Clocks Back Tonight

James Martin
Posts: 1011
Joined: Sun 15 Feb, 2004 19.26

Tis that time of year, people, when we being on the depressing dark evenings.

So time for that annual debate!

Should we stay on GMT+1 all year round? Should we even take it one step further and go to GMT+2 in the Summer months?

And if we're feeling really extreme maybe even GMT+3 in the months each side of June?!

What about Scotland and their dark mornings - is it about time that they were put onto a different timezone and observed GMT all year round?

Does putting the clocks back in Winter actually matter anymore? Is it REALLY needed? Research claims that 450 lives a year can be saved. Indeed the last trial in the late 60s showed a sharp decrease in road accidents.

I personally belive that we should be on GMT+1 over Winter and GMT+2 over Summer, with Scotland adopting GMT year-round.

Whilst I feel that there may be a slight increase in road accidents in the morning, evening accidents would fall dramatically - certainly enough to easily outnumber the morning increase.

Also, people are generally more alert in the mornings that they are at tea time. So we'd cope better with darkness in the morning... and even better we don't have our afternoons turned into night time.

What's everyone else's take?
Jamez
Banned
Posts: 2587
Joined: Sun 30 May, 2004 23.02
Location: Bristol

Great(!)

It will now get dark at 4pm, so travelling home listening to the radio in car with the rain lashing down on the windscreen, windows misting up, stopping every 50 yards for traffic lights, getting wet when you get out of the car in the dark, cold, raining winter evenings.

Lovely, just lovely.

I hate the British winter so much. I wish I was a bird, and could migrate every winter to Australia or somewhere nice.
User Removed
User avatar
Nick Harvey
God
Posts: 4147
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 22.26
Location: Deepest Wiltshire
Contact:

Jamez wrote:I wish I was a bird, and could migrate every winter to Australia or somewhere nice.
Exactly.

It's at times like this that I could hate channel five announcers!
User avatar
Lorns
Posts: 3149
Joined: Thu 24 Mar, 2005 22.48
Location: A room with a view. 15 Hookey street, the Edge.
Contact:

No, no, no. Who really wants to be a bird this winter, what with avian flu and the predicted mass culling of our feathered friends.

This is the time of year i wish i was a hedgehog or squirrel. Hibernating for the winter.
Mental anxiety, Mental breakdowns, Menstrual cramps, Menopause... Did you ever notice how all our problems begin with Men?
James H
Posts: 1276
Joined: Tue 20 Jul, 2004 14.49
Location: In your endo

miss hellfire wrote:No, no, no. Who really wants to be a bird this winter, what with avian flu and the predicted mass culling of our feathered friends.

This is the time of year i wish i was a hedgehog or squirrel. Hibernating for the winter.
Please please Lorna. It's Evian flu. We catch it from drinking water.

Well that's what Anna Blotting keeps saying.
User avatar
DVB Cornwall
Posts: 519
Joined: Fri 24 Jun, 2005 21.42

Being fortunate to live in Cornwall it doesn't get really dark until after 4.30pm in the real dark short days of December. I therefore get extremely dark mornings instead. Frequently it's gloomy until gone 8.00am in December.

My 'Solution' is quite radical and preserves the Scottish Farmers concerns who seem to be the ones that protest more than most. I would personally approve of putting the clocks forward from GMT to CET (i.e TWO hours in March and putting them back by two in October). The advantage would be that in Cornwall in June the summer evenings would last until well after 11pm, and the wasted daylight between 4.30am and 5.30am would go.

I very much suspect that the only real change that we might expect in the coming years is advancing the date that we actually move to summer time by two or three weeks, for energy saving purposes.

Good Discussion though.
Image
Chris
Posts: 845
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 19.03
Location: Surrey

I hate all this business of putting clocks one hour forth and back (obviously not at the same time ;) ).

I also noted today when I got some cash out of the hole in the wall that the whole Natwest cashpoint network will shut down for a few hours either side to allow for the changes as most of the new cashpoints are Windows run computers.

So much for 24 hour banking!
Johnny
Posts: 698
Joined: Fri 22 Aug, 2003 20.18
Location: The London Borough of East London

Do many other nations or continents put clocks forwards & backwards an hour at certain times of the year. I take it CET stands for "Central European Time" but do countries like USA, India, Japan or Australia bother at all?
Johnny

Harry Hill : "What is it about people that repair shoes that makes them so good at cutting keys? Try going in there with a shoe shaped like a key and see how confused they get."
User avatar
Nick Harvey
God
Posts: 4147
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 22.26
Location: Deepest Wiltshire
Contact:

Yes.

The States and Canada call it Daylight Saving Time.

Australia also does it tonight, except that they're going FORWARD for the summer, so British time and Australian time changes by a TWO hour difference tonight.

Plays hell with Qantas shift times as they work on Sydney time, wherever they are in the world.
User avatar
Sput
Posts: 7543
Joined: Wed 20 Aug, 2003 19.57

Nick Harvey wrote: Australia also does it tonight, except that they're going FORWARD for the summer
Is that because the water goes the wrong way round the toilet down there?
Knight knight
User avatar
Nick Harvey
God
Posts: 4147
Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 22.26
Location: Deepest Wiltshire
Contact:

Sput wrote:Is that because the water goes the wrong way round the toilet down there?
Yep.

Except at Christmas on Great Keppel Island, but you'll have to ask Cheesey about that!
Post Reply