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I wish we would cancel it here in the UK too. It's so pointless. Just stay on BST, or at least go back to GMT and leave it there. I find it really difficult to shift my sleeping pattern and it disrupts me for at least a week every time.

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The shift in sleeping pattern indeed is a disruption and a negative factor well studied. However it's something you're only affected by a few days or weeks at most. The positive effects are more stretched and last over 6 months. They're harder to study and I haven't seen much studies (except about the non existing energy saving effect).

I enjoy having one more hour sun in the evening in the summer. Adopting the summer time timezone in winter also doesn't make much sense, as it's already hard enough in winter to get up in the dark.

I live in Toronto, far from being the most northern city. It sometimes surprises people to learn that we're at the same latitude as Rome. Anyway, I _detest_ not just the switch from DST to Standard Time, but I also hate how we move the clock for the winter. If you wake up for work it is going to be dark, or _barely_ light out if you're lucky. But by shifting the time backwards I can't play outside when I'm done work because it is dark out. I have to bring lights with me for my bicycle. Wtf is with this? Why are we making all of the light hours during the time I'm at the office? This isn't the 1800s we don't need to milk the cows. We have the opposite problem now. We need light to play outside and we need fun exercise far more than we need a little extra light between opening our eyes in the morning and that first shower.

Actually there are fairly easily measurable benefits, e.g. to tourism due to extra light in the evenings.

Staying on BST all year would be the best thing IMO. In the winter, yes it's hard to get up in the dark, but most of the time it's dark an hour after I get up anyway too. There's not much natural light in my office so in the winter I rarely see the sun because of the idiotic timezone.

Google 'lighter later'.

Summer time is decided as the EU level: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:320...

But as the UK is apparently leaving the EU, staying on BST will be possible...

[EDIT, typo: US -> UK]

Irony: that'd make GMT no longer the time in Greenwich.

That's already the case during BST.

> Summer time is decided as the EU level: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/ALL/?uri=CELEX:320....

This document only seems to specify when the switch happens for obvious coordination reasons, in the same way DST dates are decided at the federal level in the US, but states are not required to use DST (IIRC AZ does not)

I've found another document from the European Commission that seems to say that the 2001 directive actually also requires that all EU member states use summer time, not only when if they use it.

http://ec.europa.eu/transport/facts-fundings/studies/doc/201...

"European policy measures began to be introduced, leading to the present day situation, where Directive 2000/84/EC requires Member States to put their clocks forward one hour on the last Sunday of March and change them back on the last Sunday of October each year."

And 11.2 (page 10): "The cumulative effect of this succession of laws is that all Member States are now obliged to observe summertime, starting it on the last Sunday of March and ending it on the last Sunday of October."

You could try to ease into the new time by waking 5 mins earlier/later per previous morning, two weeks before the switch.

Or we could stop pretending that playing with timezones somehow magically gives us more hours in the day.

It's like the shaggy dog story about a business consultant who was hired to improve efficiency at a port. "The first thing you need to do," he concluded, "is reschedule your tides."

If it makes sense to adjust our schedule according to the season, let's just do that, instead of shifting our clocks and pretending nothing's happened.

Hm. Have to get every employer in the land to switch at once. That's the challenge. Changing the clock does that handily.

Well, under the hoods of DST, every employer is changing their schedule (relative to the sidereal midnight) at once anyway, by agreeing to abide by DST and forwarding their clocks at once.

Then why not agree to change the office timings at once?

That's what laws are for.

It's less legislative work for them to do it this way (and more work for the programmer). What you want is less work for the programmer and more work for the legislator.

Not every employer has to switch at once. One company can switch, then their clients and contractors, and then /their/ clients and contractors, and so on and so forth. It's not too big of a deal if you're off by one hour vs other companies.

It's not about more hours in the day - it's about more hours in the pub garden in the evening. I'm all in favour of that.

I would go for morning pub gardens though--might that be a solution?

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