[Closed] Aligning UK time with Europe, good thing?

I'm 50:50 on this. What I can't understand though, is that if it's such a good idea, how come the Central Europeans aren't pushing to have [i]their[/i] time set an hour earlier too?

But it'll just mean darker mornings. Really don't see the point.

Surely the rest of Europe should be aligning there time with our far superior British time.

Greenwich Mean Time is the one true time

So what do this mean, getting dark at 4.30 or 2.30 in mid December, if it's the later i'm against it, if it's the former probably against it too. getting light at half 9 in December would be rubbish too. Leave it as is I say. Or have a different Scottish time zone.

Surely we should just have it so at 12pm the sun is at it's highest, you know midday!

But Europe is already aligned with us, Portugal - just need to get the rest of them in line.

b r - Member
But Europe is already aligned with us, Portugal - just need to get the rest of them in line.

No - Europe is currently one hour ahead. Now, given that they are also further East than us, that makes sense. But - if we go one hour ahead (to CET), then surely the same advantages apply to them and they would also be better going one hour ahead (and so on around the globe).

Surely what is required is to reset GMT so that it happens when the sun hasn't yet reached the highest point in the sky? Then everyone can keep the time they have.

Not bothered, got lights.

Actually, no. Moving timezone means that there'll be more ramblers cluttering up the trails for longer on summer evenings. The only people I see out and about at night at the moment are lunatic mountain-bikers. I recall seeing some runners with headtorches in September and October but they all seem to have given up now, the lightweights. Lets do away with British Summer Time altogether, keep it GMT all year, and make the sun set earlier so we can carry on riding empty hills in the dark, only on nice dusty trails instead of muddy winter ones.

Or, we could just change our work pattern ?? Go to yearly hours ?? It's all relative, as somebody else said on here today "time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so"

Having lived in Europe all my life, I didn't know I was misaligned. The sun will go up and down anyway. If someone wants to get up earlier or later let them, don't see what it's got to do with government, but governments always want to do stuff don't they.

No, its a sh1te thing to do, can't see how a bit more light at night is going to bring billions of pounds in to the economy, the weather will always stop tourists coming here, another Great British thing (GMT) being given away to Johnny Foreigner 👿

changing the clocks will mean more daylight after work in spring and autumn.

it's a brilliant idea, although mintimperial makes a very good point...

Yes, I'm for it.

I'm for this.

I'm at work in the morning, or travelling to work. To me, thats a waste of daylight. I can sit in an office or car just as easily in the dark as I can in the turgid half-light we currently get in the winter.

As Ahwiles says, it means more daylight after work in the spring and autumn. It'll widen the scope of evening rides considerably, and in the peak of summer, allow a virtual 'half-day' ride into and past midnight.

The problem comes in mid-winter, when this proposal means that, the further north you go in the UK, the longer it stays dark in the morning.

Shorten the length of time we are on GMT.

Absolutely. The Europeans are so much better at sunlight than we are.

Scotland can have their own time zone if they want.

I really don't see the point. Wasn't this tried before in the 70's and deemed a bit of a nuisance?

I suspect people in the far North of Scotland will be less than impressed with this stupid idea.

I think one of the arguments for this idea is that it will enable people to have more time in the evenings to exercise and thus reduce obesity. Surely longer evenings will just mean more of an excuse for many to sit in a pub beer garden?

Use GMT all the year. No need for Timezones as such.
Change the clock times that work/school/shifts start+end. Let Scotland choose different times to keep them happy, if they want.
More or less light in the evenings is something to do with the Sun going round the Earth, and when you get up and go to bed, not where the big and little hands point on the clock.

Summer time doesn't seem to be a problem but apparently winter is, so here's my suggestion - move to European time in winter and BST in summer. That way we get the best of both worlds and [rant] I DON'T HAVE TO CHANGE ALL THOSE ****** CLOCKS TWICE A YEAR!!!!! [/rant]

Portugal moved to CET for a trial period - after all their closest neighbour is Spain. But they have moved back to GMT. While it does give more light in the evening, it does mean that mornings are darker for longer.

