Commentary, musings, Photography

To Spring or not to Spring …

27 Comments

… forward, that is. I find it unbelievably irritating and totally unnecessary. But what is probably a lot more irritating is that although politicians are listening to complaints about their time meddling, it’s only on their terms. Why? Because they want to nail it down to daylight “savings.”

Salvador Dali

Is it just me or is that totally thoughtless? Daylight “savings”? In December? The sun won’t peek over the horizon until 9 or 10 am. Apparently politicians don’t understand this concept. And summer? Try sending your kids to bed at 2 a.m., especially if you live anywhere northish. Yikes.

Salvador Dali

I want standard time. All year. Permanent daylight “savings” will feel like we are in the wrong time zone for most of the year and will affect our health. But apparently, daylight “savings” is supposed to be good for late shopping, so I guess that’s the only thing that matters. We’re just supposed to bow down and accept whatever is best for the God of Commercial Consumption.

Salvador Dali

What do you think?

27 thoughts on “To Spring or not to Spring …”

  1. Some of us live for the light. And we need it. We need it desperately. I can’t stand the darkness. It takes me down.

    2. Then what will you do in December and January when it’s completely dark at 9:30 a.m.? All of us need the light, but it’s much easier to provide it for ourselves if we stop trying to manipulate it.

  2. Standard time is the right choice, although my son in Vancouver wants DST. I suppose it depends on the latitude you live at. Sunrise at 9:50 AM in December does not thrill me and how would the ski hills operate normally? Open at 10 and close at 5. It is time we stopped meddling with time. Allan

    1. Agreed.

      Yes, there’s probably some effect given the latitude, but the idea of (in the winter) dealing with short daylight hours dominated by dark mornings isn’t something I find attractive. There are many drawbacks, including a drain on our health that has been well studied.

      But I also got very irritated at the poll John Horgan sent out asking if people wanted to keep changing or to stay nailed down at DST. An option for standard time wasn’t even given, and as a result, responses to the poll were low (only around 40%) and the results manipulated. Horgan also keeps yammering about changing only when Washington, Oregon and California change to permanent DST, which I also find irritating. I understand the interrelatedness of trade, but my, can’t we make our own informed choices? And if they decide to go to to permanent standard?

      1. Jason Kenney’s United Clown Posse also sent out a similar poll question. Lets lead with then answer we want. Given the breakdown of Global supply chains, maybe we ought to change to a Canadian solution. 🕛

        1. I agree. We should be determining what’s best for us as a country, not catering so much to foreign business interests. But Kenney would sell Alberta down the river in a heartbeat (not that it hasn’t happened before) if he thought it would win him the next election. I’ve dealt with major time changes for most of my life, and if that’s part of your job duties, then you get on with it.

  3. I did a blog post on this six years ago that I’m quite proud of. The politics of DST is beyond ridiculous, and you can best believe the politicians enforcing it have no clue how it actually works. The sad thing is that people REALLY believe it magically keeps the sun in the air for an extra hour each day. The unfortunate conclusion of almost every country’s obsession with some form of DST is that we’re slaves to the very system that we rely on to keep track of time. We could just adjust our schedules to the sun, but we find it “easier” to just manipulate the time instead…

    1. I couldn’t agree more. If you wouldn’t mind, please send me a link to your post as I would love to read it.

      Yes, I know that some people think we have some control over the sun by manipulating time. Yikes. It never fails to astound me what people will believe.

  4. I hear it called “savings” all the time, but it’s actually daylight “saving” time. But maybe all these politicians are thinking about their “savings.” I agree that it would be much easier if we could just stay in the time zone we’ve got and we’d be just fine. Having said all that, I looked it up to be sure and found out that it’s today that the clocks go ahead. Shock! Where have I been all this time? I must have fallen asleep under my rock and not realized it’s time to crawl out. Thanks for the reminder, Lynette. I can’t believe I would have missed it.

    1. Yes, I know that it’s actually “saving” but I was trying to be sarcastic and make the point that daylight is not a bank account from which we can draw hours when we want, as some people seem to think. I had odd conversation with someone about that a couple of winters ago, along the lines of “why can’t we change the time so that it’s not completely dark in Inuvik in January.” 😳 I don’t think our politicians have a very good grasp of what DST is all about, really. It’s more about their personal tastes rather than what’s best for most of us; ie, Doug Ford pronouncing that DST is best because he can have daylight in his back yard until 10 p.m. Pretty selfish.

      Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but it seems like you’re living your life on your own time which sounds really nice.

      1. I figured you probably knew it was saving time because you kept putting the quotation marks around it. But now I’ll confess, I didn’t realize it was time changing day. Then the Captain pointed out that actually it was last night that the time changed. I might have gone on for days, always an hour behind, so thanks for your post. These things happen when you’re retired (and I love it that it doesn’t matter).

  6. When the sun is overhead, it is noon. Period. DST needs to be done away with. There have been several people that have stated that this is a way to mess with the human body. It’s not natural. My three cents…adjusted for inflation.

    1. Hahaha. 🙂 Thank you – my thoughts exactly. DST has been studied extensively and it has been documented to cause a number of health issues. Allowing our politicians to play around with the time is foolishness on our part.

    1. Right? In the week after the spring change, there is a rise in accidents of all kinds, including fatal accidents, and especially those caused by impaired drivers. So, one of the results of DST is that some people die so that others can have an extra hour on the golf course in June …

  8. I agree! AndI ‘ll pass on the old quip about daylight savings: it’s like cutting a piece off one end of a blanket and sewing it onto the other end, to make the blanket longer…

Comments are closed.