I Want My Hour Back

With the weekend arriving, it brings with it the annual farce....er....tradition of moving the clocks forward an hour to Daylight Saving Time or British Summer Time as we call it back in the UK (which is a joke in and of itself - British Summer? are you kidding?!). And naturally, the usual gripes and groans and debates of whether it actually does any good are brought up, talked about and then put in storage until next year - hey, at least it's recycling of a sort. Now, the idea of DST goes back to 1907 when it was first proposed by William Willet as a means to increase opportunities for leisure hours during afternoon sunlit hours - sounds like a good enough reason to me. After all, we're usually not all up at the crack of dawn so those sunlit hours after work are very welcome - makes me feel less of a vampire (even though i'm not overly found of getting up and it still being dark outside - but hey, you gotta take the rough with the smooth). These days, though, DST is nearly always trumpeted more as a means to save energy from lighting that would be needed during evening hours. But is this actually true?

Well, there are a few studies out there and the results are mixed to say the least. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the general consensus is that there is little over all difference. Indeed, some reports are suggesting that daylight savings time actually INCREASES energy consumption which makes that whole argument certainly less than convincing. Last year in the US, when the start of DST moved forward two weeks and the end moved back one week, US gasoline demand increased as well. Which is perhaps unsurprising if people are taking more time to travel and do leisure stuff. Of course, DST is most useful to retailers and other businesses - with plenty of extra spending and retail happening as a result of extra daylight. So i have to ask the question of whether it's really worth it our not? Can't we just comprimise and move our clocks back 30 mins and leave it at that instead of changing them? Or should we just leave them as they are right now? Given that there are countries, states and, indeed, counties here in the US that do and don't observe DST, won't it make it less confusing for all?? Answers on a postcard....