This seems to be a mainly London centric request and as such seems to have been driven by the chattering class - who want to have longer light in the evenings to sit outside and drink!

I have never understood the whole road safety aspect. Surely we need light in the morning since we have school kids and the morning rush hour all trying to use the roads at the same time. In the evenings the school kids are generally at home (or rather have left school) by the time the rush hour starts. But what do I know!

Some people do a proper days work and go to work in the dark and come home in the dark so meh

I see it as our inflexibility, not a problem with the clocks. The sun will still go up and down at the same "point in time" - the only issue is what we call that "time". If we were prepared to adjust our routines to work with the available light there would be no need to adjust clocks. The big problem with darkness in the morning and resulting commuting snags is our (collective) desire to all start work at pretty much the same time. If we could spread our start and stop times a little the world be a much smoother place.

I agree with convert.

Schools should stagger their start and finish times, and employers should be more flexible in this respect, then not such traffic bottlenecks, time wasted and pollution created. And I can swan out at 3pm in summer to ride my bike...

case study:

i go to the pub on sunday nights for a game of scrabble, and the quiz.

i'm in bed for 11:30ish.

i need about 8 hours sleep,

so i get up at 7:30ish to go to work.

i get home at 5ish and it's dark.

all this adaptation and staggering and flexibility and etc. that you suggest sounds very complicated, how about we just shift the clocks by an hour?

that way i can go to the pub for a game of scrabble and the quiz, i can get my 8 hours sleep, i can go to work, get home, and have enough light to go out and play with my chums.

and this idea even requires [i]less[/i] effort than the current system, all we have to do is not fiddle with the clocks next autumn.

easy.

got to be worth a go at least?

"people in the far North of Scotland" what, all 35 of them.
I would loove an extra hour of daylight in the evening at this time of year.

although I think the clocks could be improved Im not totally for this change.

I think another hour forward in the summer will be too much. It can already be pretty difficult to get to sleep on the hottest/longest days in the summer. If we moved the clocks forward another hour this will exacabate this problem.

Also I do agree that its already dark enough in winter in the mornings.

I dont think theres anything wrong with our times on the 21st of december and 21st of june its just inbetween that could be better.

To be honest we only need to be at GMT for 2 months tops.

I think the clocks should go back mid November and forward mid February. But overall its impossible to get this completely right.

To maximise light but have it going dark at the right times you'd have something like this ->

November to Feb GMT
Feb to May GMT +2
June to July GMT+1
August-November GMT+2

because GMT+2 will be too much in mid summer

I don't get it either, in the winter I get up in the dark and come home in the dark, shifting it an hour won't make a jot of difference to my day.

yeah but obviously in spring and autumn it would be nice to have more light in the evening.

1. "move to European time in winter and BST in summer" - in other words don't set the clocks back one hour at the end of summer - CHECK
2. Let Scotland do it's own thing - CHECK
3. Depressed Britons enjoying the psychological benefits of daylight after finishing work in the Spring and Autumn - CHECK

Why bother having GMT if we don't use it? after all it's the Railway that standardized time, so if London want to go forward an hour to do more business with europe then let them come in at 10!!! adjust your working hours you lazy sods, I work shifts and have to work around with child care, school ect, it would be nice to have a fixed pattern, I don't get why people insist on doing 9 - 5 if it's better to do 10 - 6? flexible work force anyone?

Its all very well people saying let Scotland do its own thing but I don't think that approach could be taken. Whilst the Scots may have their own parliament and are very proud of their national identity they are still part of the UK and having what would effectively be a Scottish time zone out on its own would be a right sod to deal with, especially for businesses that operate both sides of the border.

they can share it with Ireland, Dave. I deal with Europe a lot and having the same time zone would be great.

druidh - Member
if it's such a good idea, how come the Central Europeans aren't pushing to have their time set an hour earlier too?

I'm against, I far prefer going to work in the light and coming home in the dark than vice versa. I find it really hard the month or so where I have to go to work before it even starts getting light. Putting the clocks forward would extend this.

If people want to work the same time as Europe let them work 8 - 4 rather than mess about with the time.

