There’s a referendum tomorrow to decide whether WA will permanently introduce daylight saving. My personal feelings are the same as Mark’s, summed up by this excellent quote:
I don’t really care how time is reckoned so long as there is some agreement about it, but I object to being told that I am saving daylight when my reason tells me that I am doing nothing of the kind. I even object to the implication that I am wasting something valuable if I stay in bed after the sun has risen.
As an admirer of moonlight I resent the bossy insistence of those who want to reduce my time for enjoying it.
At the back of the Daylight Saving scheme I detect the bony, blue-fingered hand of Puritanism, eager to push people into bed earlier, and get them up earlier, to make them healthy, wealthy and wise in spite of themselves.
I have to admit that even if I did support it, there’s a part of me who would have voted against it just to annoy some of the more obnoxious yes supporters. No, I’m not worried about my curtains and I’ve never met anyone who is. Although it’s possible that they think that the whole WA population is a bunch of morons if these ads are any clue. Seriously, vampires? Did they never learn the rules of logic? Just because vampire-Australians are against it doesn’t make it good!
Anyway, consider this an open thread in which to follow the vote or just discuss the issue. Perhaps both sides of the debate can try and not be complete arseclowns about it, but snark and good fun are more than welcome.
Well if there’s still disputes once all the votes are in, maybe you can initiate some kind of Daylight Trading Scheme… because the Emissions Trading Scheme is working so well, after all!
I think it’d make much more sense, and reflect what’s really happening, to simply change regular business/school hours rather than pretend to change time itself. It’d be much simpler to think “I’ve got to start work at 8 tomorrow instead of 9, than think i start at 9, but that’s really an hour earlier than it was today, and now the time difference between here and there is an hour different”.
This is something like the fifth referendum WA has had (in my memory). Around about now WA citizens should commence using firearms on whoever is saddling the state with constant referendums.
Great, now I’ve got nothing left to say.
That’s exactly why I’m somewhat passionate about the vote – it won’t change my life, Perth summer is way too hot to be outside regardless of what the clock says, but these people need to be taken down a peg. I’m kinda tired of being told I’m a stupid, backwards, conservative, anti-progress dinosaur (and so on) for being a night person.
I love the Robertson Davies quote, too. There’s too much puritanism in Perth already (try getting a beer anywhere after 10pm on Sunday, or doing your grocery shopping on that day), we don’t need more of it. Those bony blue fingers have left me with just an hour and a half of drinking time after the sun goes down in midsummer. To state the bleeding obvious, that isn’t much.
Steve: this is the fourth referendum in the last thirty-odd years just on DLS. I imagine it’ll come in eventually, just because the people who want it are so bloody persistent (and include most members of parliament). We also had a much more worthwhile referendum at the 2005 election to relax trading hours. Over here, that means the non-IGA supermarkets being allowed to open after 6pm on weekdays, or on Sundays. That one got shot down in flames by quite a margin, so we don’t get to do ungodly things like buy milk for a reasonable price on the lord’s day, or even two freakin’ hours before sunset when DLS is on. Hmph.
Funny thing, too. One of the few referendums to get a majority ‘yes’ vote in WA was the one in 1933 for seceding from the Commonwealth. It didn’t end up happening, but we were very nearly the anti-New Zealand. Would’ve been interesting, and there’s probably an alternate-history novel in it somewhere.
These are really weird arguments to me. I am a night person, and that’s why I love daylight savings. Daylight savings makes the sun come up, and set, later. Morning people HATE it because it means for a while longer they have to get up in the dark.
Daylight savings isn’t about making you go to be earlier – it’s about making it light after work hours for longer. That’s all. That’s why city people like it and country people, if they have an opinion, usually hate it.
I couldn’t live without it.
I loathe daylight savings. It renders me tired all summer long. Here’s an article about how it has been shown to disrupt our circadian rythm. I read also, (somewhere) that it was introduced in America after consultation with the commercial/retail sector who wanted extended daylight hours to encourage people to stay out shopping for longer.
I am by nature a night owl, but I like the very early mornings too. But I’d rather wind down at the end of the day towards sunset after a hot day, not be winding up into a frenzy of physical activity because there’s another bloody four hours of daylight left after I’ve already put in a day’s work.
I can’t wait to graduate and ditch Perth for Darwin.
* No daylight savings
* No stupid trading-hours laws
* Slightly less pathetic oppositions
* Day lengths that don’t vary by bunches of hours over the course of the year
* Not freezing to death through winter
* Retardly backwards power infrastructure
Oh, I could go on and on.
