
European MPs vote to end summer time clock changes - bjakubski
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47704345
======
wongarsu
I'm glad we are getting rid of daylight savings time. It's a biannual
disruption of sleep cycles that costs lives (in increased accident rates) for
at best marginal benefits: for most of europe sunrise and sunset times change
too fast for an additional hour to really matter.

Still, I think given the choice most people would have prefered to stay in
summer time instead of winter time (or equivalently: to abolish DST and move
the timezone by one hour).

The actual proposal is only 8 pages long and also worth a read [1]

1:
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2018/63030...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2018/630308/EPRS_BRI\(2018\)630308_EN.pdf)

~~~
renholder
> _Under the new legislation, governments opting to make summer time permanent
> would adjust their clocks for the last time on the last Sunday in March
> 2021.

For those choosing permanent standard time - also called winter time - the
final clock change would be on the last Sunday of October 2021._

It's down to the member states to decide but I think _most_ would prefer
summer; save for maybe the Nordics, where the vast difference in the amount of
daylight hours makes quite a significant difference.

Edit: Removed Iceland, since they froze their EU application.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Even in the Nordics, eternal summer time would be preferrable for most people
I think. It gives you more sunlight in the afternoon (if I'm not mistaken),
when you actually have some free time to utilize that fact.

Who cares if it's light or dark in the morning, nobody is outside enjoying the
weather at that time anyway, we're just trying to get everyone to school/work.

~~~
renholder
In my county (Östergötland), the sun starts rising at 3am around this time of
year; so, the concept of it being light or dark in the morning (or
afternoon/night) isn't really a concern (overall).

In places like Kiruna, the sun will never set for about two weeks[0], during
the summertime.

It's the amount of actual daytime during the winter that would principally
matter - in the overall scheme of things.

[0] - [https://www.kirunalapland.se/en/see-do/midnight-
sun-2/](https://www.kirunalapland.se/en/see-do/midnight-sun-2/)

~~~
semi-extrinsic
FWIW I live a bit further north, at 63 degrees. In winter, at least december
and january, we're in the state of "dark when you go to work, dark when you go
home". However for the approx. two months between autumn equinox and end of
november, and similar two months from end of january to spring equinox, having
one more hour of daylight in the afternoon would be really really nice.

------
avar
> There were 4.6 million replies [to the online] consultation, 70% of which
> were from Germans.

Germans make up around 15% of the EU population. So by this metric they've got
an out-sized democratic participation in the EU by a factor of almost 5x.

As seen on a solar map [1][2] Germany isn't even particularly badly impacted
by this issue compared to say France or Spain. There's some truth to the
saying that Germany basically runs the EU, but as results like this show
mostly because they seem to be making an effort to give a crap about it and
its policies.

1\.
[http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTimeV...](http://blog.poormansmath.net/images/SolarTimeVsStandardTimeV2.png)
(source: [http://blog.poormansmath.net/how-much-is-time-wrong-
around-t...](http://blog.poormansmath.net/how-much-is-time-wrong-around-the-
world/))

~~~
Wildgoose
If you don't vote, don't complain. I live in the UK and I also voted to end
the twice-yearly wrecking of our body-clocks with the attendant accidents,
injuries and deaths.

Moreover from an IT perspective it would be convenient if we don't pick
permanent Daylight Saving Time in that the UK would effectively always be
using UTC.

~~~
fredley
I don't know, BST (more sunlight in the evenings) would be better, and UTC
happening to line up with GMT could result in a whole load of programmers
getting quite far in their career before realising timezones are something you
even need to account for...

~~~
Asooka
But BST would mean waking up an hour early all the time and that's its own
kind of hell. Your body doesn't care for where the hand on the clock is and
the standard 9am work start time is meant to allow you to get up at some
normal time around 7 or 8am. I would rather have a normal sleep schedule than
an hour of sunlight in the evening. Just wake up early and use the morning
light if you need it.

------
sergioisidoro
The news is not correct. Member states cannot chose to keep the daylight
savings, but they will have to choose between keeping the summer time or
winter time. This is to ensure uniform time keeping in the union to reduce
trade costs.

quote:

"Consequently, the Commission proposes to discontinue the seasonal time
changes in the Union, while ensuring that Member States retain the competence
to decide on their standard time, in particular whether they will move to the
standard time corresponding to their summer-time on a permanent basis or
whether they will apply their current standard time permanently. "

[https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...](https://eur-
lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52018PC0639&from=EN)

------
ridgewell
I recognize that this is probably an unpopular opinion but I live for the days
when the sun sets at 9pm.

DST really factors in quite well for night owls like myself. I'm aware there
is a strong degree of detraction in terms of complicating time keeping and
body clock adjustments.

It makes the daylight stretch into what we conventionally consider the night.
In the winter, I'm always somewhat a little sad that the sun sets before I
even leave the office (~4-4:30pm), but I'm always in a much better mood in the
summer when I leave the office at 5pm and still have hours of daylight left in
the day.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The late evening sunset in the summer is a godsend for anyone who has a day
job and has projects they need to work on outdoors. It's like having every
weekday followed by a Saturday afternoon for productivity purposes.

