October 2021

Summertime is done, DST is next. When will clock-changing end?

Greetings to my surprisingly large number of readers from Europe!

In whatever language you use, you generally refer to the period where the clocks are an hour later as summertime instead of the completely American Daylight Saving Time, which we of course turn into an acronym of DST. (That comes in part because we can never remember if it is saving or savings time.)

I hope you enjoyed your extra hour of sleep. Sleep is so wonderful, and almost all of us need more of it.

Of course, we also need exercise, and with the sun going down now before we get off work, that gets harder and harder. Also, take care out there… crime goes up when it gets darker earlier.

Dublin-summertime-dst-sunrisePhoto by Mark Dalton on Unsplash

You may be on this site because you thought that some law was created that would end all of this clock changing madness. There was, kind of. It didn’t really take hold for thoroughly European reasons. (I wrote about that here.)

So, for now, you are kind of stuck with it. Sorry.

We in the U.S. change the clocks next weekend, so for just this one week you are an hour closer to us. I can tell you from experience that will make trans-Atlantic calls both easier and more confusing. But, let’s celebrate the closeness in time while it lasts, and try not to complain about the rest.

I really try not to complain, and just be fascinated by all of this. I was even in Europe during the Spring Forward time change a couple of years ago, and found the perfect place to talk about it:

 

Europe took a big swing at fixing all this, but missed. (Does that expression work for fans of cricket?)

I applaud Europe for taking that big swing, and I actually thought that was the best solution for the world, and said so for a couple of years. But now that it seems dead, I’m now looking to my home country to lead the way on this.

Will we be able to do it? Stay tuned! Be sure to follow me on Twitter to get the very latest, or sign up for my extremely infrequent newsletter in the box on the right.

And when it is dark and miserable when you are trying to go home from work this week, remember that it does not need to be that way.

But until we fix it, stay strong and be healthy. And keep in touch with each other, and with me. 

Your friend in wanting clock sanity,
I remain,
Yours,

-Scott

ThisClose to Progress on DST in Canada

Well, we’ve now had the first state- or province-wide vote on the issue of Daylight Saving Time, and unfortunately the result did not go the way I had hoped as voters rejected a proposal by the narrowest of margins.

Screen Shot 2021-10-26 at 6.02.43 PM

That’s right. More than a million votes cast, and the margin was fewer than 3,000 votes.

With a margin that close, nobody can claim a huge mandate for anything, but I think there are a few things we can take away:

  1. The idea of #LockTheClock is very popular. Other than me writing a couple of blog posts, there was absolutely no organized proponent organization or message or effort of any kind. Even so, nearly half the people voted for it.
  2. There are two groups of people who voted no, those who want to keep changing the clock, and those who favor permanent Standard Time. So, those who want to have permanent summer time are about as many as those two groups put together, even in Canada where the winter nights are extremely long.
  3. I was especially interested in the town of Lloydminster, which straddles the border of Alberta (where they voted on the DST issue) and Saskatchewan (which has already decided to #LockTheClock in Permanent summertime). Voters there approved the idea, showing that people who know more about it know that not changing clocks is a very good thing.
  4. There are some Alberta-specific politics that seem to have influenced this vote negatively.
  5. I wonder if the vote would have gone differently if it was right after the Fall Back time change, when everyone has to leave work in the dark at 5 p.m.

Before the language was announced, I had pushed for the idea of asking the voters two questions: Do you want to stop changing the clock? and, If so, which time zone do you want to lock into? It’s hard to say for sure, but my hunch is that the first question would have won by a wide margin, and then the second vote would have probably gone for permanent summer time.

I haven’t seen anything like exit polling, but for argument’s sake, let’s say that half of those who voted no like changing the clocks twice per year, and half want permanent Standard Time. In that case that means that 25 percent of the votes would go for permanent ST, and half would go for permanent DST, leaving the last fourth up for grabs. Let’s be generous and say that the vote would split evenly, that would still mean a 2-1 win for permanent DST. Hard to see a lot of bad news in that.

I had really been hoping that we’d see a convincing result, but we just did not get that. If it had been sweeping, then maybe it would have been a message to the rest of the world. But given that it is not exactly the most populous province in a not very populated country that has extremely long nights in the winter, well, I don’t think this evenly split vote is going to be sending much of a message.

Not all hope is lost, however. With the fall change to the clocks coming soon my inbox is again filling up with requests from reporters and lawmakers. Maybe if the U.S. is able to Lock The Clock, Canada will want to hop on board the sanity train and join us in a future where we don’t have to change the clocks twice per year.