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So I once had this friend, and one of /his/ old friends had
the perhaps slightly controversial idea of changing time
accounting to 25 hour days.
He reportedly did concede that this would have an issue
of wall days not synchronising with solar days, however
he contended that any disadvantages
would be more
than
made up for by having an extra hour each day.
Now, in the UK we have this strange and terrible
tradition of changing the timezone twice a year - once
forward by an hour in spring (last Sunday of March), and
again
back by an hour in the autumn (last Sunday of October).
The autumn switch turns out to be relatively painless,
biologically, but the spring change is a nightmare which
takes at least a week to recover from.
So. I think you have probably guessed where this is going.
If we absolutely must continue this debacle, perhaps
instead of moving the time forward by an hour, we move
it back by an hour, for 23 days in a row.
Obviously one calendar day would become superfluous to
requirements, so we throw away the last Sunday in
March each year.
People with a birthday on that date get to celebrate for
23 days in a row.
[link]
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Daylight saving time was instituted during WW1 and simply carried on thereafter because it was a bit useful - not massively so, however. |
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In the absence of a war, and given the prevalence of much better and more ubiquitous artificial lighting, there's no reason why England shouldn't stay locked to GMT/UTC on a permanent basis; and apparently legislation is already in progress to achieve this. |
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So the proposal is to replace a week of slight annoyance and confusion because the clock time is between zero and one hour different from brain time, with a week of utter mayhem because clock time is between 10 and 14 hours different from brain time? |
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What [8th] said. Western Australia has been ahead of the game
here, by consistently refusing to adopt daylight saving in the first
place. |
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//So the proposal is to replace a week of slight
annoyance and confusion because
the clock time is between zero and
one hour different from brain time, with a week of utter
mayhem because clock
time is between 10 and 14 hours
different from brain time?// |
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If changing timezone was symmetrical in biological
impact, the proposed approach would be 23 times
worse than the current method.
But this idea hinges on the fact that it's universally very
much easier to adapt in the
direction of a fractionally longer day than a
shorter one. |
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//there's no reason why England shouldn't stay locked to
GMT/UTC on a permanent
basis;// |
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Well, no reason except for the traditionalists who block
most sensible progress.
We're lucky the metric system
got past them, to be honest. |
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//the proposed approach would be 23 times worse than the current method// |
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Yes exactly. That might even be an underestimatement. |
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//much easier to adapt in the direction of a fractionally longer day than a shorter one// is fine for the first few hour adjustments. It's halfway through the cycle when sunrise is not until late afternoon, and then the sun is bright all night and then it starts to get dark about 6am. |
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Brexit of course means that we’ll be setting the
clocks back to about 1920 |
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1815 would be better; the filthy frogs have just had a right drubbing at Waterloo, the Germans aren't unified, and the Royal Navy rules the waves ... |
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//and the Royal Navy rules the waves// - might be a
challenge now - have you seen the current size of the
navy? |
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He didn't say which waves they ruled. The wave machine in the middle pool at Southend leisure centre is fairly easy to rule. |
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