Time zones and why they change so damned often

[Bob Martin]

in 714232 20140109 120741 Alister <alister.ware at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>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).

British Summer Time *is* Daylight Saving Time.