EU to have summertime all year round.

PMU

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Was anyone aware of this? https://ec.europa.eu/info/consultations/2018-summertime-arrangements_en and https://www.rte.ie/news/europe/2018/0831/990719-daylight-saving-time/.
The EU press office reports on the results of the survey as “84% want Europe to stop changing the clock” http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-18-5302_en.htm, but it's not 84% of Europeans, it's 84% of the 4.6 million who responded to the survey, i.e. 3.86 million of the EU's population of 840 million, i.e. 0.43% of Europeans, i.e. toss all.
Apart from the questionable use of relative probabilities by the Commission to give the impression that a significant number of Europeans want to end daylight saving time it does seem to be an excessive level of standardization. In any event, it's unlikely the UK would change if the EU does; if only to show they're different; so we could have a 'temporal border' on the island of Ireland with an hour difference in time in daylight saving time between the two jurisdictions.
 
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The RTE article is completely confused, if it is being suggested that Summer Time should be used all year round then Summer Time is not being abolished but extended to cover the full 12 months.

If that is what is intended I think its a great idea.
 
What would this mean in winter? Dark mornings and longer evenings?

If the UK doesn't follow suit going to be tricky for us.
 
I would be neither for nor against. Im just fed up that for all of my living memory the issue of daylight saving hours crops up as a topical subject at least once, if not twice a year.
It makes no difference.

If traders are concerned about time differentials between different countries, they should do what other traders do who deal internationally - get used to it!

If people are worried about dark mornings and kids going to school, start shool and working hours one hour later and finish one hour later.

In the end, it appears to be a 'recommendation' to end it. So ultimately it will be for ourselves to decide.
 
The suggestion seems to be that the changing of the clocks could be abolished. Countries could decide to stay on either permanent summer time or permanent winter time, effectively by moving into the next adjacent time zone if necessary. But all countries would agree to the same arrangement, i.e. change clocks on the same date or don't change at all. Personally I'd be a fan of permanent summer time. I love the long summer evenings, hate the short winter ones, and never get up before sunrise even in winter, so don't care if it rises at 10am.

I didn't see any specific mention of Spain on the EU consultation page. I presume they would take the opportunity to move back to GMT. It's kind of crazy that the country is almost entirely west of Greenwich, yet they are on CET. As far as I know it was a political decision by Franco in the WWII era to align Spain more closely with Hitler's Germany.
 
If the UK doesn't follow suit going to be tricky for us.

It does not make it anymore difficult that having to deal with any other country that has a different timezone or a boarder with a country that has another timezone.
 
but it's not 84% of Europeans, it's 84% of the 4.6 million who responded to the survey, i.e. 3.86 million of the EU's population of 840 million, i.e. 0.43% of Europeans, i.e. toss all.
While it might have been a bit better if they'd gone out and asked random people to respond, it's not that flawed a survey surely? Lots of people don't turn out to vote in much more important referenda, you never get everybody represented and for a trivial issue like this I'd imagine the turnout to a full referendum on it would be hilariously small. I'd say the people who felt strongly about this (4 million is pretty impressive I think) took the opportunity to vote in both directions and the result is pretty conclusive.

Daylight saving is just an inconvenience at this point so I'd be delighted to see the back of it. Plenty of countries have multiple time-zones within their borders, so I don't think the outside possibility the North ended up on a different schedule would be a problem.
 
It does not make it anymore difficult that having to deal with any other country that has a different timezone or a boarder with a country that has another timezone.

There's simply no comparison between the UK and any other country in this regard - the level of interactions between Uk and Ireland that would be impacted is huge.
We don't have listings in the newspaper for Spanish TV, for example.
We don't have trains running between Dublin and Madrid.
 
I would be neither for nor against. Im just fed up that for all of my living memory the issue of daylight saving hours crops up as a topical subject at least once, if not twice a year.
It makes no difference.
It makes a lot of difference for those people working on IT systems that struggle with the changing timezones. Twice yearly projects to coax systems through the change over.

Get rid of it and good riddance I say.
 
It makes a lot of difference for those people working on IT systems that struggle with the changing timezones. Twice yearly projects to coax systems through the change over.

Im no expert. But I cant imagine how people working in IT could 'struggle' with this?
How do they cope in a leap year?
 
Im no expert. But I cant imagine how people working in IT could 'struggle' with this? How do they cope in a leap year?

Every timezone change and leap year is like the system catching a cold... so many different platforms, databases etc all needing to be re-aligned. Business days versus Calendar days.... *achoo*
 
The issue here really isn't daylight saving time but the questionable presentation of statistics to support particular public policy aims.

According to today's UK Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...ries-clocks-back-forward-summer-a8516426.html, “Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the continent-wide survey to which 4.6 million people responded, revealed 84 per cent of Europeans want to stop moving the clocks back and forward by an hour under daylight saving time. Millions “think that in the future we should have summertime all year round, he said. ”So that’s what will happen.”

Now there is no basis to say that 84% of Europeans want to stop moving the clocks back and forward; only those that responded to the survey, i.e. (a self-selected group of) 3.86 million of Europeans, less than half of one percent of the population, have expressed this wish. Not 84%. It's doubtful if this by any reasonable standard could be regarded as providing a sound basis for public policy.
 
Im no expert. But I cant imagine how people working in IT could 'struggle' with this?
How do they cope in a leap year?
Many complex systems on different platforms. Some can deal with a time change automatically, some can't. Constantly changing environment.

Doubt it all you want but I've experienced it.
 
Many complex systems on different platforms. Some can deal with a time change automatically, some can't. Constantly changing environment.

Doubt it all you want but I've experienced it.

Well on that basis, being neither for or against, you have swayed me to think we should get rid of it.
 
There's simply no comparison between the UK and any other country in this regard - the level of interactions between Uk and Ireland that would be impacted is huge.
We don't have listings in the newspaper for Spanish TV, for example.
We don't have trains running between Dublin and Madrid.
We have flights between Dublin and Madrid. If I remember long ago when SkyTv was a European station, all it's programming was listed as CET. We managed, just like with the Euro. Happens in US states too. I think it would be ok.
A bit misleading saying Summer time all year round though, some people will expect the weather too.
 
Many complex systems on different platforms. Some can deal with a time change automatically, some can't. Constantly changing environment.

Doubt it all you want but I've experienced it.
Ditto. One of the more painful was a source code management system that got confused when a code check-in occurred that appeared to be earlier than one that was actually later because of the clock change ... causing all hell to break loose with corrupted code syncs.
 
A bit misleading saying Summer time all year round though, some people will expect the weather too.
Good point ;)
I doubt we would call it summer time ... we'd simply be on GMT+1. I guess we couldn't call it CET either as presumably plenty of folks in CET would move to GMT+2. As the EU web page says, this is much more of an issue for us folk above the 50th parallel with our 17 hour days in summer and 7 hour days in winter. With that degree of variance there's no good choice of a single timezone that will suit everyone.
 
Time is just an arbitrary label. Just let everyone use UTC timezone. We'd eventually get used to it.
Not entirely arbitrary -- it's still synchronised with local solar midday and midnight, nowadays rounded by timezone. I suppose there are still a few applications tied to meridional crossings of celestial objects, though I'd admit they're obscure and probably few and far between. Navigation was the major one but that got solved by being able to synchronise time by telegraph in the 19th century and GPS today. Hobby astronomy and solar panel efficiency spring to mind, where you would be constantly needing to know the UTC offset from local solar time, even today.
 
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