Summer Time
For us European-types, tonight marks the time when we put our clocks forward one hour onto summer time i.e British Summer Time (BST) in the UK and CEDT in most of the rest of Europe. The upshot is that Europeans and Russians will get an hour less sleep tonight whilst Australians will have one extra.
Daylight savings is a practice followed by many countries positioned away from the equator. It is mainly an attempt to shift daylight hours to a more suitable time for agriculture although I've always wondered why people can't just get up an hour earlier instead of us going through the twice-annual confusion especially as many parts of the world change on different dates. Interestingly, there are at least three major industrialised countries - Japan, China and India - that don't observe daylight savings and that makes up a significant fraction of the world's population that don't have to worry about it.
If only somebody would let the miserable British weather know that summer is supposed to be on the way.
Comments: Summer Time
Hate it, never ending light polluted summer evenings until November now :(
Posted by James on Saturday 29th Mar 2008 (23:01 UTC)
Indeed, I find it quite frustrating, especially when you're not listening to the radio or something because you just don't remember. I missed class one day because of that, felt like a total jerk and idiot.
Posted by Clement on Saturday 29th Mar 2008 (23:01 UTC)
Actually we have changed our daylight saving dates here in NSW, Australia. We are now putting our clocks back on the first weekend in April; next weekend, so we still have another week of dark mornings but light evenings.
Posted by Rob on Sunday 30th Mar 2008 (10:15 UTC)
Rob, NSW and Queensland work on different times, don't they? My aunty lives near the border and says it causes all sorts of confusion for the people who work on one side of the border and live on the other. I got to stand astride that border back in 2006.
Posted by Stuart on Sunday 30th Mar 2008 (22:00 UTC)