Flexible working practices bring other benefits as well, e.g. less congestion due to longer commuting period.

Why bother having GMT if we don't use it? after all it's the Railway that standardized time, so if London want to go forward an hour to do more business with europe then let them come in at 10!!!

Because it would be 11 in Europe.

I've just seen this comment in the BBC news story

Tourism bosses say the number of overseas visitors would increase if summer evenings were lighter"

Are they still on about putting the clocks forward in the summer as well then?

Either they're not and the changes would make no difference whatsoever, or they are and they really think that it getting dark at 11.30pm instead of 10.30pm in the summer would make a difference? Ludicrous

I don't get why people insist on doing 9 - 5 if it's better to do 10 - 6? flexible work force anyone?

Because their employer expects it?

I work in a place where people work whatever hours they like up to their allocated hours. It CAN be a PITA when you need to see someone about something urgent for a project you're both working on and they're not in for the next 2 days because they know they can make up the hours on another day/the weekend.

ROSPA support the change and estimate it will save over 100 lives per year

Less cost to the NHS due to health benifts of increased daylight leisure time

I absolutely hate it when the clock change in Oct, the weather is getting worse and nights getting darker, wht compound the misery by changing the clocks.

A rare good move by the ConDem government IMO

8 - 4 is the hours you need to keep to be in line with Europe 9 - 5, not 10 - 6

As evidenced here, I worry about letting the public make the decision when they can't work out which way the time would shift!

A few things I don't understand every time this discussion comes up:

1- Why do we spend the whole of march (nearly) on DST, and not some more of October? Surely daylight savings should be distributed evenly around the shortest day?? (correct me if this isn't the case).

2 - “we can't change it the farmers won't be able to cope...”
One of the few luxuries of being a farmer is being able to work to your own times. The actual length of day isn't going to change. Farmers are already used to working extended and unusual hours that don't really relate to how other people work- how do any proposed changes affect this?

3 - “what about people up north/Scotland/ kids going to school, they won't like change/ will die...”
As one of the former (and formerly one of the latter) this is another non-issue. As a kid I used to go to school in the dark and come home in the dark for a couple of months either side of the shortest day (albeit there was a long schoolbus trip). To sit in school for an extra hour in the dark mornings would allow the massive benefit of having even 1hr of light after school to be able to do stuff outside. Obviously, in the areas where BST is supposed to have greatest benefit, many people would still be going to work and leaving work in the dark- so no change there.

A couple of points.
1- The safety “issue” was not significantly changed when they last trialled it in the UK.

2- There are the massive potential energy benefits to changing- as most people are active and consuming energy with a bias towards the evenings nowadays, more daylight means significantly less time each day where energy is being used for lighting (and to a lesser degree heating).

A couple of proposals IMO:
1- more flexible working. Many people (but not all) are forced to work indoors 9-5 (ish)- which in winter totally precludes any kind of daylight exposure. Many people can and should be able to work more flexibly so that they can use the little daylight we have during the winter. Obviously not every type of employment makes this possible, but many which could [i]choose[/i] not to.

2- If we really feel we can't cope with a change, shorten the amount of daylight savings time to a couple of months, equally distributed around the shortest day. Roughly November- February should do it.

3- Just change it. I haven't seen a convincing argument yet as to how it will be any worse for anyone – just different. I think it would be a big benefit for schoolchildren.

Change in winter would be rubbish. We'd have dark mornings and it would still be dark after 5.30 anyway so riding in daylight would actually be harder.

I would advance the clocks so that it got light at ~ 7.30 am in spring/autumn.
We'd have light to ride in the evenings for much longer.

more daylight means significantly less time

There will be exactly the same amount of daylight

[i]]1- Why do we spend the whole of march (nearly) on DST, and not some more of October? Surely daylight savings should be distributed evenly around the shortest day?? (correct me if this isn't the case[/i]

Yup it does seem mental.
We'd be on BST now (i think) if the time change forward from winter solstice was the same as the move back.

Sunrise and sunset aren't evenly distributed around the shortest day.