Jacques – I think I’d rather live with vampires than crocodiles.
Steve,
It is only (!) the fourth referendum on the topic. I think I can say it no better than my brother did on Facebook:
“Three No referendums and Labor still brings it in! On that alone I would vote no no no! Does that mean if there is a yes vote we can bring in a trial for no day light saving and have another referendum in 3 years???”
It was actually introduced by a joint Private Member’s Bill by former Liberal Leader Matt Birney, and former discgraced ALP turned Independent MP John D’Orazio – aided and abetted by a sustained campaign by News Ltd’s Sunday Times.
I’ll be voting no – it stuffs up my body clock and being physically disabled the humidity and heat at night affected my shoulder pain and I had shortness of breath and made drinking quite difficult.
Sounds like you’re more of an afternoon person, then. I like night, as defined to be that period where it’s dark and there isn’t a sun. It’s a lot more comfy in summer… about 25C, an ideal temperature for being outside. If it’s dark where you are, electricity goes some way to fix that, and if you’re scared of vampires, carry garlic.
Err, it gives more daylight drinking time in summer and less getting up in the dark time in winter… That’s anti-puritanical for mine. You WAers are odd.
Frank,
And Carps was, of course, frantically opposed, as was the Cabinet and Caucus (in descending order of importance, as usual).
Where you live in a time zone also makes a big difference – the further east you are, the less after work light you have and the more potential gain you have from DS.
Though I’ve always had a bit of trouble understanding the enthusiam for it in southern regions where they already get a quite late (relative to the far north) sunset in the summer.
Daylight, sure. But I don’t believe in putting down my beer when the sun sets.
I Wonder if those proposing to Vote Yes are those same people who complain every year when Lotto Skyworks start at 9pm and the following day is a work day ?
And also, the annual Xmas Pagaent was moved BACK to a daytime timeslot because parents copmplained that the late start at 9pm on a Saturday Night was making kids stay up too late and making them tired.
So much for being “Family friendly”.
well I’m voting yes. I like having the extra hours of light in the evening to do things.
I don’t know anything about Circadian rhythms, but the unrelenting heat here makes daylight saving hard to take in the summer months, and not just for families with school age children. Babies and pre-schoolers are hard to get to sleep and exposure to excessive sunlight is certainly bad for Caucasian skins if not for curtains! After-school sporting activities are particularly exhausting, whereas early morning practice times are very pleasant and easy to schedule. And as an elderly dog-walker I can tell you I have hated in the summer months having to wait until late evening for my sunset walk along the beach. My dog doesn’t like walking in full sunlight either. After enjoying the sunset with him these days I can even fit in a swim at the flood-lit pool before dinner followed by my favorite TV programs, in the cool of the evening.
If business people want more contact with E.S. counterparts why can’t they stagger their working hours and habits? After all who needs daylight to work in a store or office? That said, with the Internet, faxing and texting commercial interactivity is now possible at any time.
It’s about change for any sake. Sapped by being in Perth, punters call for anything to be different, as if some change, ANY change might make things more interesting.A proposal to switch to driving on the right hand side of the road would have the same traction here.Same with the foreshore. It doesn’t matter if the proposal is shit, put something there, anything there, a ferris wheel, a racetrack, a dog track, a giant statue of Saddam, Stalin, Willy Wonka, an island shaped like a Swan, anything, ANYTHING!
All the arguments for it are insane, hyterical, and bogus. “We will be more in line with Eastern States trading hours”. Well wouldn’t it be lovely to help giant corporations do business with Sydney. Unfortunately it would also put us out of line with our new overlords in Beijing. More time after hours to do things argument is risible. The sun stays up for f*cking hours on a Summer night. It’s being pushed by big business, no-one has wanted it in the past, and young people want it. How many reasons do there have to be to reject it?
Yairs, it’s post-modernism to blame: people think if they want it to be 6.00pm and call it 6.00pm, then it IS 6.00pm. Just fiddle with the clocks and there you are – except when you tune in to national radio – I’ve had to give up Australian radio and just listen to the BBC. “Plus 8″ I keep saying to myself, on the hour ……
I for one welcome our new Willy Wonka statue.
Westpoll: 53 per cent no, 44 per cent yes.
