Would there be any similar problems from abolishing daylight savings time, or is that idea fairly safe?
We _should_ abolish DST. The issue is that there are people who want to abolish Standard Time because, I don't know, they have weird notions about how awesome it is to have the sun up at 8pm. Or don't understand that there are just fewer hours of sunlight in the winter in general. Yeah, it's going to get dark earlier, it's a thing that happens every year. It's better to have early morning sun than late evening sun.
And the last time we tried abolishing standard time, everyone hated it and we went back to switching between daylight and standard. But places that abolish daylight savings time never go back.
It's a case where people are particularly stubborn about wanting to validate their feelings rather than do the thing that would actually work. Because people bitch and bitch about standard time in the winter and think they're bitching about the time system. When really, they're just bitching about it being winter, but they don't realize that.
Is there actual data backing that up or just your opinion?
I personally really enjoy more hours of sun in the afternoon and early evening. As an office worker most of my mornings are just waking up and getting ready for work, not normally lots of time for recreation. Having more hours of light later in the day aligns with my free time hours better.
There is data backing up that early morning sun is better. It being light out when kids go to school and when we drive to work is more important. There are also things about our circadian rhythms and what not.
The "more hours of sun" is only an issue in the winter. In the summer/spring/fall, the sun goes down at reasonable enough times for you to still do all of your recreation. But in the winter, the sun is going to go down earlier anyway. And what sort of after-work recreation are you doing that requires the sun to be out?
In brief, our bodies evolved in the the movement of the sun, not numbers on a clock, so called solar time. Standard time aligns the numbers on the clock the best with solar time for most all of the world. There are some exceptions along the equator and at the poles at different times of year, but those are exceptions that have been, and can continue to be, handled well by people in those areas.
Or we could simply change the common time everyone uses and not have to reprint everything.
Before the 1800s the day began when the sun came up, this varied every day. Clipping this to specific hour is far more sensible for a global community.
See (variable-length/unequal) temporal hours:
> Adapting the European clock designs to the needs of Japanese traditional timekeeping presented a challenge to Japanese clockmakers. Japanese traditional timekeeping practices required the use of unequal time units: six daytime units from local sunrise to local sunset, and six night-time units from sunset to sunrise.
> As such, Japanese timekeepers varied with the seasons; the daylight hours were longer in summer and shorter in winter, with the opposite at night. European mechanical clocks were, by contrast, set up to tell equal hours that did not vary with the seasons.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_clock#Temporal_hours
Summer "daylight time" tweaks that by an hour (or two?) in order to make customary "waking-up time" closer to the summer sunrise.
Permanent daylight time just shifts everything over one timezone to the east, which to me seems kind of silly (along the lines of the "these go to 11" bit in Spinal Tap) but does have the benefit of not having to rename things like "the 11 o'clock news".
There is a way to do that, it's called summer time.
Your kids will grow up quickly and you could change jobs over a year or two if it is particularly inflexible. Whatever your situation, it is a short period of your life that can and will change.
A time system doesn't have to solve everyone's problems, in fact it couldn't if it wanted to. Basically the point is to solve your own problems as you see fit, not push one solution onto everyone else.
If only the idiots in charge would accept my brilliance.
Sunrise in Glasgow if the U.K. was on UTC+1 year round would be as late as 0945 in December, civil twilight wouldn’t start until an hour after people leave for school.