Speaking as someone who has lived about the same length of time with DST as I lived without it, let me, once again, register my displeasure with messing around with the clocks twice a year. I haven’t noticed a single benefit from it. I have noticed a handful of problems with changing the clocks, however.
Yeah, how about you spare a thought for Australia while yer’ at it.
We have four states on the east coast in the one time zone. Tasmania kicks off their DST about four weeks before Victoria* and New South Wales. Queensland stays forever behind the times and refuses to entertain this new-fangled invention at all. There’s a reason for all those Queensland jokes I tell’s ya…all that sun they get must’ve addled their brains or something.
*Victoria is extending their DST time into Autumn by about two weeks this year, and will join Tassie in the earlier initiation next Spring. I don’t know what NSW is doing, but I can assure you, Qld will remain forever 1 hour (plus 50 years) out of synch.
:rolleyes:
I can sympathize.
Normally, my flight from Dubai to Frankfurt leaves at 1:45am. While it is a chore to stay up that late, I can usually do it. Anything longer than that and I’m nodding off. But now because of the daylight savings change, the frickin’ flight doesn’t leave until 3:45AM!!
It creates a number of problems:
a) Getting just enough sleep so that I don’t sleep on the boring flight?
b) Sleep and take a chance on missing the plane entirely? Like I’m going to be able to fall asleep with that worry until I’m exhausted, in any case.
c) Stay up (at that point it would be close to 24 hours) and be a zombie for days afterwards?
It wouldn’t be so bad if my travel day before I get to Dubai didn’t start at 4am the previous morning. Another problem is that once in Dubai I have to entertain the girlfriend. Granted we don’t leave the hotel room much, but it is still, well, rather draining and sleep isn’t much of an option in any case. And there are still 18 hours worth of flights plus a 7 hour stopover in Frankfurt to go. Ugh!
Just scrap the whole damned thing if you ask me.
But… We didn’t have “fast time” or “slow time” - we stayed on EST all year long. We simply didn’t change, and I LOVED IT! I think DST is a major pain in the ass and is unnecessary.
Since the PTB decided we were going to start back up with DST, I would have preferred the Central time zone over Eastern though. Especially since I live on the very western edge of the state.
There’s the other nonsense argument, too, that it will mean that offices & such are working at the same time as in other European countries. Because obviously it’s impossible for people to just go to work an hour earlier when they need to match Berlin or Milan.
By the way, there is a small part of Northern BC/Alberta that doesn’t observe DST either. Up by Dawson Creek/Fort St. John/Chetwynd.
My parents live there (and I gre up there) and I have to be careful round DST changes or I might call an hour past their bedtime.
OK. After that let’s synchronize our spelling. 
Seriously, though we do speak the same language I can accept the fact that our DST isn’t in sync. Our countries are 3000 miles and more distant from each other.
On the other hand, last year at this time we drove down to Rosarito Beach, in Baja California, and had to set our clocks back one hour. Having to set my watch for a trip of less than 150 miles, not even crossing a time zone yet, was weird.
Insert ‘usable’ before ‘daylight’ and it makes absolute sense to me. Daylight from 4AM to 6AM in the middle of what we can laughingly call the British “summer” is useless. Daylight in the evening opens up outdoor activities until 10PM (or later if BST is extended another hour).
In recent years we have had to fall in line with Europe. It used to be the morning after the third Saturday in March (or if that was Easter, the second Saturday)
Actually, that’s why they’re so screwed up. Centuries of sticking unnecessary "u"s and "e"s in words is what’s caused the BTL (British Time Lag), and many experts predict that if they don’t stop it fairly soon, they’ll quickly fall behind the rest of the world by as much as a whole year! I’m sure when that happens, Lobsang will post a Pit thread raging about this as well.
You know how awesome it is not having to adjust your clocks all the time? Really awesome. In fact, if I have to adjust the time on my clock, it means I’m travelling somewhere, and that’s an entirely new level of awesome.
Further, I’ll have you know, we are no longer 50 years out of synch with the rest of Australia. By my reckoning, it’s about 1994 here, meaning we’re a mere 14 years out. We hope to have Broadband internet sometime soon, and I’m told you lot down south have some sort of “mobile phone” network happening as well, which we can look forward to in the near future.* 
*Jokes aside, the cellphone coverage up here is pretty crapular at best, especially if you don’t aren’t with Telstra and their disastrous NextG network…
Well, it does remind you to change the batteries in your smoke detector! 
It does? :eek:
What this means is that during summer the 6th largest metropolitan area in Australia (the Gold Coast-Tweed area) is on two time zones, with the boundary falling in the middle of a street which has one side in NSW and the other in Queensland. Boundary Street, Coolangatta - Tweed Heads. It’s a popular area to visit at Christmas and January, so one advantage of the arrangement is that people can celebrate New Year’s Eve twice – once in NSW, and the second time an hour later in Queensland.
I just scrolled a little to the west, and noticed that the boundary line appears to go through the terminal of Collangatta Airport. That must make things interesting…
Edit: no, wait, it just passes outside one corner.
Maybe just me then. My dad is a firefighter, and we were always innundated with the “When you change your clocks, also change the batteries in your smoke detector” meme.
Was this ever a big push elsewhere?
But the runway goes through time zones, so it can take about an hour to go from one end to the other (or minus an hour if you’re going in the other direction). But I think the airport operates on Queensland time, even though part is in NSW.
can we swear in pit thread titles?
Please don’t. Thanks. 