Too bloody right. While an opponent of daylight saving, I’m not hugely passionate about it one way or the other. Nonetheless, when it goes down tomorrow, I don’t think I’ll be able to suppress a feeling of schadenfreude towards those telling me to “grow up” or “get over it”, or that I’m “stupid”, or that they “wonder about my intelligence” – to go off today’s West Australian letters page alone. The sharp age cleavage in attitudes towards this issue no doubt explains the greater tendency of yes voters to be nasty and childish towards those who disagree with them. It so happens that I voted yes in 1992, and I’m pretty damn sure I wasn’t smarter then than I am now.
Heh! I didn’t know you were a WA expat. Well done on voting no!
Anna,
William is a Fremantle Local, and he’ll be voting in the By-Election as well
Not even an expat – a pat, if you will.
Okay, so daylight saving will kill puppies. Will it kill kittens as well? If not, vote no.
I don’t know why we have to have referenda on these kind of things. The govt. should just make the change and be done with it. THose over here who oppose the thing need to stop being so parochial and just get on board with the rest of the world. Jesus most West Australians think they are some kind of unique breed anyway, lets not encourage them.
I used to leap into the fray with this argument, but on sober reflection: I guess I dont really give a crap whether WA or QLD has daylight saving.
I just don’t want anyone to mess with it in VIC.
Cos its absolutely brilliant.
I don’t think I really like it in NSW. But that’s because I like waking up in the dark.
Lefty E I agree with you wholeheartedly, DS is fantastic in Melbourne.
Can someone please explain to me why you would not want daylight saving?
Fine, because screwing with people’s sleep patterns isn’t all that good from a health perspective. In the middle of summer the heat can make it difficult to sleep, if the sun goes down an hour later that’s 1 hour more light and heat and hence 1 hour later I can get to sleep. I still have to get up at the same time to get to work though.
But Desipis, what scerws with my sleep pattern is that in the weeks leading up to daylight saving I’m regularly woken up at 6am by daylight, instead of 7am, which suits me much better. The sun goes down at about 9pm during daylight saving, so how early do you need to go to bed? So your rgument doesn’t match my exerience at all.
Fine – DSL makes the wold noisier. Instead of beautiful, quiet early summer mornings (5.00-6.30) when I’m cycling down to the beach, before the traffic, DSL means all those cars are out on the road an hour earlier. And since it keeps people out later at night, the noise never stops. Hence DSL = an hours more noise every day of summer.
Russell, I live on a main road near a busy shopping strip full of pubs, so I’ve learned to embrace the noise
One must assume most on here are office workers,I like DLS my Girlfriend starts work at 5 30 am its dark,I started at when I lived in Sydney up at 4 30am.walk to train at 5am, I like to sit down after she gets home in Summer and talk,go for a swim or a walk or a BBQ tea.
While the sun is up its nice,I for one cant understand why all the no people don’t like it, I think some are Luddites,others like certain 6pr radio jocks one who I regard as an old fogy now and I,m sure hes a damm sight younger than me.
But then this is Perth and anything that looks like it might change the status quo or upset Bunnings is frowned upon,besides Sunday is Gods day and God does not like DLS
I must admit, when I was younger (and living in Brisbane) the lack of DS didnt bother me too much- a. since i didnt know any better, and b. so much of my rec time was night-based anyway.
But now I find I really appreciate the post-work daylight leisure time. can come home, have dinner, watch news and THEN play with my daughter in the back yard, or go for a walk, or a bike ride.
I seriously wonder whether the full quota of DS opponents actually know what DS is like. I fankly doubt it. Im a bit with Fine – are you guys serious? Have you experienced DS? For those who know it, its a major bonus in terms of work/life balance.
If I went back to Bris, Id find the work-over-sun-plummeting-from-sky thing depressing.
Conversely, Victorians would need to understand that Bris is fairly constant with dawn/dusk all year – they dont get the same “winter darkness at 5pm / YAY SUMMER= LIGHT”/ anyone opposing DS is f’n bananas!” nexus. Which is more or less self-evident here.
William – that’s what happens when you read a blog through Google Reader. You don’t notice the big blurb right at the top of the page that says where you live! I thought you were just visiting Freo for some reason…
“I don’t think I’ll be able to suppress a feeling of schadenfreude towards those telling me to “grow up” or “get over it”, or that I’m “stupid”,”
Will losing the referendum mean that you are no longer those things. I mean the ligic would be something like:
“I am stupid for opposing daylight saving, referendum goes down, therefore I’m not stupid”. Don’t really see the connection between not stupid and winning the referendum.
LE, I’ve visited Melbourne and Canberra when DLS was on and I liked it. I don’t like it in Perth and I imagine that Brisbane is the same. The climates are different, we have plenty of sun in summer.
