The blessed clocks go back

[martin]

-tonight! - much to my total disgust!

[roys]

Not all bad, party last night and then an extra hour in bed before I had to go to work. Cheers Steve, PS Where is the asprin

[Flamethrower_]

Martin,

Yes I have to agree with you whole heartedly

increase of fuel usage, lightig, etc,etc,etc,etc, (I feel like I'm in the King and I)

The powers that be with heads in the sand 

[insolare]

Good moaning - err I mean morning Martin 

[Paulh_Boats]

Oh no they don't!


I've left my mobile on GMT+1 and will get up when its alarm goes off, so my body clock will not change. When it gets too dark in the morning I'll switch to GMT (Sat 8th November, sunrise 8:07 GMT).... then back to GMT+1 on Feb 21st (sunrise 8:02 GMT sunset 18:27).

That will add up to more darker mornings, I'll never drive to work in the dark, but there will be an extra 7 weeks of lighter evenings.

Its a bit of an experiment to see what happens, but no darker in the mornings than New Years Day and light enough to check the garden after work from the last week of Feb. has got to be worth trying.

-Paul

[martin]

I like it! - a Harvey Smith to Big Brother!

[dhaslam]

One of the reasons for daylight saving time is for farming but when I was growing up the farm and all the other farms around stayed with "old time" all summer so starting time was 10 am by the clock. 

[renewablejohn]

Has anybody told the cows that milking time will be 1 hour later.  We never alter clocks we just have to remember what time the rest of the country is on if we need to communicate. A bit like going abroad for a holiday.

[Capcave]

Our house cow was hanging over the fence by the time we surfaced this morning - definitely knew something was not right - got an extra half a litre of milk though!

[KenB]

In bleak mid-December, it's still dark at 7:30am GMT in London and the south east.

If we did not return to GMT in late October, it would mean that it was dark at 08:30am (BST). 

I guess that it's a trade off so that most people travel to work in daylight in the winter.

Perhaps the best approach is to stay on GMT all year round.  Not  that  it helps the Scottish farmers much.



Ken

[Paulh_Boats]

The French have GMT+2 in the summer, so light until 11pm and I'm told its great for evening parties and social events. In World War II Britain switched to double summer time to save energy blah blah blah...

Ken - yes for about 4 weeks either side of Winter Solstice its too dark in the morning on GMT+1, but the politicians never seem to grasp the point that we don't need to be on GMT from the end of October to the end of March. We could easily chop 6 weeks off that and it would still never be too dark for the kids in the morning.

If you look at this graph you will see the BST is not symmetrical. We could start BST one month earlier and mornings would still be lighter than Winter Solstice on GMT:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Greenwich_GB_DaylightChart.png

Can anybody justify why BST starts so late? For my whole life I could never understand why it starts late.

-Paul

[Paulh_Boats]

The American Daylight Savings (Summer Time) table is here:

http://www.energy.ca.gov/daylightsaving.html#chart

On Monday August 8, 2005 President Bush signed into law a broad energy bill that extended Daylight Saving Time by four weeks beginning in 2007. Since 1986 the United States had observed Daylight Saving Time from the first Sunday in April through the last Sunday in October. The provisions of the bill call for Daylight Saving Time to begin three weeks earlier on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November.

Starting this year then the Americans will have an extra 4 weeks evening daylight ....seems like a smart move.

-Paul

[JohnS]

At the moment, all of Europe, or at least the bits that have daylight savings, change at the same time - last weekend of March and October.  Up until the recent change in the US, they changed at the same time as Europe in the autumn and a week later in the spring.

I agree it would make sense for Europe to come into line with the new US dates.

Personally, I would prefer to be on GMT + 1 in the winter and GMT + 2 in the summer, i.e. the same as France etc.  The Scots and Welsh have their own parliaments and can vote for something different if they want.