And Back We Go Again

Two-Minute Hate

It’s not often that I agree with the doings of the foul European Union bureaucrats, but I see that they’ve just voted to do away with daylight savings time.  And as we’re coming up to the day (next Sunday morning) where we set the clocks back to Standard Time (where they bloody should be), I gaze across the Atlantic with something approaching envy — or rather, I will next year when DST becomes a thing here again.

Of course, this being Euroland, some people are going to be inconvenienced:

If member states give it the go ahead, EU countries will no longer put their clocks back in autumn and forward in spring.  But this would mean a time zone difference between the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, with the province still adhering to Greenwich Mean Time and British Summer Time.

As if the Irish need a way to cock their lives up any further… in discussing the matter with Mr. Free Market during our regular Sunday night drunken phone call, his suggestion is to let the Micks have one time zone (either one, no matter), after pouring a boatload of guns and munitions into the hands of the Northern Irish DUP, and let them all fight it out among themselves, while the rest of Britain sits aside in (to coin a phrase) splendid isolation.

If they’re going to fight about a version of Christianity, they may as well fight over an artificial timekeeping system, too.

15 comments

  1. As some Injun/Native ‘Murkin supposedly said, “Only white man think he cut one end off blanket, sew to other end and make blanket longer”. I do hate DST. Hell, lots of people here want to make DST a year ’round thing, instead of doing away with it entirely. The sun wouldn’t come up ’til 8:30 in the morning in winter if they get their way.

  2. My cousins in the Republic and the Six Counties are tongue in cheek hoping for a hard border so they can return to their glory days of money making smuggling between the two. I suspect they will find a way to make this work in their favor, perhaps in the way of alibis.

    1. Reminds me of the old maxim: “Where there’s chaos, there’s money to be made.”
      Several thinkers believe that one of the reasons government exists is that by imposing order over chaos (one of their selling points), government can become the primary earner.

  3. I don’t care about DST v.s. “Regular” time. Just pick one and be done with it.

  4. One timezone for the lower 48. Fix it at what’s now CST, call it Franklin Time. Let the Alaskans and Hawaiians hold referendums, leave Duva-duva (“where America’s day begins”) as it is.
    Them as need to get up at dawn to tend the stock will do so anyway but their brokers on Monkey Street could use a break.
    .

    1. Living in Central time, I find I don’t completely disapprove of the idea, but I’d rather let the Chicoms have their single time zone. Who wants to deal with dawn at 3AM (or 11 AM)? [note: I’m making up times there for effect. I didn’t bother to see if they’re accurate.]

  6. DST is as useful as tits on a boar hog. It could be eliminated in a matter of weeks if it were just declared racist. So declared!

  7. Time zones are arbitrary constructions. 12 o’clock Noon at my location is about 14 minutes ahead of true local time, my brother’s is 17 minutes past. Yet we have the same clock time. If you want to get up with the chickens, get yer ass up. Nobody is stopping you.

  8. Back in the Dark ages ( ~ 1975 ) we were driving through New Mexico and stopped at a Gas station in the middle of nowhere and I noticed the clock on the wall . It was 40 minutes later from my watch. I thought that was strange and asked if that was the correct time. The guy behind the counter assured me that his clock was accurate. an hour later we stopped for dinner and they had a time that was 20 minutes earlier. We were completely confused until we learned that the Indian Reservations set their clocks to different times specifically to toy with the ” Whiteman”. “On the Res” it’s either night or day.

  9. and besides …… Remind Mr. FreeMarket that they were ones that invented precise time keeping in order to for the Royal Navy to navigate more accurately. Calculating Longitude depends on knowing the time so you can use the tables. Any idiot can measure Latitude. but you need both for a position fix.

    1. Actually all you need to know is GMT. Local time is arbitrary.

      I don’t think that they’re even teaching sight reduction using the HO tables at the Naval Academy any more. I know that they dropped Morse Code long ago. As to what happened in the Pacific twice recently they’re not doing so good a job on basic piloting.

  10. Simply declare DST to be Standard Time and be done with it. Double Daylight would be even better but I worry about triggering people.

  12. The conflict in Northern Ireland is less about religion and more about power. Religion’s just a proxy.

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