The shortest day is not the same day as the latest sunrise or the earliest sunset.

(Disclaimer: I've no idea whether dates when the clocks go forward/back are lined up with this, it's just a possibility)

I mentioned this earlier and I think when we've had this discussion on singletrack world before we have come to this conclusion being the sensible answer. Even the people in Scotland dont think this change would be that bad.

GMT should be early/mid november to early/mid febuary then we'd already be in BST.
Ok it would still only be light till 6:30-7:00 at the moment but if you can finish work earlish this extra light could be used.

For MTBing you could probably go out for a ride when its light but need lights on the way back.

ebygomm- yeah, I did think that might be a possibility, but surely the discrepancy isn't big enough to account for an extra month (almost)?

I don't get it. If the change was originally motivated to get more light in the morning for farmers, why do they not just get up an hour later/earlier (whatever) rather than us sliding the clocks around.

Re European time. Construct this ven diagram Portugal is in Europe, Portugal has same time as UK (including BST). People always treat things that are clearly different, for any number of reasons, as one homogenous easily described entity when they want to seed a them and us reaction.

Introduce flexi time for everyone who cares?

Before I got too concerned about the health benefits that would accrue from giving the British population more time to bike in the Autumn and Spring, I'd be interested to know how many of them get off their arse to do any exercise in the middle of Summer.

It's the assymetry of it that's bugged me more than the actual thing (although I hate the feeling of hibernation it brings).

This time it started 52 days before the shortest day.

52 days [b]after[/b] the shortest day gets us to 10th Feb - already 2 weeks ago. So how much longer do we have to wait? Another 4.5 weeks!

Why does it need to go on for another 6 weeks longer in the spring?

BigJohn talks a lot of sense.
Also I have 400 quids worth of bike lights, I want dark nights thanks.

ditch_jockey - Member

Before I got too concerned about the health benefits that would accrue from giving the British population more time to bike in the Autumn and Spring, I'd be interested to know how many of them get off their arse to do any exercise in the middle of Summer.

good question,

we get a usefull amount of light after work from about april-ish till the end of september-ish.

that's 6months-ish of light, meaning 6months of darkness.

it's difficult to form good habits when you haven't done anything for 6 months.

shifting an hour of daylight would give us all 8 months of playtime instead of 6, that's 33% more playtime, and 33% less time to forget the good habits.

sgot to be worth giving it a go?

It was tried in the late 60s / early 70s and its a no go. For anyone north of Manchester you get two months of the year when it is still dark at 9 am. I remember it - it was horrid

And it will still be dark at 5 pm even with double summertime - so no advantage just disadvantages.

If you want to be aligned with CET in the south east just adjust your working day.

They tried this clock change when I was a young child, infant school, a 2 hour time change I think. I mostly remember the misery of getting up in the middle of the night (or so it seemed to me as it was pitch dark) to walk to school in the dark, it took a while as it was about 3 miles away.

Worse was being sent to bed at "night" when it was the middle of the day and being confused with the absurdity/sense of my being punished when my parents drew my bedroom curtains to try and keep out the daylight, which continued until really late at "night". It was difficult to sleep with all that daylight outside but too dark in my room to do anything but be bored and feel punished as everyone else did not go to bed in the middle of the daylight. I did not understand the unpleasantness of the sudden light changes. It felt silly even then and at that age. It does not fit with natural human clocks.

I would support keeping what we have but making summer time bit longer into the autumn or spring. I big change all year round is not good.

yes it gets dark in winter, well spotted!

😉

[i]If you want to be aligned with CET in the south east just adjust your working day.[/i]

Nah, it makes more sense for the north to adjust, as far fewer of you having a working day to adjust in the first place 🙂

I work 9 - 6 as standard so it'd have less impact to me, though I hate riding home in the dark, so I suppose every little helps.

What about winter working times (shorter) and summer working times, much like tourist attractions?

I have relli's in Arizona, USA and they have 3 hour long rush 'hours' to try and meet up with 3 other timezones all within the same country (they're on Mountain Standard Time)' Oh and schools have staggered start times, though mainly due to lack of school buses.