British Columbia To End Time Changes, Adopt Year-Round Daylight Time (www.cbc.ca) 182
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CBC.ca: The B.C. government says this Sunday will be the last time British Columbians have to change their clocks. The province will be permanently adopting daylight time and the March 8 "spring forward" will be the last time change, Premier David Eby announced Monday. "We are done waiting. British Columbia is going to change our clocks just one more time -- and then never again," Eby said. Residents will have eight months to prepare for Nov. 1, 2026, when the clocks would have been turned back one hour, but will now remain the same. B.C.'s new time zone will be called "Pacific Time," according to the province. Further reading: Permanent Standard Time Could Cut Strokes, Obesity Among Americans
Americans, you want the same thing? (Score:5, Funny)
Just tell cheeto that changing clocks was a liberal idea and that sharpie will scribble an executive order in no time.
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Re:Americans, you want the same thing? (Score:5, Informative)
Stop blaming the farmers. Do you really think the rural-dweller or their herd of livestock care one lick what set of segments/pixels are lit when they rise, before the sun, to begin feeding? How do you think the cattle would feel about suddenly getting breakfast an hour late*?
Or that crop farmers, during planting/harvest seasons, are going to let morning light go to waste for any/no reason at all?
That's some real BS right there.
We put up with this because of suburban parents. (and maybe some commercial interest?)
* cows aren't dumb; and stress affects production
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Stop blaming the farmers.
This was always a myth to begin with. If anything, farmers were always against it. People kept doing it under the false assumption that it would save energy, particularly during wartime. Problem is, it never really did.
https://www.fb.org/focus-on-ag... [fb.org]
Re: Americans, you want the same thing? (Score:2)
The problem for farmers is most (around here at least) work a 9 to 5 job as well as farm so they can afford their addiction to living on the land.
Animal care schedules have to mesh with schedules tied to the time zone. One schedule is static and the other flip flops twice a year. It's a pain in the ass issue that mainly benefits the golfing cult.
Re:Americans, you want the same thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
I am all for ending the time changing, but I'm strongly opposed to daylight savings time year round. Stick with standard time.
DST has never had anything to do with farmers. I'm not sure where that myth got started. I first originated during WWI as a way to save fuel, although I don't think it ever saved anything.
Re: Americans, you want the same thing? (Score:2)
You live on the western end of your time zone, don't you? I live on the eastern end of mine. And sunset is before 430pm in the winter and it fucking sucks. Maybe let's split the difference and go to utc-0430 for New England.
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Yes, and with DST in the dead of winter, dawn in Boston won't happen until 8 AM. Full on daylight won't be until about 9 AM.
All it will take is one cycle of DST during winter, and everyone will clamor for either going back to the semi-annual shifting, or Standard Time. That's what happened last time this misguided experiment was actually tried.
Oh, dear readers, you didn't realize? Yes, the very same argument --- exactly the same discussion --- happened in the early 1970s, and, for exactly one year, 1974,
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Seriously? You thought an appeal to learn from history would work?
The majority of people outside of \. are idiots, and the people here don't have the sway to end this stupid time change.
Every year articles for ending this shit stating the reasons and logic appear, but nothing ever changes.
Most people are just brain-dead automatons that don't think beyond the basics.
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And most of the rest of the country says...
"Fuck Boston"...
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The time changes are necessary to cause mental blips in cognition. It is how 'they' ratchet up the pressure with less backlash.
Re:Americans, you want the same thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
America's problems go far deeper than dementia Hitler, the two houses of Congress are nothing but petty robbers so old they think walking on two legs is a modern invention, and it has a populace so disconnected and uncaring about how the government works or what it does they keep re-electing these paleozoic cretins indefinitely. Cheeto man is just the apotheosis of glitzy, substanceless drooling uncaringness that is the United States.
Re:Americans, you want the same thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a congressional law that mandates any state that starts using daylight savings time cannot legally stop without permission
Not quite. The Uniform Time Act of 1966 standardises DST, but states can opt out by passing a law, having no DST and sticking to standard time.
It would stop then having permanent DST, like BC, as any DST must follow the federal standard.
And a good thing too. Permanent DST is stupid. Noon means noon. You want more evening sun? Regulate commerce hours to start earlier.
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Communication works because people use words with consistent meaning. You don't fuck around with that without a very good reason.
