Scrapping Daylight Saving time

Meant to come back to this before, but I didn't realise a decision has just been made in the EU parliament and we have to decide by next April whether to switch to Summer or Winter time permanently. I think we've made a mistake here and we should have agreed to at least try it out, but we should have got a derogation to switch back to DST if it doesn't work out. There's plenty of precedent for territories within the same country, never mind international blocs like the EU, to have different rules in different places. At the end of the day, it doesn't actually matter to the rest of the EU if Ireland were to have a different system.

The experience of Portugal (mentioned above) indicates to me what is likely to happen here if we switch to Summer time. It's interesting that the people here who influenced this decision seem to be generally in favour of Summer time, but it's likely that those who will be worst affected by the downside (the dark Winter mornings) might not even know about it, and/or haven't expressed an opinion, one way or the other. Certainly, the process that led to the "overwhelming" decision by people in the EU to make this change, was unscientific and biased, with the vast majority of opinions coming from only one country.

And if we were to decide that the downside of dark Winter mornings would be too great then switching to Winter time would mean losing the benefit we will get next week of the extra hour in the evenings (for a period).

I also just listened to Pat Kenny there this morning and thankfully, finally, someone shows up who is prepared to predict the downsides of permanent Summer time. Apparently we tried it here before in the late 60's and it wasn't popular. It was also tried in the US and Russia at different times and was changed back. Most compelling though is scientific evidence of a significant increase in incidence of some cancers found in the Western parts of US timezones which is attributed to darker mornings affecting the circadian rhythm. Someone made the point that cows get up whenever the sun does. Maybe humans are supposed to as well.

On the border aspect, apparently there was an experiment once which meant there was an hour difference at the border and people got used to it. Someone also joked that one way to deal with it now, might be to ensure that border crossing formalities take exactly an hour to complete.

No problem with me trying this out, but I think we should be able to switch back to using DST if we want to.

magicbastarder wrote: »

AFAIK what the MEPs voted on was to remove the requirement to have the clock change - until now, it has been mandated that the clocks should change,
they have not mandated that the clocks *shouldn't* change, only that the mandate itself has been lifted.

so, if i understand correctly, it's up to each country to decide what to do locally.

Would be good to get an official position on that, but the way it's being presented in the media is that DST is gone and we have to make a choice.

Hurrache wrote: »

There's no comparison with the situation in Russia.

Why not?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-28423647

This ends an experiment that began under former president and Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev. In 2011 he switched the clocks to year-round "summer time". The change was initially popular, but a survey last year showed less than a third of Russians wanted to keep the clocks forward all year.

MPs say permanent summer time created stress and health problems, especially for people in northern Russia where the mornings would remain darker for longer during the harsh winter months. They cited medical reports of increased morning road accidents in 2012 compared to previous years, and blamed them firmly on the 2011 time change.