Why is the Change to Daylight Saving Time Offset?

[BabaYaga]

I see no point to summer/winter time.

I sympathize, but the OP's question was not whether DST is pointless or not, but why is it offset to autumn over spring in regard to summer and winter solstice.

 

[Mark-1]

I've tried so hard to care about it.......

You've made 8 posts in the thread so we certainly can't dispute your valiant attempts to care.

 

[capnsensible]

You've made 8 posts in the thread so we certainly can't dispute your valiant attempts to care.

I tried. Mebbe people who travel a bit don't get a wedgie over a simple hour time change. As I mentioned, mines shifted 7 times in the last few weeks.

 

[lustyd]

I tried. Mebbe people who travel a bit don't get a wedgie over a simple hour time change. As I mentioned, mines shifted 7 times in the last few weeks.

Ooh bringing travel into it. I find there are two camps here too. My ex was convinced that 9am was 9am regardless while I believe if I fly far enough 9am might actually be 9pm. On short trips or with small differences I try not to adapt too much in anticipation of return, so if I’m in the Canaries I’ll wake up based on UK time if I’m only there for a week. Further or longer and I’ll make an effort though

 

[capnsensible]

Ooh bringing travel into it. I find there are two camps here too. My ex was convinced that 9am was 9am regardless while I believe if I fly far enough 9am might actually be 9pm. On short trips or with small differences I try not to adapt too much in anticipation of return, so if I’m in the Canaries I’ll wake up based on UK time if I’m only there for a week. Further or longer and I’ll make an effort though

You can do that because the Canaries use the same time zone as the UK. Flitting between Spain, UK, Gib, Lanzarote and Marrakesh over the past few weeks, as soon as I get to my destination I change to local time. Its easy. If I'm sailing a long way, I alter ships clocks every 15 degrees of longitude.

Next thing, people will work out, like Ptolemy that the movement of the sun can be tabulated. Before you know it, someone will have worked out how to use that to navigate.....

And the sun keeps on plodding at a degree of longitude every 4 minutes.

 

[lustyd]

I thought canaries were out by an hour? May be thinking of Cape Verde’s I can confirm I have no problems when travelling from one time zone to the same time zone!

 

[capnsensible]

I thought canaries were out by an hour? May be thinking of Cape Verde’s I can confirm I have no problems when travelling from one time zone to the same time zone!

In mariners theory, they should be as they lay between 7.5 and 22.5 degrees west. But that would put them 2 hours out from.....central government, i suppose.

Cape Verdes are in UT +1 for sailors, -1 for landlubbers. I like to use the mariner version with UT as the datum, not where your at.

 

[LittleSister]

Now that almost everyone has clever phones, watches, etc., there's no reason we should have standard time zones at all.

We can and should revert to local time, and your phone will adjust the minutes and seconds as appropriate as you move east or west to another village/town/city/remote anchorage.

In fact we also could dispense with Mean Time altogether, and live by genuine actual natural organic solar time (solar noon etc.) in all its variable glory.

 

[Mark-1]

Now that almost everyone has clever phones, watches, etc., there's no reason we should have standard time zones at all.

We can and should revert to local time, and your phone will adjust the minutes and seconds as appropriate as you move east or west to another village/town/city/remote anchorage.

In fact we also could dispense with Mean Time altogether, and live by genuine actual natural organic solar time (solar noon etc.) in all its variable glory.

Perfect. I really like the idea of phoning someone in Bristol and they're fifteen minutes later in the day than me.
But offset "natural" time such that there's light until 10pm all year round so everyone who finishes at five gets five hours to do something in the evening. (Obvs in winter the evening will start mid morning. )

 

[Slowtack]

...and I can remember coming out of school in the dark. No safer.

More traffic in the morning thought...also, we cycled in busy road to school... Not like now when a lot of kids are chauffeur driven....

 

[Mark-1]

It looks like (in the UK) we switch from GMT to BST in Spring when there's a about 12 hours of daylight, and from BST to GMT in Autumn when there's about 10 hours. So there's an offset to give longer evenings in the Autumn.