Similarly, you don't just redefine Greenwich to be your town, so that GMT is now conveniently the same as local time for you.
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If they did lean I'd guess it was slightly for DST.
I personally don't care, just pick one and quit changing twice a fscking years....
Permanently daylight savings? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Permanently daylight savings? (Score:5, Insightful)
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How many people actually look at the time at exactly "noon" and look up at the sky and actually bitch that the sun isn't at the highest point? We don't tell the time with sundials anymore
Maybe with AI we could go back to everybody having their own personal noon :-)
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Who cares if the sun is directly overhead at "noon" Just pick standard or daylight time and stick with it. You're never going to make everyone happy since the time from east to west of the time zone is going to differ by nearly an hour. so one side might have the highest point at "noon" while the other side has it at 11a or 1p. How many people actually look at the time at exactly "noon" and look up at the sky and actually bitch that the sun isn't at the highest point? We don't tell the time with sundials anymore, it really shouldn't matter
It's less about the sun being overhead at noon and more about synchronising our working day with our circadian rhythm. Before we all had clocks, this is what we used to do naturally as seasons changed the number of daylight hours. In simple terms, work when it's light and sleep when it's dark. Before the trains forced a uniform time zone, it wasn't uncommon for different parts of Britain to have different time zones, the clock above the Corn Exchange in Bristol has two minute hands, one for GMT and the othe
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That's what it's been for millennia, until the railroads introduced "standard" time, which kept the same intent - 12 PM is as close to noon as is practicable.
It's idiocy to move wall clock an hour from that. It has absolutely no benefit. If unlinking wall time from Sol, everyone might as well just go to UTC.
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The EU is spread over three timezones, plus a few more for the distant French (and Dutch) territories.
- the Baltic states and Greece, probably Cyprus, maybe Finland
- pretty much all of the rest
- Portugal, Ireland
That's from memory and I may have got some of those wrong.
The reason Spain is in the "all of the rest" block rather than Portugal, Ireland (and the UK) is that General Franco owed and admired Hitler and he decided to have his country on the same time zone as the German Reich. The Spanish adapted (t
Re:Permanently daylight savings? (Score:5, Insightful)
Change whose schedule? Would you prefer passing all sorts of laws changing the start time of schools, the official working times, the shop mandatory opening times? Changing a standard is orders of magnitude easier, especially when one realise that your idea of "high noon" is fantasy that doesn't exist in much of the world and in many places where it does, it only does so for half a year anyway, and that before you consider the tilt of the earth not putting the sun overhead year round anyway.
Don't confuse solar noon and noon. If you want to be a Pegan and worship sun gods in the forest then by all means, but for the rest of the world "noon" is 12 o'clock regardless of where the sun is.
Though I will concede this change will piss off anyone who owns a sundial.
By the way where I live solar noon is at 12:56 in Jan and at 13:48 in Jul, and no one cares. That said I guess in BC people will care, after all 2026 years ago they didn't have wristwatches and the sun's location was the only way to tell the time. /lamejoke
In reality solar noon is currently at 12:26 in in Vancouver, so it's not like the sun is correct now either.
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We can do flexible scheduling for those that need it - we have the technology. Daylight savings nearly half a year is like constantly changing the standard.
Like many people at this point, just pick one and stop changing it.
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We can do flexible scheduling for those that need it - we have the technology.
No we can't. Society exists in synchronization. You working an our earlier or later doesn't suddenly change the bank's opening hours or the time you need to pick up your kids from school.
But yeah I agree with not changing the clocks, that said I'm firmly in team *permanent daylight savings*. Having noon at 13:30 is great. There is so much I can do after work when it is still light outside and I have no problem driving to work in the dark, and my kids aren't raised to be pussies so they can walk to school in
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4 time zones won't be enough for that!
Re:Permanently daylight savings? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like you want to go back to the concept of "local time for local people", which existed before railways required common timekeeping for the entirety of a route... Noon was at different times of the day for east-west services...
There are reasons why "local time for local people" didnt work then for anything more than a single town or village, and those reasons are still valid now.
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North Pacific Time with the usa in south? (Score:2)
North Pacific Time with the usa in south?
Re:North Pacific Time with the usa in south? (Score:5, Informative)
No, just Pacific Time (PT) - we are not using Pacific Standard Time (PST) or Pacific Daylight Time (PDT.)
