The changing daylight hours thread

[Stargazer]

Ah, I'm sensing an old debate starting again - no, not the obvious one about GMT/BST/BST+1 before you ask!

 

Has anyone been able to find a satisfactory explanation for why we're happy to put our clocks back at the end of October (just before which the sun rises at 07.45 BST here) but don't seem willing to put them forward again until the end of March (sunrise about 06.45 after changing over to BST)?  Putting our clocks forward in early March when sunrise reaches 06.45GMT (07.45BST) seems perfectly logical.

 

I know we used to put our clocks forward a week earlier and changed many years ago to align with the rest of Europe, but why does Europe generally delay putting the clocks forward so long?  The changeover dates are not that far from the equinoxes, so there is no significant variation with latitude and therefore this seems to have nothing to do with helping anyone in the far north or south of Europe.  Any ideas?

[Tony27]

not sure, even in northern scotland sunrise is at about 7:30am in early march which would be 8:30am BST time, i wouldn't mind if the clocks went to BST in early march, but i hope GMT is not scrapped altogether as feb would feel like a spring month as it would be getting dark at nearly 7pm now if we were on BST time

Edited February 19, 2014 by Tony27

[cheeky_monkey]

Wish they did here!

Only trouble with the clocks going forward earlier is your right back into the dark mornings again for a few weeks

[Gray-Wolf]

I think most folk would prefer light evenings ( after work) and would put up with the drag into work in the dark if they had a couple of hours warm sun at the end of the day? I'd run BST over winter and then add on the hour in early March?

 

I remember them trying it in my childhood and it was magical...... light at 11pm!

[4wd]

I think most folk would prefer light evenings ( after work) and would put up with the drag into work in the dark if they had a couple of hours warm sun at the end of the day? I'd run BST over winter and then add on the hour in early March? I remember them trying it in my childhood and it was magical...... light at 11pm!

You must be much older than I thought, that was during WW2.There was an experiment for three years from 68-71 where they left it on summer time all year round, but general opinion was that dark until well after 9am was not a good thing.I always think we should be going onto summertime about now since it's already getting light at 7am.We go on to BST at the end of October about a month after Equinox, so I have no idea why it wasn't blindingly obvious to choose a month before spring equinox to change back.Of course you can just get up an hour earlier anyway.

[East_England_Stormchaser91]

The lightening evenings are already starting to depress me. 'Only' 17 weeks 'til the days start getting shorter.....

Then hopefully we will have a winter that actually delivers something white instead of plain old rain. Cant believe how bad this winter has actually been! Its the 'year we skipped winter' !

I for one am glad to be seeing these lighter evenings return!

[Gray-Wolf]

Thanks 4! That was the one the BST experiment. Why not stick to plus 1 hour but still add on in spring and back in Autumn. i also hear you on the month before equinox thing. i fully agree with your thinking. The number of folk who report suffering from S.A.D. surely lends to us having lighter evenings when most folk are out of school/the workplace and so could appreciate the extra hour after work/school. They reckon 20 mins of sun exposure on face and arms boost vit D as well but not when you are stuck in work/school! Lack of vit D leads to poor uptake of vit C and make you into a right old miserable Git ( as we see in L.G.! LOL).

Edited February 21, 2014 by Gray-Wolf

[reef]

This comes up every year and the answer is always the same. If we were to go onto BST+1, sunset would be well past 22:30 for the majority of the UK and later than 23:00 in parts of Scotland. Its just far too late especially when you consider twilight aswell and you get the added issue of darkness in the mornings. Here for example you would only get 8 weeks of the year with sunset before 6am.

 

I can understand going to BST earlier or sticking to GMT or BST all year around however.

[Tony27]

BST+1 is a no from me we get plenty of daylight as it is in summer there is no need for it to get dark at 11pm, plus it will be even worse if it is a hot day as well as the heat would last longer into the evening and would be harder to get to sleep, heat is part of the reason i presume african countries don't put their clocks forward by a couple of hours when they easily could 

 

as for the GMT BST debate it is fine as it is for me, people have coped all these years why need to change it now, are we getting too fussy these days?

Edited February 21, 2014 by Tony27

[hillbilly]

I heard that the government have plans to push through bst+1 for summer and bst in winter if Scotland votes for independence!!!! FantasticVote alec salmond!!!!!!

[Bottesford]

For sure we should move the clocks back in early March - far more people are awake at 1830 then 0630 so the light is better used in the evenings. It's especially noticeable for me now I work 9am-6pm (instead of 5pm) as I've still got several weeks of finishing work in darkness yet.

 

As for BST+1 - well if you forget June for a moment and think about late March to mid May and mid August to October - those periods would benefit a lot from extra evening light when more people are awake doing things that need light. When we talk about this people tend to immediately think about those few weeks around the solstice which I can understand does mean some quite late sunsets. But this period doesn't last that long and for the benefits across spring/early autumn maybe worth it? 