“I seriously wonder whether the full quota of DS opponents actually know what DS is like”. Oh yes we do – before each referendum we have to have a trial – this time the trial was 3 years of DSL. If the vote is No again, we’ll no doubt have to have another referendum, with a 10 year trial.
I just voted NO to DSL and then had to number all the boxes on the Freo by-election ballot paper – it would have been so much more satisfying to have written YES next to the Greens, and then No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No, No for all the others.
Sure, like I say – dont really mind what happens in other states. I lived in QLD for 32 years though, Anna – and I only got plenty of sunlight when not working 9-5. There was seriously no chance of daytime recreation after normal work hours.
I just took that for granted then – I wouldnt now!
Caroline 7 is right – I read somewhere that the death rate actually jumps at the start of daylight saving because of the disruption to sleep patterns. Getting up early to catch a plane has the same effect.
Coming off daylight is not as bad – our bodies can handle getting up later a lot better. This is why most shift rosters go day/afternoon/night.
Live in Qld or the NT and avoid early planes is my advice.
Heh, I forgot about this one. The “don’t bother to ask the people and just do what I want” argument – I hear it every now and again, from folk who I guess are scared of their position being in the minority. Care to explain your contempt for democracy a bit further, Patrick?
The religious conviction of the “Yes” campaigners and their insulting of anyone who disagrees has alienated a lot of people who probably don’t care either way. I’m personally opposed to it, I was 13 during the 1991-92 trial and my experience as a student leaving home at 7am each day to get to school put me off it then, and working briefly as a prac teacher in 2007 did the rest. I’ve also heard young tradies complain about the effect of the change in hours on their work and lifestyle. So I don’t think the young are sold on daylight saving necessarily.
Out of curiosity, interesting looking at the referendums. 1974-75 was one we “had to have”, Labor supported it (and had tried and failed several times during the 1971-74 term to enact it) but had just lost government. 1983-84 was an election commitment again by Labor. 1991-92 was a move by the Labor government to try and distract the public from WA Inc, and 2006, which happened amidst new allegations about Brian Burke and in particular the whole Marlborough affair which was taking place at the same time as this proposal came up, was enthusiastically endorsed by Labor and still is by former ministers such as Kobelke, Carpenter and MacTiernan. It should be noted though that many country Labor MPs, several new (i.e. not in parliament in 2006) metropolitan ones and a huge stack of grassroots membership of Labor are opposed to it for as wide a variety of reasons as those in the general community.
From memory though, I think it would have failed if it was a vote for introducing DLS rather than just a trial. There were quite a few MPs who only voted for a trial, but who didn’t support DLS.
I don’t know what the numbers would be like now, though. Probably similar.
Two other points:
* It works great in Melbourne and Tasmania, I’ve been there at switchovers. However both are in different climatic regions and are MUCH further south than Perth (6-11 degrees of latitude) meaning they get shorter winter days and longer summer days than we do.
* Re: “on board with the rest of the world” – What about our trading partners in Asia? None of them have it. If “the rest of the world” is America and Europe, there’s a lot of things they do that we don’t do.
I find it bewildering that people would vote no to DLS???!!! I just don’t get it. Why wouldn’t you want an extra hour of out doors time in thr summer. It’s good for you. Melatonin!! I come from the north of Sctoland origionally and we are broad day light until 11pm in the summer so all this crap about not getting the kids to bed is feeble. I love the sun, love being able to go to the beach for an hour after work and watch the sun set or walk in the setting sun rahter than walking home in the dark??? Is it just the change western Austrlians don’t like?! Im perplexed by the resistance to change in this part of the world. If i could i would vote yes yes yes! And if it’s a no again, myself and all of the people i know will be gutted. Bring on longer summer nights i say!
Fine @34. I shall try:
Before daylight savings kicks in, the sun is rising early at approximately 5 am. For most of my life I have woken up, but not necessarily gotten up, about twenty minutes before the sun rises, sometimes its just an early morning pee and then its back to bed–depends .
Before daylight savings starts (my absolutely favourite time of year):
It’s 5 am and the sun is shining brightly, the weather is a bit warmer and the inducement to stay ensconsed in a warm doona is not as strong. So I might get up. Owning horses means its straight on with the morning feeds,rugs off maybe, whateve’s. Then coffee in the sun and I’m thinking (maybe; new day, hello world, birds are singing sun is shining, the dark days of winter are fading into the past. YaY! Let’s see what can I do around the garden/paddock. I’ve often put in a good few hours work before I have to start thinking about getting ready to go to work, should I be so lucky as to have work to go to, and if not putting in four hours or physical activity before nine o’clock is a great way to start the day and make one feel positively virtuous!