------
seanalltogether
People often say they would rather have permanent summer time, but from
observation it seems everyone sets their rhythm around solar noon regardless,
so why not make noon = noon. During the summer months Spain's solar noon is
between 2 and 2:30pm. Guess what time Spaniards sit down to eat lunch? In the
summer the UKs solar noon is around 1pm, guess what time all the office
workers pour out on the streets to eat lunch.

~~~
otabdeveloper1
Because in the northern latitudes there is no such thing as 'noon'.

~~~
rfergie
I don't understand? Are you talking about days in winter where the sun doesn't
rise at all?

~~~
otabdeveloper1
No, I'm talking about the fact that "noon" has no cultural or practical
significance if the solar day changes wildly during the year.

------
setr
>The proposal would give each member state a choice from 2021: either to keep
the current summer time system or scrap the twice-yearly clock changes

So if you travelled vertically within a timezone, you could end up going back
and forth by an hour repeatedly, depending on the state’s decision made here?

Truly, a design made by committee.

~~~
michaelt
Arizona doesn't observe DST, but it contains the Navajo Nation which does[0],
and in turn contains the Hopi Reservation which doesn't.

So you can go back and forth by an hour _within a single US state_.

[0]The Navajo Nation extends into Utah and New Mexico, which observe DST, so
this lets the Navajo Nation maintain a single time throughout.

~~~
hannasanarion
There is actually a Navajo exclave inside the Hopi reservation, and a Hopi
exclave inside the Navajo reservation, so if you travel into Arizona via route
264 in the summer, you have to change your clock seven times.

------
tzs
It's really a simple question. How should you approximate this curve?

    
    
       ....................*****.....
       .................***.....**...
       ................*..........**.
       *.............**.............*
       .**..........*................
       ...**.....***.................
       .....*****....................
    

If you think it should be this, you want permanent standard time:

    
    
       ..............................
       ..............................
       ..............................
       ******************************
       ..............................
       ..............................
       ..............................
    

If you think it should be this, you want permanent summer time:

    
    
       ..............................
       ..............................
       ******************************
       ..............................
       ..............................
       ..............................
       ..............................
    

If you think it should be something like this, you want some kind of DST
system:

    
    
       ..............................
       ..............................
       ****..........****************
       ..............................
       ....*********.................
       ..............................
       ..............................

~~~
sixothree
There are two curves to account - sunrise and sunset. Daylight savings
attempts to flatten one of those and not the other!

~~~
dezzeus
Yes, because DST correctly attempt to adjusts Sunrise towards our usual wake-
up time (obviously it can't do miracles).

------
wazoox
People vote for "summer time" because they, d'oh, prefer summer. But summer
time in winter is atrocious. And there are many people getting up early,
they're (mostly) called "the poor", those generally brown people who clean up
your office hours before you come in, prepare food early so that you can eat
at noon, collect trash, etc. I know, they don't vote and don't really count,
who cares if they can't see the daylight all winter long?

Yeah, that's a cynical take on the class orientation of HN... (I don't get up
at 5 and never ever reach the office before 10:30 myself).

~~~
jedberg
I don't think you're right that it's mostly poor people who get up early, but
even if it is, they would benefit even more from permanent summer time. There
would still be sunlight after they get off work, and if they started their
shift at 5am, then they get a whole lot of sunlight after work, an hour more
than they would otherwise.

------
bbojan
I hated DST, but now that I have kids I really like it - it means in the
summer I have one more hour of sunlight to play with them outside after I come
back from work.

------
throwaway123001
The consultations might have had a different result if there had been a
practical multiple-choice test with questions that link the idea of DST to
actual consequences. Like:

 _Would you like to go to work in the light or in the dark during winter
time?_

 _Would you like to have some daylight while having barbecue at 9pm in the
summer._

...

(My concern is that people had no idea of the practical consequences beside
_sucks-to-have-to-get-up-one-hour-earlier_ and will be in for a rude
awakening)

~~~
nybble41
Whether you go to work in the light or in the dark is determined by your work
schedule relative to the local solar day/night cycle. Not DST. If you want to
drive to work in daylight, negotiate for your working hours to start after
sunrise. If you'd prefer some sunlight after work ends, negotiate for your
working hours to end before sunset. Keep in mind that you won't get both year-
round at most latitudes simply because a typical work day is longer than the
length of visible daylight in winter. (What would probably make the most sense
would be 10-12 hour work days in the summer and 4-6 hour work days in the
winter, centered around solar noon, but that's likely to face strong
opposition from both sides.)

The only _practical_ consequences of DST vs non-DST lie in whether we try to
force everyone to shift their schedules all at once twice a year or leave it
to individuals and businesses to set their schedules as they see fit.

There are no practical consequences for permanent-standard-time vs. permanent-
summer-time. Either way, people will adjust their schedules to suit local
conditions just as they do now, but without the complication of abrupt time
changes in the spring and fall. My preference would be to place local noon as
close as possible to solar noon (+/\- 45 minutes, to permit one-hour time zone
offsets without splitting up dense urban areas) so that morning and afternoon
are approximately the same length, but I wouldn't call that a _practical_
difference, as long as the offset from solar noon is consistent. It's more a
matter of aesthetics, in particular a distaste for needless complexity.