 

More sensibly we should shift society's working patterns to match the rise & fall of the sun- why is it 9-5 we work? Surely 8-4 centralises it. Although really 7-3 is even better since a vast majority of people prefer to have their free time after they finish work. It's not much fun 'relaxing' whilst clock-watching before their shift starts! This is why the "why not just get up earlier?" argument just doesn't work when you work fixed times.

It ain't gonna happen of course - the time of day is too engrained in our minds. Take here in Germany - shops open 10am-8pm and office hours seem to be 9/10am-6pm which is even more skewed in the wrong direction than the UK is! And there's Spain....

[legrandefromage]

I'm sure the clocks changed slightly earlier in March but was moved because of those crazy european politicians and their straight bananas

[Jax]

Said before and happy to again, time is time, peeing around with it is superficial, lets stick with GMT and be done with it, with people asked to work shifts this is pointless and the original idea was for farmers I think.

 

All it does is screw the body clock up of a nation twice a year.

[towbar0]

Said before and happy to again, time is time, peeing around with it is superficial, lets stick with GMT and be done with it, with people asked to work shifts this is pointless and the original idea was for farmers I think.

 

All it does is screw the body clock up of a nation twice a year.

Oh so true. +100000000000

[Tony27]

For sure we should move the clocks back in early March - far more people are awake at 1830 then 0630 so the light is better used in the evenings. It's especially noticeable for me now I work 9am-6pm (instead of 5pm) as I've still got several weeks of finishing work in darkness yet.

 

As for BST+1 - well if you forget June for a moment and think about late March to mid May and mid August to October - those periods would benefit a lot from extra evening light when more people are awake doing things that need light. When we talk about this people tend to immediately think about those few weeks around the solstice which I can understand does mean some quite late sunsets. But this period doesn't last that long and for the benefits across spring/early autumn maybe worth it? 

 

More sensibly we should shift society's working patterns to match the rise & fall of the sun- why is it 9-5 we work? Surely 8-4 centralises it. Although really 7-3 is even better since a vast majority of people prefer to have their free time after they finish work. It's not much fun 'relaxing' whilst clock-watching before their shift starts! This is why the "why not just get up earlier?" argument just doesn't work when you work fixed times.

It ain't gonna happen of course - the time of day is too engrained in our minds. Take here in Germany - shops open 10am-8pm and office hours seem to be 9/10am-6pm which is even more skewed in the wrong direction than the UK is! And there's Spain....

putting the clocks on BST +1 and working from 7am to 3am? no thanks i don't fancy going to to bed before 10pm in summer when it is still light and maybe to hot to sleep, plus i would say very late sunsets would be from late may to late july so that is 2 months, i could argue it only gets dark at 4pm for 2 months of the year but people complain about that

 

i suppose you would be able to sunbathe if work finished at 3pm though, but if you don't care about sunbathing then there is nothing wrong with finishing work at 5pm you still have 5 hours of daylight to go and do things anyway, i doubt we will see many people out on the streets at 10-11pm even if we were on BST+1 people are all tucked up inside and getting ready for bed anyway even if it did get dark at 11pm, people go to bed earlier in this country than in spain cos the weather is usually crap  so it may as well be dark at 10pm, time is too engrained in our minds as you say

Edited February 22, 2014 by Tony27

[4wd]

China should have five timezones by most standards - but they are all on the same time since 1949.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_in_China

[Bottesford]

putting the clocks on BST +1 and working from 7am to 3am? no thanks i don't fancy going to to bed before 10pm in summer when it is still light and maybe to hot to sleep, plus i would say very late sunsets would be from late may to late july so that is 2 months, i could argue it only gets dark at 4pm for 2 months of the year but people complain about that

 

i suppose you would be able to sunbathe if work finished at 3pm though, but if you don't care about sunbathing then there is nothing wrong with finishing work at 5pm you still have 5 hours of daylight to go and do things anyway, i doubt we will see many people out on the streets at 10-11pm even if we were on BST+1 people are all tucked up inside and getting ready for bed anyway even if it did get dark at 11pm, people go to bed earlier in this country than in spain cos the weather is usually crap  so it may as well be dark at 10pm, time is too engrained in our minds as you say

 

No I mean more simply you'd stop changing the clocks and stick to GMT all year. You'd then change working, school and every other pattern to run more with the sun - maybe adjusting based on season.

But we all know that won't happen as shifting everything 2 hours earlier to make a better match simply won't work. Imagine working hours are now 7-3, lunch time is now 10:30-11am and those pubs that close still at 11pm now close at 9pm, the last bus is at 10pm not midnight but the first one is now 4am instead of 6am. Naughty films on tv now can show at 7pm, kids start school at 6:30am but finish at 1pm and an early dinner is 3pm. 