THEN daylight savings kicks in.
I still wake twenty or so minutes before sunrise but now its an hour later at six o’clock and I have less time to faff around or get stuck into doing outdoorsy type stuff. OK I can cope with an hour’s less time in the morning to get ready for the day, I’ll just rush a bit (more) Yaaah!
End of working in an office type of day and its been a hot one. I get home in what is now no longer late afternoon but mid-afternoon and as the earth starts to release its heat from the ground and the sun still bears down it is definitely the hottest part of the day. The old 4 pm is now the new 5 pm. I come home, and as its only early afternoon I don’t feel like thinking about dinner, so instead I might loll around a bit staring into space, maybe have a swim in the creek and feed the horses. There’s not much joy for them in going for a ride. They’ve just endured a hot day and they don’t feel much like getting all worked up at the end of a hot day–and nor do I. At about 7.30pm it starts to cool off marginally. Hey! I should mow the lawn or pick up poo or something in the cooler part of the evening–which I do. Suddenly, its 8.30pm. I come inside, hungry, hot, and start to think about dinner. By about 9.30 I’ve possibly cooked something and I’m eating it. Then its time for the night time activities. (am I boring you?) So after about three hours or so of blogging or whatever, I feel sufficiently wound down to think about sleeping. Its now after midnight and so I go to bed– gotta get up in the morning and when I wake, pre-sunrise it won’t be 5 am it’ll be 6 am and after only six or so hours sleep I’ll be feeling more like turning over and getting in another couple of hours. And so it goes on. The first month is the worst. But I can’t say I ever get used to the new rush to go to work in the morning or the rather odd rush to get to bed at night.
Hope this helps explain why I for one would rather not have daylight ‘savings’.
I live in Adelaide, and dislike daylight saving intensely. It’s even worse here because our clocks are already set half an hour fast (because some idiot politician wanted our business hours to be closer to Melbourne’s).
I live in Adelaide and I also dislike daylight savings intensely. I also hate the fact that they’ve extended it into April (ffs) which means the sun doesn’t get up until nearly 7.30 am in early April.
According to the WAEC site, the No vote is in front
http://www.waec.wa.gov.au/elections/live.php
“Care to explain your contempt for democracy a bit further, Patrick”
Care to explain why some religious nut/ill-educated numb-nuts reckons I shouldn’t shop on a Sunday? Or that the self same knob wants to stop me from communicating with the rest of the country after 2:00PM or that the same drop kick wants to try and prevent me from having a couple of extra hours of daylight after I get home from work.
People in general are far too fond of the idea of “deciding for themselves”. I think that there’s a couple of problems with this:
Most wouldn’t even get off their arses if it wasn’t for the threat of a fine and;
It is not axiomatic that the majority decision is the best one.
There you go BOP, suck on that birdseed.
The question put to referendum has been rejected by the voters. Again.
Congratulations voters of Western Australia. May the irredeemable evil of DST henceforth be banished from the Commonwealth.
David Irving@53: I’d always wondered why South Australia used such a weird time zone when a full hour behind the East would have made more sense.
Séan @57: Careful. You’re being somewhat absolutist-dictatorial there.
DST makes perfect sense if you are an evening person, a city-dweller whose non-work activities tend to be in the evening, AND live at high enough latitude for daylight hours in summer to be noticeable long relative to those in winters, AND do not have such high daylight temperatures in summer than sun avoidance is the main priority. Conversely, it has disadvantages if you are an early bird, have Things to Do in the early morning, or loathe having to put up with ridiculkous heat after work.
Hence: folks in most of NSW and Vic, the ACT and Tasmania have good reasons for feeling differently from you. Personally, I’d like it for even longer than we have it.
Vive la difference!
I never was any of those things, PatrickB. The point is that I’m being told that by people who are unable to spell, use question marks or count up to one (a couple of extra hours?). And why bring up the completely unrelated issue of trading hours? Your line of logic is: “I support DLS, people who disagree with me must be stupid, I support Sunday trading, the same stupid people must disagree with me about that as well”.
If someone (or some state) is to have daylight saving, & be so horned up over an extra hour of daylight, then why the eff do they not have it 12 months of the year? If ever there was a need for an “extra” (guffaw) hour of daylight, that need is in winter.
??????????????