So it seems to me the spring clock change could have been mid Feb to give everyone longer evenings for an extra month. (I appreciate dawn and dusk times don't perfectly align with length of the day but you get my point.)

Anyone know why it's offset in that way with a bias of lighter evenings in the Autumn? Harvest gathering? Did they do it specifically to annoy me?

So if we were consistent between the two changes we'd already be in BST now and it would be light until about 7pm tonight.... Quite a useable evening for many people.

I'm not bitter....

 

[Motor_Sailor]

So if we were consistent between the two changes we'd already be in BST now and it would be light until about 7pm tonight.... Quite a useable evening for many people.

Quite. It bugs me every year that we have to wait so long for the clocks to change in the Spring.

 

[LittleSister]

Quite. It bugs me every year that we have to wait so long for the clocks to change in the Spring.

Nothing stopping folks from changing their clocks now to BST (British Senior Time?)!

 

[mjcoon]

Nothing stopping folks from changing their clocks now to BST (British Senior Time?)!

Unless, like me, you have lots that are "radio controlled" and set themselves by wireless. In which case, wrap them in tinfoil? ;-)

 

[capnsensible]

Quite. It bugs me every year that we have to wait so long for the clocks to change in the Spring.

I blame the sun. Lazy old light bringing gaseous cloud, can't be bothered to enter the northern hemisphere until 0307 on the 20th March. Needs a good talking to.

 

[Motor_Sailor]

I blame the sun.

I don't. I blame whoever decided that the clocks shouldn't spring forward until 10 or eleven days after the Spring equinox. That's astronomically a good month or so after the same person decided we should change the clocks back in the Autumn. Makes no sense.

 

[sarabande]

There is a lot of money to be made by building a barn to keep the cows or tractors dry or something like that on agricultural land. Then once built you can gradually refine it into a rather nice house. After a few years, the house can no longer be the subject of a demolition order and can be sold as a nice barn conversion for real estate prices. There is a lot of money in attractive barn conversions in nice places in the country side.

I dont know where Westernman lives, but that view of covert conversion of an agricultural building to a residential one is completely erroneous. It simply cannot be done these days. There have to be valid, verifiable reasons to make the change of use.

 

[Frank Holden]

Here in Victoria, Australia, we shift the clocks first Sunday in October, first Sunday in April, so a flat 6 months and about a fortnight after the equinoxes.
Possible reason UK does what it does and we does what we does is that you are further north than we are south so get a greater benefit. Queensland being sub tropical to tropical gets little benefit so doesn't bother.
Now, the reason for extending longer into autumn may be as follows, there is a lag in the weather warming up so you are more inclined to be enjoying the great outdoors in late autumn than early spring. F'rinstance , here the summer solstice is late December, hottest month is typically February.
I recall as a pup it would rain every Christmas Day and you would be stuck in a tent by the seaside, wet sand everywhere, wondering what to do with the flippers and googles you had just unwrapped. Then the new school year would start at the end of January and you would spend a month in an unairconditioned classroom pondering the meaning of life.

 

[gaylord694]

There's a farmer who did exactly that on outskirts of Salisbury he built a lovely wooden barn,walls insulated and everything for his animals,after ten years got rid of the animals and moved into the so called "barn" with mod cons etc so I suppose good for him

 

[Daydream believer]

I was in the wife's car on one rare occassion, when I noticed that the clock was 1 hour wrong. I asked her why & she said it was because she did not know how to adjust it. However, having been right through the winter like it, she did not want to change it now, as it would be summer time in 2 weeks & it would be correct again.
Trouble was that the following week she took it in for service. A couple of days later she was fuming. It seems that some interfeering p..k in the service centre saw that the clock was wrong so put it right for her
I did not help, by telling her that they probably charged her a fiver for doing that
She now had to spend all summer waiting for the clocks to go back again for it to be correct.