~~~
throwaway123001
What stores or businesses allow to choose their opening time or beginning of
shifts like that?

That _might_ work for an office worker but beside these?

~~~
nybble41
All of them? It's not like private stores or businesses are legally required
to be open at specific times. They decide for themselves when to open and how
to lay out their shifts. It's normal to have some variation in operating hours
between different businesses.

Individual employees don't necessarily have the option of setting their own
personal hours, especially for shift work, but if there's a clear preference
among the group then they have a decent chance of getting the business to
adapt its hours to suit the majority.

This is ignoring certain jurisdictions which have made the short-sighted
mistake of hard-coding specific hours into local employment laws. Such laws
would need to be updated, of course, to reflect this or any other time zone
change.

------
tilolebo
I have been wondering for a while: will this decision trigger any significant
work to make software compatible?

Or is it "just" a timezone library to update and voila?

~~~
notatoad
it's just a tz library to update, assuming you're using a tz library. Any
poorly localized software is going to have issues.

The challenge is actually getting that update pushed out to everything that
needs it. Every embedded and IoT device needs to get a new tz database, and
any applications that might use a different tz database to the system one need
to be updated. It's not significant programming work necessarily, but it's
still probably going to cause a significant number of bugs in reality.

------
JohannesH
Made this little visualization of the night/dawn/sunrise/day/sunset/dusk/night
times throughout the year.

[https://codepen.io/JohannesEH/full/JzVgeR](https://codepen.io/JohannesEH/full/JzVgeR)

------
johannes1234321
Mind that this is just a step in the legislative process not the final thing.
Next step is the EU Council where relevant ministers of the individual member
states have to find an agreement. Some governments aren't that enthusiastic ..

~~~
dpark
Do all of them actually have to agree or just some majority?

~~~
johannes1234321
This is always so complicated and I do not know. Sometimes they need a simple
majority representing so and so many citizens and so and so many different
countries (i.e. so that big countries [De+Fr+UK] can't overrule small ones and
the small ones can't overrule big ones) some hings have to be unanimous,
sometimes a simple majority is enough ...

------
demircancelebi
Turkey removed DST in 2017 after 47 years, and it did not cause much trouble.

------
FearNotDaniel
I don't have a strong opinion on whether we're better off with or without the
seasonal time change. But I don't like the idea of individual member states
opting in or out, which is what this ruling allows.

I've lived the past few years in a border town where many people will live in
Germany and commute to Austria, or live in Austria but do their regular
shopping in Germany, or regularly go on weekend mountain hikes that may cross
the border multiple times. Hopefully the authorities are smart enough to avoid
the kind of situation where the two regions would end up in different time
zones for half the year and all the ensuing confusion over bus and train
times, opening hours and so on.

~~~
Dumbdo
I think you misunderstood that bit, see this comment:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19491551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19491551)

~~~
FearNotDaniel
Well yes, I believed the BBC reporter's description of the proposal instead of
bothering to read the source document. That's thankfully a bit less ludicrous
than what the article suggested.

------
1337biz
Not bad, they now at least understand the basics of PR! Always combine an
unpopular decision (uploadfilter) with a popular one (summer time).

------
nikanj
Conveniently this is going to steal a lot of press from the copyright reform

------
mabbo
> The European Parliament has backed a proposal to stop the obligatory one-
> hour clock change which extends daylight hours in summer EU-wide.

> which extends daylight hours

No, it doesn't. The number of daylight hours is exactly the same no matter
what your clocks do.

All DST does is force everyone to change their schedules so that they wake up
earlier, go to work earlier, come home earlier, and go to bed earlier. It
effectively forces businesses to open an hour earlier and close an hour
earlier because of society's expectations.

When you describe it this way, the entire process sounds like something that
takes place in a totalitarian state run by a crazy person. Yet here we are as
a group claiming it somehow helps farmers (it doesn't, it makes things more
challenging for them). The only people who truly benefit from DST are golfers
(and golf course owners) who can leave work an hour early and get in a few
more rounds.

~~~
dezzeus
> When you describe it this way

Which is by far one of the most accurate description in this community.

> the entire process sounds like something that takes place in a totalitarian
> state run by a crazy person

It's due to the way the Universe works, it only requires a review of your
early school notes about science / geography / astronomy.

DST is _a_ way to compensate that "strange" behavior for the current
definition of a "time-zone".

Is DST good ? it depends because we over-generalize the definition of a "time-
zone" by taking in consideration only the longitude, but not the latitude.
(and above/below certain latitudes, nothing can be done)

Is DST good for EU (or North America) ? Mostly yes if you take a closer look
at the year-round daylight charts for key geographic coordinates.

Extra notes while here:

1) "EU propose to get rid of DST", its our best interest to keep it; don't let
some incompetent rule such a thing because he/she doesn't really know how it
works but only how it's perceived.

2) "If I have to choose, I prefer more daylight in the evening": fine, but
that is out of scope from DST; it's about changing schedules. Clock should
(I'd say "must") stay on their natural "time-zone" for the sake of
coordination and travel.