Dig Ben Raue’s electorate result maps. Coastal Perth says yes, everybody else says no. Makes sense. There were clearly also age (close result in greying Cottesloe) and income (yes in Alfred Cove/Jandakot, no in Kwinana/Rockingham) factors at work.
Re: andyc@58:
A bit of hyperbole was employed, although my comment does encapsulate my general position on the issue.
I am actually from Melbourne where some people seem to think that DST is the greatest invention since sex and still think that DST is one of the stupidist ideas to be devised. Apart from the inconvenience it causes everyone who have to change every single timepiece in the state, it also is another attempt for capitalism to impose itself on nature. Now, while I realise that the concept of time in this case is an abstraction in itself, it is at least a logical way to measure the time of light and dark. DST is an attempt by its supporters to deny reality by changing the measuring stick of time so that it suits them, while anyone who disagrees can go and get stuffed.
The idolisation of sunlight is a theme that is pushed upon society constantly. Sunny weather = good, rain = bad (and then people complain about drought!). I personally pay no attention to weather forecasts beyond any practical detail (e.g. checking the BOM radar to see if it’s worth putting out the washing) as it is not something that I can change (beyond shutting down the world’s coal power plants). DST is a symptom of society’s refusal to adapt to nature and instead to create an abstraction so that it doesn’t have to deal with it.
Also, I don’t see why DST is good for people who want to do activities in the evening. Presumably an activity in the evening is one that is meant to be done in the dark, so delaying darkness for a hour doesn’t seem all that advantageous to me. Being a lover of the dark (no sunglasses required), the prioritisation of the wants of the early risers and sun lovers by government irks me no end. As for work, I currently work in civil construction. Work starts at 7:00 am and the time at the start and end of the period usually causes a safety issue as it is still dark. Also, under the EBA, workers are sent home on full pay as soon as the tempreture reaches 35°C, so DST delays me from knocking off by a hour several days every Summer, more than enough reason to get rid of it in my opinion.
Some MASSIVE swings too from 1992. Look at “established” areas such as Armadale, Thornlie, Greenwood etc which experienced upwards of 10% swing against it booth-by-booth (most bizarrely, the main Thornlie booth went from 65% support in 1992 to 53% opposition in 2009!). Strangely the country didn’t help much – although the support there only rose from 8-12% in some centres to 10-16%, it was still a rise in what had previously been a much larger counteracting vote to the city. They said this one would be won or lost in the city and they were right.
You can probably find a clue to that from age trends in Armadale (for one). Being established, these areas are getting older and hence more resistant to daylight saving.
Greens win Fremantle with 45% primary. WOOOOOOOOOOOH!
Ok, so there was no LNP candiate – but still, beating the ALP is no mean feat.
Dig the new breed!
You’re telling me people in Armadale live that long?
Serious comment though: I used to live there (you may see that phrase a lot from me: I’ve lived in way too many different sharehouses), and it’s about as far from any kind of beach as you can get in Perth. A hair-raising half-hour drive down narrow, busy Armadale Road, through the constant roadworks around Atwell and Beeliar, and then you end up in Spearwood and have to drive halfway to Freo for somewhere worth swimmimg. And don’t even think about doing that journey by public transport. The ‘beach lifestyle’ I keep hearing about probably ain’t such a big deal out there.
Bunch of wallies on the ABC TV this morning, ever so briefly touching on the Westoz “NO” vote.
They were all mystified that anybody would vote anything but “YES” to daylight saving.
Not one of them had a comment to make that was either grown-up or pertinent.
YES!! ‘No’ WON!
Steve at the Pub @ 60
Simple. DLS in winter would condemn us to getting up when it’s black and freezing cold. In summer with DLS, it’s already light when we get up (sevenish) and DLS then gives us an extra hour of outside activities in the evenings. Well, that’s a Tassie perspective anyway.
Whatever they want or not in WA. Though it is kind of bizarre in the arguments to see that few people seem to really understand that the increased day length (and temperatures) is based on the natural cycle of the earth and the sun and well beyond any human control. Whether they vote for it or not.
There’s always going to 24 hrs in a day according to the clock and how long shops etc can open could be any fraction of that (8-12 hrs?), whatever the sun was doing, if people chose that. DST (or not) seems to actually be the only possible choice that any humans could actually make regarding the change in day length during summer.
.
People seem to be confusing the changes in their rhythms (work, biological) which are natural adaptations or responses to changes in day length, with DST changes I’d say. Almost all land dwelling creatures (and many marine ones) actually use the changes in day length to alter their behavior and biology.
