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 choose 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

]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

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 after 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!

😉

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

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.