The longest periods of British Summer Time | Hacker News Reader

The longest periods of British Summer Time

diamondgeezer.blogspot.com

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Im still confused about the rationale of having the start of Standard Time in late October instead of September.

In Europe, this was a purely British thing, that got later harmonized into the EU convention in 1996. But unable to make out how the Brits came up with that late October date instead of keeping it around the equinox dates and having about equal lengths for the DST and standard time intervals.

https://www.polyomino.org.uk/british-time/

https://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/1995.html

https://www.timeanddate.com/time/dst/1996.html

The USA delayed it until the first Sunday in november in 2009.

I have no idea what the rationale for this was either. I guess people like it? (I mean, I like it too, I think).

The wikipedia says:

> The United States Chamber of Commerce has praised the extension of daylight saving under the 2005 law, which increased the amount of shopping and commerce from after work in evenings. In the golf industry, the group has noted exceptional increase in revenue of "$200 million in additional sales of golf clubs and greens fees".[25] The extension of daylight saving has also had a notable impact on Halloween and candy sales.[26] Wyoming senator Michael Enzi and Michigan representative Fred Upton advocated the extension from October into November especially to allow children to go trick-or-treating in more daylight.[27] In some areas, the extension of daylight saving time in March and November has pushed back sunrise to as late as 8:30 a.m.[26]

—https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_in_the_Un...

So, uh... golf? That can't be it. I think people just like the extra daylight in the evening? Until it gets too far into winter and they don't like the dark in the morning, depending on where they live?

That's pretty much the logic especially at higher latitudes. People generally like more light in the evening rather than at 5am. But even though there really isn't enough light to go around in the morning in the winter months, people want to at least try to avoid sending kids to school (in particular) at zero dark thirty. (Have a 4:30a airport pickup on Sunday.)

But that's not how it works, having Standard time in early October would actually help with reaching school with natural light in more cases and have why did they hose to have one month less of this effect on only one side of the curve.

Why not start with Summer Time in February then already.

It's that assymetry that irks me most. [1]

My question is more with the rationale of 1940s UK [2] (other than to confuse the Germans), where this habit with late October date and 5/7 months started. While the rest of Europe had a September date and 6/6 up to 1996.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_of_daylight_saving_ti...

[2] https://www.polyomino.org.uk/british-time/

The November start time keeps halloween and the kids trick-or-treating in the evening from being after dark.

Here in Edinburgh, it means that we switch over just as leaving the house at 8am to take the kids to school happens in the dark, to make it so that that happens in the light again.

Of course, if that's the aim, then we should switch back again at the start of March.

So they're well prepared for the darkest period of the British empire in a while

Always disappoints me when people who advocate for ending daylight saving are completely unaware that it was tried in Britain not long ago and generally hated.

They didn't try to end daylight saving, they tried to keep DST (i.e. Summer time) for the entire year.

That’s the same thing - I would argue that the common idea of “daylight saving time” is the act of switching clocks, not the time zone itself. It’s just that the country settled on UTC+1 with no DST.

The United Kingdom spans from ~8 degrees west to ~2 degrees east, making UTC+0 its natural (local mean solar) time zone. So it is not a stretch to argue that switching to UTC+0 all year round would have a better result.

Conversely, it is obvious that UK switching to UTC+12 would have a very bad time compared to UTC+0 or UTC+1; so the same point can be said for UTC+0 vs. UTC+1 as well.

> The United Kingdom spans from ~8 degrees west to ~2 degrees east, making UTC+0 its natural (local mean solar) time zone.

Not only is it "natural" it was the basis of timezone in the first place.

We now use UTC, but not too far back, and originally, it was called GMT. The definition of 12h00 GMT was when the sun reached its zenith at the Prime Meridian, which cuts through… Greenwich.

The sun should be highest at noon and lowest at midnight. Summer time breaks this.

The sun “should” be wherever makes the most sense taking into account the cultural, geographical, and social factors that affect time zones and their selection. There is no objective correct standard.

> There is no objective correct standard.

People who study circadian rhythms (known as chronobiology) say otherwise:

* https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/07487304198541...

* https://old.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/dq2nv3/askscien...

* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00950...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology

* https://twitter.com/SRBR_Outreach

The position of various European societies:

* https://esrs.eu/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/To_the_EU_Commiss...

Sure but that was different times. Patterns of work were very different in the late 60s.

It’s a shame the article is so light on why this was unpopular. Happy to be shown to be wrong on this, but to me switching to permanent BST seems like a no-brainier.

I’d’ve said so too, but speaking to the members of my family who went through it back then - the consensus from them was that it meant sunrise further north wasn’t until almost 10am. So then you had people travelling to work and school in the morning noticeably darker. I can see why that would be less popular than dealing with it in the evenings.

I live in Portugal and wish we had summer time all year round. We're not Britain, our days are longer, it sucks for night to suddenly come 1 hour earlier.

Extending BST is not as popular in Northern England and Scotland.

It's bad enough when sunrise is after 9am in the middle of the winter, after most people have travelled to work or children to school.

I’m not aware of it myself. When did we last not have BST in the Uk?

From the article:

1) 193 weeks (18 Feb 1968 - 31 Oct 1971)

In 1968 Harold Wilson's government decreed that Britain would shift to permament GMT+1 by not switching the clocks back an hour in October. Technically this was British Standard Time, not British Summer Time, as there was no intention to return to seasonal time adjustments. This change increased evening daylight throughout the winter months (which was popular) but also delayed sunrise (which was not, especially in Scotland). Statistics showed that road accidents decreased in the evening more than they increased in the morning, which was good, but this couldn't be pinned down solely to the time change. Ultimately permanent BST proved unpopular enough that Parliament voted to end it by 366 votes to 81, a fairly convincing rebuttal, and the annual switcheroo has continued ever since.

Not long ago?

Everybody who was studying at the time is now working age, anybody who was working age is now retired...

That’s the opposite.

The thing people object to about daylight savings time is the act of changing the clocks - not the new times themselves. You’re correct that the country remained in UTC+1, but it would be difficult to describe that as “daylight savings time” if the clocks stop changing.

Maybe most people object to that, but personally I like to have daylight hours first thing in the morning to pop out for a run to start the day. There’s a weird bit in October where you lose the ability to do that because of BST.

I was genuinely curious as to when the Uk last didn’t have BST. I believe the the answer might be a very long time ago, in conflict with the original assertion I was replying to.

If people pick through my responses here it’s very strange that I’m being downvoted. I suspect maybe a few people have forgotten to follow the HN rule of trying to read charitably.

It's a mix. There's definitely a camp of pick a time zone--any time zone--but don't change it over the course of the year. And then there's a camp that doesn't want winter (in higher latitudes) to involve getting up and about in pitch blackness for "normal" schedules but also likes long summer evenings rather than sunrise at 5am.

The UK last spent a whole year on GMT in 1915.

Changing sleep cycles is more of a pain than clocks, it’s automatic in the vast majority of devices. I’ve not even realized the switch happened a few times because my alarm and everything else changed automatically.

If you’re still changing wall clocks manually there is a much better option: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_clock

In 1973, OPEC was newly powerful and making itself felt, and that winter we had DST. I was commuting to college in six-person carpool, and if anyone had an 8 am class, we were on the road before 7. I saw more planets that I have generally seen, but I can't say I enjoyed it.

How comes I had never heard of this?

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