.
The idea that life on earth involves a monotonous and never ending linear ‘day’ so that everything and everyone revolves around what we want/need seems the most ridiculous. Nature, including us, is about rhythms and cycles.
The puppies, and most animals won’t die, in fact they will adapt behavior and biology, maybe decide to sleep a lot more in a cosy burrow, or head north for a bit more sun (a good idea at the moment!). They use the change in day length to influence how they live and their rhythms. Who is going to tell the sun to go down earlier?
Personally I couldn’t give a crap about DLS but when the extended trading hours referendum failed I gave up on WA for good. And Australia for that matter.
Its patently ridiculous how backwards WA is in this respect. I can’t think of anywhere in the world that has restrictions on trading as stringent as WA.
Just an interesting aside.
As a polling booth worker, I helped with last night’s count at our booth.
Remember the “ticks are yes, and crosses are not nos” beat up this week?
I was at a booth with about 1800 votes counted,. in a lower socio-economic area:
Number of ballot papers with a tick: 0
Number of ballot papers with a cross: 0
Number of informal: about 10
Number of ballot papers with the answer “I have a large penis:” 1
I am not kidding.
For the east-coasters who struggle to understand WA’s (4th) rejection of DLS, I’d just like to point out that both sides of our continent have flat coastlines and inland ranges. What this means in the east is that the sun rises earlier anyway, and sets earlier. The reverse applies in Perth. Got it?
Ozymandias @73: cute point, but not many places are deeply shadowed by the ranges, and eaterly or westerly position within the time zone has a much greater effect on sunrise and sunset times. I found a cute sunrise/sunset calculator on the WWW and if you check sunrise, transit (ie astronomical noon, when the sun is due North and highest) and sunset times for the equinox, March 21st, you get the following:
Sydney: sunrise 6:57 am transit 1:01 pm sunset 7:04 pm
Melbourne: sunrise 7:21 am transit 1:26 pm sunset 7:30 pm
Adelaide: sunrise 6:48 am transit 12:52 pm sunset 6:55 pm
Perth: sunrise 7:19 pm transit 1:22 pm sunset 7:26 pm
Note that Melbourne and Perth are both rather far west in their respective time zones, so they already have a bias towards dark mornings and light evenings if you judge time by the clock rather than the sundial.
SATP @60, Séan @62 and others: yes, ‘daylight saving’ is a stupid name since no light is actually saved or created, which is why in the UK it is just called ‘British Summer Time’. No one is denying that the changes in actual length of day from winter to summer are due to the relative orientation of the Sun-Earth vector and the Earth’s axial tilt, and hence beyond our control. But we use clocks to tell the time, have time zones to synchronise clocks in a given geographical/political area, and most folks these days have a working day which is close to 9 am – 5 pm in their local time zone. We do have the power to temporarily change our time zone, if we want, so as to maximise daylight hours either before or after those working hours. In the South-East, in general, people are fairly fond of having daylight for outside activities after finishing work rather than before, while changing time zones back to avoid dark mornings in the winter.
“I don’t think I really like it in NSW. But that’s because I like waking up in the dark”
In that case, Paul @32, you should be in favour of it.
I just LOVE daylight saving, let’s have it all year round!
Get up and I have hours to spend gardening, walking the dog etc b4 I even have to think about getting ready to go to work!
That just doesn’t make sense to me Jovial Monk. Daylight savings means an hour’s less light in the morning. (going by what the clock says).
congrats on the No vote and glad I can agree with Larvae Prodders on something nowadays.
Now can we wind back DLS in the rest of Australia?
Good lord, no, Jason. You can take my long summer evenings out of my cold, dark, wintery, hands.
Jason (and Liam),
To me one of the strengths of this country is that we can deide these things on a State by State basis. To me DLS makes little sense in WA, the NT, and QLD – but does make some sense in Tasmania and Victoria and perhaps elsewhere. The important thing is to let each area decide for itself based on what they feel is the best for them. A single national imposed time solution, like in China, makes no sense whatsoever.
I congratulate WA on their sensible response to Daylight Saving, and only wish that we could have a similar referendum here in SA.
Actually, aren’t some very vocal people screaming for everywhere to be the same monotonous corporate state of affairs these days in this country?
For ‘everyone’s benefit’?
National curriculum and school system, bikie laws, healthcare registration, land taxes, road rules, driving licenses and registration, criminal offences, lamington recipes and horse racing rules???
Daylight savings???