The neighbours to the south will still use PST and PDT.
millions of devices (Score:3)
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I've seen a lot of thermostats that change their clock settings twice a year with no way to make that not happen.
My thermostat doesn't have any notion of DST, so it's wrong for about two months per year because it takes about a month for me to notice that the furnace is running extra early or extra late and that I need to change the time on the thermostat by and hour by choosing the "Set Clock" option.
But thermostats are cheap and simple to replace, so if I actually cared I could replace it and so could anybody who has one of the weird ones you've seen.
Mine doesn't know what DST is because it has no idea what date it
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Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
If so, I can't imagine why
We've all got time enough to cry.
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Does anybody really know what time it is?
Does anybody really care?
If so, I can't imagine why
We've all got time enough to cry.
The time is ... 25 or 6 to 4.
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Should I try to do some more....?
Another Canadian... (Score:2, Funny)
It's about time! Saskatchewan has been doing this since 1972!
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No Saskatchewan certainly has not being doing permanent daylight savings time since 1972. Central standard time, yes. Central daylight, no.
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Sure I'm strongly in favor of that. If Alberta had asked in their referendum if people wanted to keep MST year round, it would have passed in a landslide. but I, like most Albertans who voted, am strongly opposed to DST all the time, though. In fact I prefer the time the status quo to being on DST all winter.
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So has parts of eastern BC, MST all year round, though for how long I don't know. Lived in Creston around '82. In the summer the clocks aligned with the rest of BC and in the winter, aligned with Alberta. Parts of the Peace country are similar.
Screw timezones and use Zulu. (Score:3, Insightful)
Screw time changes, everyone should just use Zulu and be done with it.
WTF cares if is it's "high noon" at 12:00 or 21:00, it's just a fucking number.
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China uses one time zone for the entire country. It is of course Beijing time. Interestingly such a policy solves absolutely none of the problems that people have with time zones in general. Because the time zone is so divorced from the actual solar time in far away regions, instead of working 9 to 5 (haha right), you'd be working 7 to to 3. This has all of the same problems as time zones with none of the benefits. I think they do it because it's part of how the CCP maintains this myth of a homogeneous
Re:Screw timezones and use Zulu. (Score:5, Interesting)
Having a single timezone avoids issues with things like broadcast times depending on where you are, or having to change your clocks as your train/flight progresses. If it says your high speed train will arrive at 2 PM, it will arrive at 2 PM, not 2 PM local time 4 PM destination time. You know exactly how long it will take to get there.
China isn't the only country that does it. Japan has a single timezone for the whole country, for example.
Most countries don't have DST either.
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China isn't the only country that does it. Japan has a single timezone for the whole country, for example.
Japan really doesn't span enough longitude to warrant multiple time zones, unlike China which spans something like 5.
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Japan covers 3 timezones. There are periodic complaints from Okinawa about it, but I don't think people in eastern Hokkaido care.
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Japan has a single timezone for the whole country, for example
Same with Iceland.
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China uses one time zone for the entire country.
As does Mexico, slightly closer to home.
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UTC or TAI?
I'm all for getting rid of leap seconds.
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Because people schedule their days based on those "fucking numbers". Normal people unless they work earlies or live north of the artic circle expects to get up when theres still 6 hours of darkness ahead or try to sleep when its bright sunlight at 2am.
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Screw time changes, everyone should just use Zulu and be done with it.
WTF cares if is it's "high noon" at 12:00 or 21:00, it's just a fucking number.
I'm so tired of seeing this tired old red herring trotted out during debates about daylight saving time.
Using local time versus UTC has absolutely nothing to do with DST. You can get the same effect by eliminating DST and keeping a static UTC offset for local time. There's a reason that Britain, for which GMT/UTC is local time still has British Summer Time (UTC+1) during the summer.
The problem is how the rising and setting of the sun affects schedules. Using UTC everywhere means you'll have people saying
GMT Forever! (Score:4, Insightful)
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No need ol'chap, that is jolly good.
Wait... maybe younger?
Nah bruv.
Just do it! (Score:4, Interesting)
Near-lifelong B.C. resident here...
People have grumbled about time changes as long as I can remember. Pick one. Stick to it. Just do it.
I can't say I agree with their choice. Not so much the crazy late sunset in the summer - we're used to that - but the very late sunrise in the winter. The sun will still set by 5 in December and January. So what?