This is the same as BST+1 but somehow totally different... We have to change the clocks otherwise in summer it'd be an absurd waste of daylight given the standard time points our society runs on.

[summer blizzard]

For sure we should move the clocks back in early March - far more people are awake at 1830 then 0630 so the light is better used in the evenings. It's especially noticeable for me now I work 9am-6pm (instead of 5pm) as I've still got several weeks of finishing work in darkness yet.

 

As for BST+1 - well if you forget June for a moment and think about late March to mid May and mid August to October - those periods would benefit a lot from extra evening light when more people are awake doing things that need light. When we talk about this people tend to immediately think about those few weeks around the solstice which I can understand does mean some quite late sunsets. But this period doesn't last that long and for the benefits across spring/early autumn maybe worth it? 

 

More sensibly we should shift society's working patterns to match the rise & fall of the sun- why is it 9-5 we work? Surely 8-4 centralises it. Although really 7-3 is even better since a vast majority of people prefer to have their free time after they finish work. It's not much fun 'relaxing' whilst clock-watching before their shift starts! This is why the "why not just get up earlier?" argument just doesn't work when you work fixed times.

It ain't gonna happen of course - the time of day is too engrained in our minds. Take here in Germany - shops open 10am-8pm and office hours seem to be 9/10am-6pm which is even more skewed in the wrong direction than the UK is! And there's Spain....

 

In the modern world i do feel we are loosening our grip on 9-5 but we seem to be seeing a more varied spread rather than movement in one direction. 

[Costa Del Fal]

On a sunny day it's approaching 7pm before total darkness here. Very few can beat that because of our westerly position

[Stowfordscom]

Said before and happy to again, time is time, peeing around with it is superficial, lets stick with GMT and be done with it, with people asked to work shifts this is pointless and the original idea was for farmers I think.

 

All it does is screw the body clock up of a nation twice a year.

 

I'm with the G.M.T. brigade.  If the sun, (bless her) rises, I'm happy.  Anyone understand where High Noon came from?  I'm quite  capable of rising with the sun and enjoying the best bit of the day.  Finishing early is the bonus.

 

As an aside, using our intellect we might solve much of our overcrowding by staggering our school/working times.

[Jax]

Done all the shifts 06:00-14:00, 14:00-22:00, 16:00-01:00, 09:00-17:30, 07:45-16:30 etc etc...

 

 

...but by far the best is 07:00-15:00 (which I now do perm), so for me the time shift has never been a benefit, the body clock having to adapt for a few weeks twice every year was a problem and why I think it should be set to one single time and left alone, rather than muck around with it I suggest people get a job/lifestyle that fits time rather than trying to make time fit round them.

Edited February 23, 2014 by Jax

[Bottesford]

Thing is its tricky to just shift your hours to suit in many jobs. Although I have some freedom to choose my hours, if I did 0700-1500 Berlin time that'd be 0600-1400 UK which would essentially make me unavailable during the entire afternoon for UK clients. And even if I could do it, the wife's job is 0900-1800 no flexibility so would be pointless. Same goes for many people here which then when they want to meet in a bar at 8pm for a few beers and I'd be almost ready for bed!

[johnholmes]

Done all the shifts 06:00-14:00, 14:00-22:00, 16:00-01:00, 09:00-17:30, 07:45-16:30 etc etc...

 

 

...but by far the best is 07:00-15:00 (which I now do perm), so for me the time shift has never been a benefit, the body clock having to adapt for a few weeks twice every year was a problem and why I think it should be set to one single time and left alone, rather than muck around with it I suggest people get a job/lifestyle that fits time rather than trying to make time fit round them.

 

 

you missed the one I hated well 3 of 'em!

 

2200-0800 00-0800 and 2000-0800, not so much the actual duty but the effect on me afterwards

 

A round of duties might be 1300-2200 then 08-1300 followed by 2200-0800 then 1 day off and back again

or

0800-2000 then 20-0800 then 00-0800 and 2 days off

sure does bugger up your sleep pattern

 

the best I found was the 0600-1300 worked for several years with the alternate 1100 end of flying, not much fun in summer time when that did not start until about 2100 and could go on until 0300.

Edited February 24, 2014 by johnholmes

[Nick L]

you missed the one I hated well 3 of 'em!

 

2200-0800 00-0800 and 2000-0800, not so much the actual duty but the effect on me afterwards

 

A round of duties might be 1300-2200 then 08-1300 followed by 2200-0800 then 1 day off and back again

or

0800-2000 then 20-0800 then 00-0800 and 2 days off

sure does bugger up your sleep pattern

 

the best I found was the 0600-1300 worked for several years with the alternate 1100 end of flying, not much fun in summer time when that did not start until about 2100 and could go on until 0300.

 

This is the one aspect of the job I am not looking forward to if I get into the Met Office! :lol:

[DOdo]

Roll on the Spring!!