please empty your brain below
I leave most of my clocks/watches on Summer time all year. I also have 2 which I keep on Central European Time. I do not like making the evenings darker earlier.

John | 25.10.15 - 7:12 a.m. | #

My dear old mother-in-law used to keep the living room clock 15 mins fast, to be sure of being on time for things. But as she knew it was 15 mins fast, this may not have been as helpful as she supposed.

Great Aunt Annie | 25.10.15 - 8:14 a.m. | #

The nitpicker in me wants to object to "currently". Or rather, to amplify it, turning it into "while current rules are in force". Some day someone will tinker with them again; though if all were rational it might be to abolish clock-mucking altogether.

Malcolm | 25.10.15 - 8:22 a.m. | #

I'm mystified by John above. Surely the main point of a clock is to synchronize your actions with other people (and train timetables etc), for which purpose they need to follow other people's conventions, like them or not. That doesn't stop you getting up all year at the same time GMT, if you wish. (Though actually I find being awake when other people expect me to be awake is quite convenient).

Malcolm | 25.10.15 - 9:25 a.m. | #

If we kept things symmetrical, we'd put the clocks forward on February 20/21: that would be a welcome boost when it's cold and snowy.

Instead, we have to endure another five weeks of needlessly dark evenings. (It used to be only four, but the EU robbed us of a week of Summer Time when they standardised the date.)

Another interesting fact is that there are three 'shades' of darkness: Civil Twilight, Nautical Twilight and Astronomical Twilight. Between 23 May and 20 July it never gets dark enough for Astronomical Twilight.

Whatever we do at the equinoxes, we should have Double Summer Time (=CET) for the lighter months. It's crazy that it's light as early as 3:55am (when most people are asleep) but we then have to waste energy using artificial light after 10pm (when we're still awake). DST wouldn't be a problem, even in ScotNatLand !

Gerry | 25.10.15 - 12:06 p.m. | #

I don't think we can blame the synchronisation of summer time on the EU particularly. That was a sensible agreement among nearby countries with many transport links between them; having all the timetables mucked about on different dates through the spring and autumn would have been worth avoiding, and this would probably have happened even if the EU had never been invented.

Malcolm | 25.10.15 - 2:59 p.m. | #

@Malcolm
in these days of teleconferencing, differences in start/finish dates for DST can even be a problem between continents.
(And it always annoys me when GMT is used by (usually US based) online schedulers for UK time when for seven months of the year BST is meant)

timbo | 25.10.15 - 3:26 p.m. | #

In reply to Malcolm, fortunately the trains run from my station at the same times past the hour each hour.
Friends know my system and what time to expect me to be awake or asleep!.
I agree with Gerry I would like DST for the Summer, which would put us on the same time Central Europe during those months. Light evenings almost until 11pm. and still light before 6.30am.

John | 25.10.15 - 3:29 p.m. | #

@timbo - when you get to between continents, you also get the inconvenient fact intervening that in October the northern hemisphere is falling back, while the southern hemisphere is springing forward. And Ecuador is wondering what all the fuss is about.

Malcolm | 25.10.15 - 4:32 p.m. | #

Being my birthday today, I get to enjoy 25 hours of celebrations instead of the usual, mundane 24 hours! Something that was put to better use in my 20s than it is now in my 50s! :D

Cornish Cockney | 25.10.15 - 4:42 p.m. | #

Fed up with dark nights and clock mucking about, I've signed this:

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/109482

| 25.10.15 - 5:54 p.m. | #

" I get to enjoy 25 hours of celebrations instead of the usual, mundane 24 hours! "

A friend missed his 18th birthday altogether by crossing the dateline during the night.

timbo | 25.10.15 - 7:07 p.m. | #

We can't make the evenings lighter whatever we do with the clocks. All we are doing with BST is pretending it's later than it is. Let's keep GMT all year round as it's the best approximation we have to 'real' time - i.e. noon being when the sun is directly overhead - and if, as many claim, the majority want to get up and go to bed and do everything in between an hour earlier all year round and not just in the summer, then we can do that without mucking about with the clocks.

Sarah | Homepage | 25.10.15 - 8:12 p.m. | #

Just to confuse things, here in the USA we'll Fall back in time at 0200 on Sunday, November 1.

Colesville Garth | 25.10.15 - 8:34 p.m. | #

Really I can't get too fussed about the time changes. Thanks DG for the Interesting Facts though.

Herbof | 25.10.15 - 10:10 p.m. | #

Happy Birthday Cornish Cockney! I ust realised the 25 hours thing as we ust celebrated my partner's mother's birthday today and it his his birthday tomorrow: they both get their fair share of 25-hour birthdays :-)

EskimoPie | 25.10.15 - 11:13 p.m. | #

Actually, the EU changed to follow UK conventions rather than the other way round.

There's a picture doing the rounds of Twitter at e.g. https://twitter.com/CityMetric/status/658227617171152896 which has a graph of per-hour passenger numbers for 1928 and 2015, noting "Londoners don't seem to start work quite as early as they used to." Peering at the graph, the whole thing looked to be shifted later by a half-hour or so. That looked suspiciously like the kind of drift that can be caused by increased use of daylight savings. 7 months of putting the clocks forward an hour means about 7/12 of an hour or 35 minutes, so it checks out on a beermat.

So I went off and wrote a program to calculate the difference between mean solar time and average civil time for the year and graphed it for London and Amsterdam thus: https://twitter.com/pndc/status/658285716129103872

The answer is indeed that in 2015, London clocks run 35 minutes (and two seconds) faster on average over the year than they did in 1915.

You can see on the graph the recent change to CET/CEST rules so that central Europe is always exactly an hour ahead of the UK, which gave Europe more lighter evenings. Also visible is "double summertime" in WWII and the experiment with all-year BST around 1970. Mostly though, it just makes me envious of Amsterdam. Where's my passport!?

The script is at http://abuse.mooli.org.uk/gmtoff.pl.txt if you want a play with it for other locations.

pndc | 26.10.15 - 1:20 a.m. | #

@ pndc

Sorry, I can't agree. We had to surrender a week of BST when a common date for summer time took effect w.e.f. 26 March 1981. (In 1980 it was 16 March.)

Back then the EU was still the EEC.

However, Europe did fall into line with the UK when a common end date for summer time took effect in 1996. Prior to that they changed back at the end of September.

Gerry | 26.10.15 - 12:56 p.m. | #











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