Who actually benefits from changing the clocks?

[shockwaze]

Kids up at 5:30. Pretty sure that the same thing has happened in many, many houses this morning.

It's just an hour, but so disruptive to children.

Who benefits? Winds me up every year.

🤣 was going to say the same. This level of ignorance and stupidity can’t be for real surely 🤦‍♀️

I can't find the reference but working mothers get up on average at something like 5:50 am, so quite like the extra month of not getting ready in the pitch black.

changing the clocks has been associated with increased strokes, heart attacks and messes with our brains. We should be on GMT all the time.

All the ‘oh, but kids walking to / from school in the dark’ would be solved by sticking to GMT all year round rather than switching to BST.

OP: who benefits from this thing I am determined to be arsey about?

PP: me, I benefitted.

OP: no, not you. You’re too specific.

PP: farmers.

OP: fuck them!

PP: my kids are fine with it.

OP: well aren’t you just great???!!!

This is one of those posts where the OP doesn’t really want people to answer the question as they’ll just shoot down anyone who comes back with an answer that isn’t the one they want to hear. Fine. I do feel people with small
children often think the country should revolve around them. I had small children and that was my choice. I didn’t think it elevated me to the position of dictating that farmers should go fuck themselves because my world was more important.

Are you always so humourless

Well OP, I for one can’t help but have some admiration for how you’ve managed to whip so many people up in to a froth with such a mundane subject. Incredible skills.

I thang you

It was the 'fuck them' comment 🥇

All you had to do was a quick google instead of a moan about how it affects your kids.
It’s not for the farmers it’s to make it lighter in the mornings, you know for when your kids go to school. In fact they trialled without in the late 60s and more people died on their way to school/work.

Just deal with it, your kids will be fine.

shockwaze this is quite a bizarre question from someone so grumpy!

Eh? It’s not to let them stay in bed, it’s to give them more daylight in the mornings.

@shockwaze

are you??

Apparently we've only had the clocks going forward & back since 1916. Then,
"During the Second World War (1939-1945), British Double Summer Time - two hours in advance of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) - was temporarily introduced for the period when ordinary daylight saving would be in force. During the winter, clocks were kept one hour in advance of GMT to increase productivity."

There would have been no street lighting then either, and more agricultural labourers - interesting that it was brought in to increase productivity.

"In 1968, a three-year experiment was conducted with British Standard Time, keeping the clocks fixed throughout the year on GMT+1. However, the dark winter mornings were unpopular, particularly in Scotland. In 1971, MPs voted to return to the system that endures today."

"Research showed an 11.7% reduction in road casualties between 1968 and 1971. An extra hour's light in the evening is thought to offer savings of up to £35m in fuel costs. Crime rates also drop with longer evenings."

I remember reading years ago that Liverpool had a time difference to the SE (15mins if I remember right), with more time added on the further north you went, but the coming of the railways changed that. Maybe we should have England 1 hour ahead of Scotland - after all Portugal and Spain manage to have a 1 hour time difference?

Research showed an 11.7% reduction in road casualties between 1968 and 1971. An extra hour's light in the evening is thought to offer savings of up to £35m in fuel costs. Crime rates also drop with longer evenings

Imagine how many fewer road casualties there would be now with all the extra cars on the road. I don't know how many cars were in the road in 1968, but there are 50% more now than there were in 1990.

I would definitely choose BST all year round if it were an option. But failing that, put the clocks forward earlier.

I remember reading years ago that Liverpool had a time difference to the SE (15mins if I remember right), with more time added on the further north you went, but the coming of the railways changed that.

Basically pre railways, travel done by horse etc, slowly, most towns simply ran their clocks on (roughly) local solar time - time on the sundial.

Problem was that meant as you travelled due east or west then for every degree you travelled (which is only about 40 or so miles at UK latitudes) your clock was out from the local time by four minutes.

Not a big deal until the railways arrived and people started to travel relatively quickly..and so the move to a standard time across the country.

Roads are far safer now than they were in the late 60s both in casualties per vehicle/per mile and in absolute numbers so the road safety gains you'd get would probably be less than they achieved then in terms of broken bones and lost lives.
There was also a change in drink driving law around that time which makes it trickier to quantify the impact.

But it does seem that dark afternoons/evenings are more dangerous than dark mornings - even after allowing for the impact of morning ice apparently.

Absolutely agree. It’s a complete waste of time - pardon the pun! Get rid of daylight savings time.

Still the farmers....this is discussed every year yawn

Makes my 4-5am start easier tbh.

Is this sarcasm?

Putting the clocks back to GMT is to the benefit of points north of the Watford Gap. I live part of the time in Lancashire. By October it is dark at 8 a.m. which means most people are going to work/school in the dark. If we stay on British Summer Time (one hour ahead of the proper time, Greenwich Mean Time) then by December - as I can well attest from living in Staffordshire in the late 1960s when the clocks stayed on BST all year - it is not light till after 9 a.m. Further north this will be 10 a.m. and in the Shetland Islands, it hardly gets light at all. I do not understand why we put them forward, it is light enough in the evenings in summer not to bother, though I suppose in August farmers would be harvesting? But they are probably harvesting something all year, so I doubt GMT would bother them. But BST in winter bothers everyone in the North (which has hardly got over the harrying of 1086 and needs a break).

Who needs farmers, all food comes from the supermarket

😂

They have clocks, (farmers) can't they set the time for when they want to get up.

I noticed how dark it is before midnight, but afterwards, it's a lot lighter, so the farmers def benefit which means we can still get their produce.

Kids waking up sadly is typical, sorry @shockwaze I know it's a nightmare for a while.

I hate the time change inc the one in March btw...

Every time we take our kids on holiday to Europe they go through an hour time change on arrival and an hour time change on return, it's two hours if you go to Greece. I dragged mine across 9 time zones to Australia to see their Grandparents in August. The clocks changing by an hour is not an issue for me and I like it being light in the morning now.