The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Getting rid of DST sounds like a good thing. Not messing time is patently good. But a bunch of countries on the western side of the EU ought to be on GMT instead of GMT+1. And appparently a majority of people want to make that worse, by making a permanent switch to GMT+2.
This will make for fun winters, with the sun rising long after rush hour. This is stupid.
This will make for fun winters, with the sun rising long after rush hour. This is stupid.
This doesn't matter at all. Really. Folks in northern locations deal with it all the time. The sun rises and sets during rush hour in lots of locations in the world and it doesn't cause things to end.
For a bunch of countries in northern Europe you don't even get to make the choice during winter. All trips to/from work or school are done in the dark, because there's just not enough daylight to go around.
You're forgetting some "laws". Let me list them in order of priority:
1. Business hours must be kept in sync with the important countries next to them. This is important for communications between companies. When business hours are off by 1 hour, there is 1 hour less to communicate with your neighbour countries at business hours. That is 12.5% of the business day you cannot reliably contact another company in another country.
2. The clock must be equal to these important countries to not make mistakes when setting appointments.
3. Business people with kids have to bring their kids to school before business hours start. Schools start before business hours, about 30 minutes up to an hour earlier.
4. Shops open relative to business hours.
The reality is that north-west EU will do whatever Germany does. Germany wants GMT+2. That means that all countries west of Germany that follow Germany will have post 10 o'clock sunrises in winter, 2 hours after people get out to bring their kids to school & go to work.
Just spitballing, but I take it you don't participate in many multi-TZ meetings.
1. That's a non problem. If you're in meetings 8h/day the last of your worries would be TZ. Plus, such a time zone difference already exists today between e.g. France and the UK, Portugal and Spain, or for that matter within the US and other countries, and even within US states themselves (see AZ).
2. No it doesn't. What's most problematic when setting appointments actually is when daylight savings changes times. During the switch your regularly scheduled meetings may get messed up, times that worked for an entire remote team might no longer work for a week or two, and mishaps on new meeting schedules are all over the place. See e.g. https://youtu.be/84aWtseb2-4?t=230 to get a sense of how nutty it can get.
3. 4. I'm failing to see how using daylight savings or not makes any difference.
> The reality is that north-west EU will do whatever Germany does. Germany wants GMT+2. That means that all countries west of Germany that follow Germany will have post 10 o'clock sunrises in winter, 2 hours after people get out to bring their kids to school & go to work.
As a french I don't see the problem with that, I'd much rather have more sunlight in the evening when I can actually go out and do stuff
Maybe you don't, but it really messes with your biological rhythm to get up before dark. If you get up, go to work and start your job all while it's dark outside, it is really hard to get going and not getting depressed in the long term.
Maybe not for you, but for many it will be.
The only daylight people will experience is when they leave their job. That's rough.
When business hours are off by one hour, there is one hour less to communicate with your neighboring countries during business hours.
If you had an eight-hour work day, a one-hour time offset from a neighboring country would mean you overlap with them for seven hours, and they overlap with you for seven hours. One of you loses an hour off the beginning of your day, and the other loses an hour off the end, but that does not add up to a loss of two hours.
This is especially obvious when you have an eight hour workday with an eight hour time zone offset. That does not mean you have sixteen hours less communication time.
re: 1 and 2. Yet lots of businesses in US states communicate with other businesses (and company locations) in different time zones including those in adjacent states in some cases. To say nothing of other countries. Dealing with timezone differences is routine for many people (and fortunately something that computers mostly handle pretty well except when you forget to provide them with timezone info).
There's a good argument for not proliferating timezones beyond a certain point. But, given they exist for good reason, you're always going to have lines that people need to communicate (and even commute) over.
>1. Business hours must be kept in sync with the important countries next to them. This is important for communications between companies.
I'm going to echo another responder here: this is total BS. Here in America, it's completely routine for companies on opposite coasts to do business with each other, and there's a 3-hour time difference year-round. If we can handle that, surely Europeans can handle a 1-hour difference.
There are also union laws that mandate overtime pay off hours. These hours are often defined to be out side of 8:00-17:00, incentivizing businesses to keep open during these hours.
By that argument, the whole world might as well use UTC everywhere. The whole idea of timezones is that local time still has some resemblance to natural time. If we're going to let go of that, I'd rather we just abandon timezones altogether and use UTC everywhere.
But it would definitely make it easier to coordinate online events, including gaming. As the world gets more globalised thanks to the internet, maybe it's not such a crazy idea after all.
Or at least, maybe people should be more aware of how their local time relates to UTC, so they can think it both local time and UTC.
Exactly. We talked about this in the Netherlands and permanent +2 for us is too far off. That's St Petersburg natural time, it would mean sunrise at 10am in wintertime.
If the Germans will really push for permanent +2 time, then there will be a time zone border between us.
Opinion here in the Netherlands is divided between a preference for permanent winter time, permanent summer time, or keep changing the clocks twice a year¹.
Sunrise at 10:00 in the winter? Fine! That at least gives us some light in the afternoon.
You are neglecting public health concerns. People’s sleep tends to be disrupted when they have to wake up long before sunrise. Sleep is important for the population, more important then afternoon sunshine, I would say.
Could be! Permanent summer time has my preference but I honestly don't mind at all if I have light when I get up, but a lot of people seem to want that.
> This will make for fun winters, with the sun rising long after rush hour. This is stupid.
For a lot of people in the EU the day starts with preparing the family for work/school. However the day ends with various activities social or others. Shops and other things tends to close later rather than open earlier (eg: have you ever tried finding some judo class for the kids between 5AM and 6AM ?) More light in the evening extends the possibilities.
As other mentioned, I spent all my youth going to school before the sun rises and coming back after it has set. That's the way it is in the North.
Currently it is ridiculous that in Spain 10 o'clock in the evening is actually the same that 8 o'clock in Germany.
That is because Germany and Spain share time while being almost two timezones apart.
This was done by Franco to coordinate with Hitler long time ago.
Your definition of "making it worse" is actually making the clock go as it should. That is, the sun is at its zenith at 12 o'clock in the morning. This could be considered a lot of thing , but stupid is not.
Rush hour depends on people, people can change behavior. The sun can not.
This will make for fun winters, with the sun rising long after rush hour. This is stupid.