...laura
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Its just a distraction from a premier who has a very serious budget deficit problem, drug problems, homelessness problems, shrinking economy, and so on
But HEY! Daylight savings! Look over there!
Half-good (Score:2)
This is a half-good decision. Not changing the clock twice a year is good. But it would have been better [aasm.org] to go with Standard Time.
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The should have gone with metric time. 10 hours to the day, 100 minutes to the hour, 100 seconds to the minute. They're still living in the old Babylonian system.
I hope it's contagious (Score:2)
As an Ontarian who has wanted the see the end of DST for several decades now, I hope British Columbia's good sense is the catalyst that causes the rest of Canada to consign this obsolete practice to the trash heap of history.
I don't much care whether they choose to adopt Standard or DST year around. That said, it seems to me that splitting the difference by moving all the clocks by thirty minutes - half-way between Standard and DST - is the most equitable solution. I don't understand why doing it this way h
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If Ontario moves to a UTC-4:30 time zone, Newfoundland will have to up the ante and move to UTC-3:15!
Things to Consider (Score:2)
Can they do that? Sure, they can skew the clock later, but, then what happens? Will the folks affected by sending their kids off into the darkness in the winter start changing the school time to an hour later? If so, will businesses begin changing their hours to an hour later to accommodate the folks that are taking their kids to school and picking them up. Will the whole system slowly shift under the weight of each complaint that rises in the winters so's that, eventually, they'll have year-round
finally (Score:3)
The time changing is a glaring example of how our governments are unable to make decisions when no lobby is pushing them. It's a disgrace to humanity that decades after every last shred of doubt that it does anything good has been eliminated, we still have it.
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The time changing is a glaring example of how our governments are unable to make decisions when no lobby is pushing them. It's a disgrace to humanity that decades after every last shred of doubt that it does anything good has been eliminated, we still have it.
Except that in this case, we've already tried year-round DST. Twice! From 1942-1945 and from 1974-1975.
Both times, people hated it. It seems like a good idea, but people don't like it being pitch black in the winter when they go to work and kids go to school.
residents aren't the problem: SOFTWARE is (Score:2)
Again, they think they can change this crap whenever they want. Computers don't work that way. Anything that involves scheduling a future event is now a problem. If they stored it in pure UTC (just a TZ offset) or EPOC, it will be an hour off. Every single calendar event could be an hour off.
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Yup, I have a bunch of older devices that won't get updates, weird things like thermostats and even my 1st gen iPod Touch (which I use as an alarm clock, battery lasts almost a month just sitting there offline! Wake up to tunes..)
Newer devices will get updates, NBD, this isn't Y2K. I'd rather we move in this directions than moan about really old hardware.
Ridiculous (Score:3)
Mmmm DST is bad (Score:3)
The usa tried this going with the daylight savings time instead of standard time. .. well... its congress what do you expect.
It lasted 1 year. The outrage was so great they changed it back after 1 year.
Why they didn't just adopt Standard Time is
Why we can't just keep Standard time year round is absurd to me.
haha contrariness (Score:2)
Ironically, the closer you are to the poles to more that daylight savings time makes sense due to wide variations in daylight between seasons.
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Not really. It makes no sense near the equator, you're correct. The day length doesn't really change much so no point playing with the clocks. But near the poles, the day length changes too much. You can't save daylight that isn't there - and don't need to save daylight when you've got more than you could ever use.
Re:Envy (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, BC was initially waiting for California/Oregon/Washington to do the same thing. I guess the government got tired of waiting!
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I'm in Washington, and looking north... I am green with envy right now.
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Well now perhaps that BC moved forward with it the three states can go "Hey, they've already done this and it's fine!" and try to push this forward but who really knows...
Re:Envy (Score:5, Insightful)
Friendly tip: don't say anything about the "51st state" around Canadians. Not even if you're joking. It's uncool, and one of the big reasons Canadians are boycotting the USA right now as a travel destination, and avoiding USA products in stores.
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It was funny until someone decided to make it real. Then, not so funny. At all.
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Not even if you're joking. It's uncool, and one of the big reasons Canadians are boycotting the USA right now as a travel destination
This just makes the joke even funnier.
You must be an American. I'm guessing you're one of the 77 million of your fellow citizens who voted for Trump. A president who mocked and threatened the sovereignty of a neighbor and historical ally.
