Should The European Union Abandon Daylight Saving Time?

Even though it was originally meant as an energy-saving measure to switch on street and road lights only when absolutely necessary, should the EU abandon Daylight Saving Time because of “debatable benefits”?

By: Ringo Bones

The EU is set to end the “quaint” practice of changing our clocks twice a year – i.e. Daylight Saving Time – in 2021, at least in some states. The European Parliament has taken another step towards freeing members of the bloc from the mandated change, but why is it taking too long? European Union spokesperson Alexander Winterstein has been the most vocal opponent of the EU still adhering to the “quaint practice” of Daylight Saving Time and legend has it that it was only as a bit of fun when that late-rising American statesman Benjamin Franklin proposed daylight savings time back in 1784 and for more than two centuries, it has been a topic of controversy.

The UK adopted Daylight Saving Time in 1916 along with many other nations involved in World War One in order to conserve coal used for electricity generation. It followed years of pressure from William Willett - the great, great grandfather of Coldplay singer Chris Martin, but the UK had its own debate about time zones. In 2011, Number 10 Downing Street proposed a three-year trial of moving to Central European Time, so the UK time would be GMT+1 in winter and GMT+2 in summer months. The change would have meant lighter evenings but darker mornings and one of the arguments for it was that it would reduce road accidents. But it was abandoned after opposition from Scotland and northern England, where some areas would not have seen daylight until 10 o’clock in the morning under the proposal.

Back around the end of August 2018, European Union Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said millions “believe that in future, summer time should be year-round, and that’s what will happen.” The EU Commissioner’s proposal requires support from the 28 national governments and MEP’s to become law. In the EU, clocks switch between winter and summer under Daylight Saving Time. In a recent EU-wide public consultation, 84-percent of the 4.6-million respondents called for the ending of the spring and autumn clock change. By far, the biggest response was in Germany (3.79-percent) and Austria (2.94-percent) of the national population respectively. The UK’s response was the lowest at 0.02-percent, but few Italians took part either with only 0.04-percent taking part. Most Europeans dislike the practice of Daylight Saving Time because some recent studies cited by the European Commission point to adverse health impacts from the clock changes as findings suggest that the effect on the human biorhythm may be more than severe than previously thought as clocks go forward by an hour on the last Sunday in March and switch back to winter time on the last Sunday in October.

Is Singapore on Permanent Daylight Saving Time?

Though many ex-pat workers had observed that at 6 in the morning Singapore is kind of dark when compared to Hong Kong’s. Is this a sign of a permanent Daylight Saving Time?


By: Vanessa Uy


Given that longitudinally, the island nation of Singapore should have been in sync with Bangkok, Thailand’s standard time. Why is it then that Singapore chose to follow Hong Kong’s time zone? Are the reasons economically driven – rather than geographical – like the standard-time boundaries of the United States, which are designated by the Interstate Commerce Commission? But first, let us examine the concepts behind a country’s geographic location and it’s designated time zone.

The local time for any place on Earth depends upon its geographic longitude. The local time is set less advanced than that of Greenwich Mean Time by 1 hour for each 15-degree of longitude west of the Greenwich 0-degree meridian. This is so because it takes 24 hours for our Sun to “circumnavigate” – due to the Earth’s rotation – across the globe. Which turns out to be 360 degrees given the circular circumference of our planet. Dividing 360 degrees by 24 hours works out to 15 degrees per hour or each time zone is 15 degrees wide. Barring the now mandatory “occasional” leap-second corrections via the now widespread use of ultra-accurate atomic clocks, longitude west of Greenwich is determined by subtracting the local mean solar time – obtained by astronomical observation – from Greenwich Mean Time obtained from radio time signals.

To avoid continuous changes in time with longitude, Earth is divided into 24 zones. Within each zone, the same standard time is kept. Minutes and seconds are kept identical in all standard-time zones; only the hours differ. The time zone boundaries over land areas quite often zigzag in order to avoid inconvenient changes of time within geographic borders legally defined by various nation-states.

In some areas, time zones are used wherein the time may differ by 30 minutes – like the Indian Standard Time. Or by an odd number of minutes and seconds of Greenwich Mean Time – these are not considered standard time zones, however. While countries very near the north and south poles where the meridians converge and there is no single time zone, they customarily default to Greenwich Mean Time.

Given that since her independence, Singapore’s stock exchange has always operated in sync with Hong Kong Standard Time – rather than that of Bangkok, Thailand which supposedly is where Singapore’s geographic meridian is in parallel with – the probable expense of syncing with Bangkok Standard Time could prove to be too costly. Thus Singapore had always stuck with Hong Kong Standard Time – in spite of the “gripes” of the island state’s resident’s circadian rhythms and Old-School Feng Sui practitioners. Which is kind of disconcerting since Singapore’s near-equatorial location doesn’t allow the island state to have seasonal variations like that of lands located further up north the need to save energy intended for use in lighting purposes – the supposed raison d’être of Daylight Saving Time.