Time zones and why they change so damned often

[Alister]

On Thu, 09 Jan 2014 07:17:25 +0000, Mark Lawrence wrote:

> On 09/01/2014 04:14, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> On Thu, Jan 9, 2014 at 2:54 PM, Ben Finney <ben+python at benfinney.id.au>
>> wrote:
>>> I'm approaching it with the goal of knowing better what I'm talking
>>> about when I advocate scrapping the whole DST system :-)
>>
>> I would definitely support the scrapping of DST. I'm less sure that we
>> need exactly 24 timezones around the world, though. It's not nearly as
>> big a problem to have the half-hour and quarter-hour timezones -
>> though it would be easier if timezone were strictly an integer number
>> of hours. But DST is the real pain.
>>
>> What I find, most of the time, is that it's Americans who can't handle
>> DST. I run an international Dungeons and Dragons campaign (we play
>> online, and new players are most welcome, as are people watching!),
>> and the Aussies (myself included) know to check UTC time, the Brits and
>> Europeans check UTC or just know what UTC is, and the Americans say
>> "Doesn't that happen at 8 o'clock Eastern time?" and get confused.
>> I don't understand this. Are my players drawn exclusively from the pool
>> of people who've never worked with anyone in Arizona [1]? Yes,
>> I'm stereotyping a bit here, and not every US player has had problems
>> with this, but it's the occasional US player who knows to check, and
>> the rare European, British, or Aussie player who doesn't.
>>
>> In any case, the world-wide abolition of DST would eliminate the
>> problem. The only remaining problem would be reminding people to change
>> the batteries in their smoke detectors.
>>
>> ChrisA
>>
>> [1] For those who aren't right up on timezone trivia, AZ has no DST.
>> Similarly the Australian state of Queensland does not shift its clocks.
>>
>>
> I remember this "From February 1968 to November 1971 the UK kept
> daylight saving time throughout the year mainly for commercial reasons,
> especially regarding time conformity with other European countries".  My
> source http://www.timeanddate.com/time/uk/time-zone-background.html

we dont have "Daylight saving time" we switch between GMT (Greenwich Mean 
Time) and BST (British Summer Time) at some point in the past we have 
also used DST (Double Summer Time).



-- 
Endless the world's turn, endless the sun's spinning
Endless the quest;
I turn again, back to my own beginning,
And here, find rest.