You think the joke is even funnier because Canadians don't think it's funny at all. If you maintain an attitude like this, don't be surprised if Canadians don't come back to the USA for a generation or longer.
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don't be surprised if Canadians don't come back to the USA for a generation or longer.
That would be the funniest thing of all time.
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don't be surprised if Canadians don't come back to the USA for a generation or longer.
That would be the funniest thing of all time.
Maybe for you, but not for the people who rely on tourism for a living. They're losing billions of dollars because your guy has turned tourists off from visiting. They have begged Canadians to come back, with billboards in Canadian cities, special discounts, offers to accept Canadian money at par, and so on.
There are tourists from other countries, but Canadians are -- well, were -- among the largest groups of international tourists, who stay longer than domestic tourists and spend more money.
So you just wan
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Not even if you're joking. It's uncool, and one of the big reasons Canadians are boycotting the USA right now as a travel destination
This just makes the joke even funnier.
It's especially funny when you say it to Canadian border officials when going through immigration to enter Canada. Try it!
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At least they CAN do something. In the USA, States don't have that choice, still. They can choose to follow DST or ignore DST, but NOT always use DST. The bill to allow it has been close a few times. Still hoping.
Well that's news to me. Arizona does not observe DST because summer evenings would be too hot. And yet the Navajo Nation (most of which is in Arizona) does in fact observe DST -- they even had their own tzdatabase entry for awhile (but now use the Denver code if I'm not mistaken.)
If a state or a First Nations tribe can decide whether or not to observe DST, why couldn't they decide to observe it permanently?
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>"If a state or a First Nations tribe can decide whether or not to observe DST, why couldn't they decide to observe it permanently?"
I have no idea why the law was written that way. It makes no sense to me (or most anyone from what I can tell). But that is why no State can have permanent DST, still.
Time/light is something greatly affected by latitude and proximity to the timezone cutoffs. It is something that very much should be more under local control.
Re:Envy (Score:4, Informative)
Don't be so envious. It will mean that children will need to go to school in the dark. Typical sunrise times for southern BC are 7:45 to 8:00 AM, and for norther BC it happens around 9:00 AM. All Pacific Standard Time. With Daylight Saving Time year-round, those times will all be one hour later.
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It will mean that children will need to go to school in the dark.
Not necessarily. Just start classes an hour later.
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It will mean that children will need to go to school in the dark.
Not necessarily. Just start classes an hour later.
Then their parents will need to start work an hour later. And other businesses will need to change their start-times. And so on.
BTW, the sunrise times I supplied were for December, the month of the winter solstice.
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Artificial illumination exists.
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>"Don't be so envious. It will mean that children will need to go to school in the dark."
So? It will still be dark in the morning at 7a. That is the nature of winter. I remember waiting at the bus stop in the dark for months when I was a kid. It does depend on latitude and how close or far one is from a timezone line, of course.
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Won't someone think of the CHILDREN!
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If you knew anything about vancouver and the coast it is that it is typically grey, raining and miserable 24x7 from sept to june. "The sun" barely comes out at all (this year not withstanding).
So lets just say, people are already used to that!!
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One, kids get run over on their way to school.
We do not use artificial lighting the same ways we did in the 70s. That much is obvious from the fact there's little seasonal variance when moving clocks around. Nor are the drastic regional variations between places where kids are in the dark regardless of what time the sun rises.
Two, as someone who has worked Wall Street hours before, it is insanely demoralizing to go to work before the sun comes up and come home after the sun has gone down.
Imagine how good you're gonna feel having afternoon sun the year around.
just relaying that this experiment has been tried before and it always gets walked back
Because it's been done once or twice 50 years ago? Sounds like you're making a solid case for trying it again, not a solid case for not doing so.
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They should have stuck with permanent Standard Time. That's what most health experts recommend.
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And? Maybe you should teach kids to harden the fuck up. Much of the world has no problem sending their kids to walk to school in the dark.
Pointing to the 1970s is stupid. Lots of things have changed in the past 50 years, not the least of which is that cars are far better at illuminating the road, street lighting is orders of magnitude better, and in general the story you linked to pointed to a bunch of isolated anecdotes that in no way have any proof that they wouldn't have happened if the sun were up too.
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We had no problem with it at all....
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Vancouver has you covered. Literally.