Ok, own up! Which total numpkin came up with the bizarre concept of daylight saving?
The clocks here in the UK went forward in the early hours of yesterday morning (Sunday 29th). Why it was decided that 2am is the appropriate time to make the change totally escapes me, let alone why it happens. But there you are. Until voters around the world demand their respective governments get rid of it, it’s here to stay, more’s the pity!
Truth be told, some bureaucrat probably drew a number out of his hat to decide what hour was best for the change over, after another of his kind had first decided that mucking around with time was a good idea. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the latter of the two received an award for coming up with the totally nonsensical notion!
Face it – we’re all idiots! Who actually benefits from changing their clock? No one! Those who swallow the myth that we somehow gain because of it, quite frankly need their bumps felt. The number of hours in a day remains exactly the same, no matter whether its during the daylight saving period or not – 23 hours, 56 minutes and 4.1 seconds, plus or minus a few thousandths.
Yes it is true that we gradually experience more hours of daylight during the summer months. But it has absolutely nothing to do with putting our clocks forward by an hour. Conversely, putting our clocks back in autumn does not change the number of hours in a day either. Instead, summer and winter has everything to do with the angle of the Earth at a given moment in time when it is rotating around the Sun.
I hate to point out the patently obvious here, but moving a clock back or forth by an hour achieves absolutely nothing, except to fool the totally thick among us into believing they are getting something for nothing. Think about it folks – does the Earth speed up as it travels around the Sun to comply with big businesses demands on you the worker? No of course it doesn’t. So why does every nation insist on doing it? Who actually benefits from this grand illusion? Certainly not the general public. Nor the business world, truth be told.
No amount of clock changing governs when we go to bed or wake up. We sleep when we’re tired. We wake up after we have rejuvinated ourselves in the arms of Morpheus. No amount of putting our clocks forward an hour in spring time and back in autumn, will ever change that! We still work the same amount of hours each day. Changing the clocks back and forth doesn’t change that either.
So, come on people wake up to the total absurdity of Summer Time. You know it makes no sense whatsoever. So why change our clocks for goodness sake? It is yet another pointless exercise which has become an accepted part of life. If you want to celibrate anything connected with summer and winter, observe the equinoxes, the time or date twice each year when the sun crosses the celestial equator, when day and night are of equal length, approximately on the twenty-second of September, and the twentieth of March each year. Now that makes total sense, unlike the clock changing codswallop!
What most people forget, especially bureaucracy, is that time is a constant. Mankind cannot change it to suit itself, no matter how much it kids itself, believing it can.
PS – if you are one of the half wits who actually believes the fairy tale known as daylight saving, I apologize for bursting your collective bubble with rationality – not!
😉
I seem to recollect reading a theory along the lines of “Day Light Saving Time was introduced for the benefit of farmers at a time when the world was mor agrarian than is presently the case”. Whether this theory holds water I have no idea. As regards time more generally, H. G. Wells “The Time Machine” is a good read although the jury is still out regarding whether time travel will remain pure science fiction.
Kevin
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It was just another political ploy to keep the farmers onside Kevin, nothing more, nothing less. But even they know the number of hours in a day remains the same. 😉
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I say we stick to Greenwich Mean Time like we are suppose to do, and stop fiddling about with time every Spring and Autumn. You are right Jack, I still sleep the same length of time regardless of whether the clocks have gone forward or back, so it is not an hour less or more in bed for me.
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I totally agree Hugh. But even GMT is a man made construct, to standardise world time. 😉
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Jack, I’m in total agreement. Ours started a month earlier in the states. My two dogs, now beg for their morning walk, in total darkness.
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Don’t you just love it when these things are foisted upon us Adam? 😉
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You might like this explanation Jack: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time 😀
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The mere fact that it starts with the following statement proves my point about what a load of codswallop it is Chris:
“Daylight saving time (DST) or summer time (see “Terminology”) is the practice of advancing clocks during summer months by one hour so that light extends into the evening hours.”
It doesn’t!!!
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We did that last month and I’m now finally adjusting. Makes no sense Jack! ~Elle
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Exactly my point Elle. 😉
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My thoughts, exactly, Jack, for many years now. In NC, we’re told that it has something with school children having to wait for the bus in the dark or come home in the dark, oh, and also the myth about the farmers. So once again we have a tail wagging the dog. We sprung forward two weeks ago, and my internal clock hasn’t reset yet.
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Who do they think they’re fooling is what I want to know Noelle. 😉
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Daylight savings time is a crock. People suffer for weeks with their circadian rhythm changed so abruptly — causing many lost man hours as well as needless accidents, injuries, and deaths. All so, as near as I can tell, the rich elite and politicians (but I repeat myself) can frolic outdoors an hour longer in the evening. What a waste of life and limb.
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Exactly Duncan 🙂
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I don’t think anyone actually thinks that altering the clocks has anything to do with saving time, or lengthening the day, Jack. I understand that the original agrarian reasons, quoted above, were replaced in more recent times to suit the building trade and give them longer hours of daylight for their work out in the open. It has also been suggested (and, of course, contradicted, that the change in the clock helps tired motorists avoid collisions and accidents on their way back home from work in the summer evenings).
I believe that we would actually be better off ditching GMT altogether and standardising on BST instead, as this gives us all extra daylight during the evenings, which is the time most of us are active anyway. It also allows us better sleep as daylight penetrates the curtains later in the mornings so that the pineal gland isn’t stimulated quite so early as it would otherwise be.
There; that’s my five penn’orth!
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“I believe that we would actually be better off ditching GMT altogether and standardising on BST instead, as this gives us all extra daylight during the evenings, which is the time most of us are active anyway.”
Even you don’t appreciate that there are only a finite number of hours in a day. Therefore, how can you have extra daylight? 😉
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I think you misunderstand, Jack. It’s not the ‘extra hour’ but the ‘extra hour of usable daylight’ that’s the issue. If a finite number of hours in any day are light, and the rest are dark, it makes sense to have the hours of brightness apply during the time we’re awake and active. It has nothing to do with the length of the day, which is obviously fixed. It has to do with the distribution of the daylight during those days. And this is especially relevant during spring and autumn, because in summer the length of the dark period is so short it makes no real difference to the amount of usable daylight time when we’re active. Hope that clarifies my stance.
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Hmmm, I thought this was just a dumb idea done here in the U.S. They say that we lose billions of dollars because of DST. The argument for it that I hear is that we have more light in the morning so that children don’t have to walk to school in the dark.
Wouldn’t it have been much easier to just change the time the kids start school?
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Exactly Sherrie 🙂
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