovely.

 

Utter blackness when I started this morning, and now come home and it's dark. 'Tis indeed lovely and on nights next week so no light for me all week! It's great. Ah, why can't it be like this forever? Meanwhile I see folk are still moaning about how dreadful it is to adjust to the clock change - you know 'nuthing!

[smithyweather]

This was here at 7:30 this morning.

http://imageshack.us/photo/photo/545/kzx4.jpg/

[hillbilly]

Well we won't.

I'm not talking about the period early dec to mid jan but the rest of the year you will benefit from longer periods of daylight in the evening.Of courseif you like being asleep while the sun is shining then finishing work with only anhour of daylight left ,it will not be for you.You are only half hour difference from me ,like I say the vast majority will benefit.

[Bottesford]

Utter blackness when I started this morning, and now come home and it's dark. 'Tis indeed lovely and on nights next week so no light for me all week! It's great. Ah, why can't it be like this forever? Meanwhile I see folk are still moaning about how dreadful it is to adjust to the clock change - you know 'nuthing!

 

Do you reckon you'd hate sunlight less if you didn't do shift work for a living? I've heard this off a few people who do odd hours - the hatred of summer warmth & sun as you try to force yourself against nature by sleeping when the sun is high in the sky.

Its certainly easily to operate an artificial 'day' during winter given that most light is obtained from electrical rather than a solar source and thus easier to control. We're naturally programmed to get up and sleep with the solar day cycles and do more feeding and activity in summer than winter. Fighting against it no doubt causes much mind based friction!

[Jax]

odd hour shift work is the utter bane of life, yet most comps do not like you picking one you like and sticking to it, no idea why, I work shifts and current comp is fine and happy for us to all adopt a shift and keep it, so technically we work shifts, but each others every 3 weeks and yet we stay on the same hours, works fine for me.  Perm earlies as the others either live too far away or just plain do not like mornings.

[Eugene]

What a complete waste of time these long nights are with hardly any temperature deviation, this weather isn't interesting at all, what is interesting is temperature differences in different locations from night and day, not uniform temperatures across the country that hardly change by night and day, mins of 11C are pathetic for this late in October and its not nonsense to say May felt alot colder this year, I think early to mid autumn is one of the worst times of year now.

 

Lets all hope the weather picks up, the conditions are horrendous for country walking, people who sit indoors all day might like it but not active people who like to get out and about without having to worry what to wear.

Edited October 20, 2013 by Eugene

[Bottesford]

You do know this is about as normal as it gets for autumn? Mild, stormy & wet is the very definition of October like weather. It's not all frosts and freezing nights in autumn you know - that's much more akin to spring really!