You never hear the end of “let’s have the rules the same across the whole country to make life better/easier”, these days.
Despite the fact there is almost no evidence to support the idea in reality.
This place has degenerated into a monotonous bland culture. Does anyone actually think because they can vote about what time they turn up to waste their life force working for “the man” during summer, this makes for an active cultural and political debate and diversity?
Not me.
Quoll,
You are right – but you normally only hear it from people who have lived their entire lives within easy reach of the eastern seaboard.
I live in country SA and I love Summer Time. I hate turning the clock back and having short afternoons. The extra month this year didn’t worry me at all, the curtains didn’t fade and no puppies died in the moving of the big hand.
Hell, Andrew, why not decide time by municipality if local option’s so great? That way farmers in rural areas would get to keep ordinary time, their livestock’s schedules uninterrupted, while the burghers and inner-city cosmopolitans would be allowed to sip riesling into the afternoon. Changing your watch three times driving down Parramatta road between the CBD and Five Dock would be a small price to pay.
YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE
Liam @ 85, as you may be aware that’s precisely what timekeeping used to be like until the coming of the railway timetable – highly local, and arbited by sundial.
Yes DI(nr), I know Graeme Davison’s book well.
You know what, as well as devolution of timekeeping, let’s have cap-and-trade on daylight savings hours. People with surplus daylight time, such as unemployed people, students, musicians, and the like, should be able to sell it on to people who work indoors away from windows and don’t have enough. I’m sure that people starting work early would jump at the chance to buy up other people’s sunlight offset.
So when’s it going to be, Kevin? Are you going to let us down AGAIN?
Liam,
Perhaps we could allow everyone to set their own time. You get to decide which timezone that you, personally, live in and that is then legally enforceable. Students would love it – they could turn up anytime and demand that a lecture starts then. Paying bills? You get to decide what day it is, therefore no bill could ever be late.
I like it, Andrew. Say no to State-enforced constants! Yes to reliance on individuals’ sense of chronological altruism! No to the tyranny of the bundy clock! Yes to temporal moral suasion!
I’m in Adelaide and I love daylight saving for the same reason Lefty E has given upthread: long, light summer evenings you can do things in. Maybe women, for whom being out after dark is always a calculated risk, appreciate this more. And maybe it’s about individual Circadian rhythms, with night owls like myself appreciating it and early risers disliking it.
Even if you think it’s daft (and I think it’s just common sense), it couldn’t be any dafter than the 30-minute timezone difference between SA and the Eastern states.
Liam, who is Graeme Davison? I only know about time zones because I’m a clock nerd and a non-practicing cartographer.
PC, although I detest daylight saving (in case no-one had noticed), I’m 100% with you on the 30 minute difference between us and Melbourne. I think it can be sheeted home to Dunstan (one of the few truly foolish things he did, in that case), although it was so long ago, my memory may be a bit faulty. Maybe it was Des Corchoran. Or Playford.
Awesome.
No need to keep the imperialist trappings of the current system for dividing time up either. Finally, Decimal Time!!! End the tyranny of weeks and months forever!
We’ll have an ostensible 400 day year, broken up into ten chunks of 40 days. You take those extra 35-odd each year and bank them, then the whole world has a calendar year off every decade or so.
The basic unit is the New York Minute, and it’s currently 78 past 5.
Working 24-7, 9 to 5′s so confusing, eh FDB? It’d be much more sensible if we were to have a working day notation, in addition to your decimal calendar, of 1 through 10, with variable work-hour durations depending on the industry and workplace agreements. The Jacobins, I’m sure, would have approved, and named each hour after a figure from classical mythology—we can start with appropriate figures from our cultural heritage: let’s start by renaming January to the month of “Sarah Connor”, February to “T-1000″, and so on.
DI(nr): he’s a social historian.
Guys,
Why have years at all? They are an outmoded agrarian way of thinking. Days are just for convenience. Months? What have the phases of the moon got to do with my life?
All time is relative anyway. Destroy all the clocks! Don’t you oppress me any more.
Good God you’re right Andrew.
Must have been some vestigial false consciousness lurking in my temporal lobes.
I expect a comprehensive self-criticism within one hour. On top of that I need to know how many capitalist running dogs you have corresponded with during the last month and a summary of such activities over the last year.
It’s clear that this new movement needs a charismatic leader. I urge the Committee to nominate the Comrade who has done most over the last twenty years to tell the world what time it is.
(Boyeee)
…but that’s okay cos I guess those guys know what they’re doing.