07 April 2016
Time Zones and Time Changes
Daylight saving anomalies Down Under and elsewhere
by Lynda Goetz
Flying from one continent to another, one accepts the inevitable disorientation caused by ending up in different time zones. Commonly, of course, known as jet lag, one ends up either gaining or losing hours or even an entire day (if you cross the date line) and breakfast becomes dinner or vice versa. Sleep patterns are disturbed and communications with friends, relatives or business colleagues can become tricky. (A sixteen hour difference between the time in Queensland Australia and Colorado USA with Queensland being sixteen hours ahead, makes one wonder how the Americans stay so consistently ahead when time-wise they are lagging so far behind!) One can also cope relatively easily with time differences between European countries, although the logic of some countries’ daylight saving does seem slightly flawed (more of which later), but when different states in the same country are not only in different time zones but actively choose, as Queensland and Western Australia do, not to apply daylight saving the results do seem somewhat perverse.
When I flew from Perth to Brisbane, I knew the flight took around four and a half hours. I also knew that I would arrive at 18.30 Queensland time, which is two hours ahead of Perth time. As neither Western Australia nor Queensland goes in for any kind of Daylight Saving Time (DST) 6.30pm is already night time in both these states. Yes, pitch dark by 6.30 pm in states with stunning beaches, a thriving surf culture and fascinating hinterlands to be explored. As a European so used to DST, the question, ‘Why?’ just has to be asked.
As in Europe, Australia had DST during World War I and World War II. After the war, as a matter for individual states, DST was re-adopted first by Tasmania in 1968, then by New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia and the Australian Capital Territory in 1971. It was not adopted by Western Australia or the Northern Territory, although over the last 40 years Western Australia has adopted it on a trial basis from time to time. In 1972 Queensland abandoned DST, although like Western Australia it has from time to time conducted trials with its use. Since 2008 the states that adopt DST do so on the same dates, namely starting on the first Sunday in October (their spring) and ending on the first Sunday in April, that is last Sunday. Each year these dates are a signal for a renewal of the debate.
A sentence in an essay on the website http://nodaylightsavingqld.com leapt at me from the page. ‘Our daylight saving dilemma is merely a reflection of a multitude of national and worldwide dilemmas that are as old as timekeeping itself.’ On the one side are those who believe or appear to believe that DST is an important part of ‘growing up’ and joining the commercial reality of the 21st century, and on the other are those who do not see any or little advantage in a disruptive and unwelcome change. The arguments put forward in the local press here in favour do seem to be of the most trivial nature; “We love daylight saving”, trills a Sydney businesswoman “because it’s lighter at the end of the day when you want it most in summer.” Well, possibly, but perhaps the answer, as many of the surfers have clearly worked out, is simply to get up earlier and enjoy the daylight there is in summer at the beginning of the day. Tourism Gold Coast CEO Paul Donovan is supportive of the Gold Coast having DST, but then he probably would be, wouldn’t he? After all, the argument runs that DST is modern and progressive and definitely the way to go for urban dwellers.
It does seem to be the case that the main benefits of DST are to the northern temperate zones rather than the sub-tropical or desert climates of Australia. In these climates many people would actually prefer to wait until the cool of the night to pursue certain leisure activities. It is a fact that of the seventy odd nations that use DST nearly 50 are in Europe. However, even there one encounters some oddities. As Brits, we all still tend to use the expression GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) when talking about standard time, but in fact, since 1972 this has officially been replaced by UTC (Universal Time Coordinated) also called “Z Time” or “Zulu Time”. However, although the two are essentially the same, GMT is a time zone and UTC a time standard. In the UK we use GMT as our winter time and GMT+1 as our summertime (BST). In Europe many countries use Central European Time (UTC+1) and in summer some, such as Spain, when changing to their DST are two hours ahead of sun time. This means that in places like Southern Spain it does not get light until relatively late, but the sun does not set until after 10pm at night.
In that country, unlike Australia, the campaign is to get rid of DST on the basis that the mismatch between clock and solar time is one of the main contributory factors in Spain’s somewhat unusual daily schedule, with late lunches and late nights being the norm for most. This is one of the last legacies of General Franco’s years in power and there have been fairly recent attempts to review this. A sub-committee was set up in 2013 to review working, leisure and family life patterns resulting from Spain’s rather unusual relationship with time. This week, at last, the prime minister Mariano Rajoy accepted the sub-committee’s findings and did indeed propose legislation to adopt GMT and abolish the siesta, but given the political impasse since last December’s inconclusive election, it rather looks as if those long lunches and Spanish siestas may continue to be a feature of life in this corner of Europe – at least until ‘ever closer union’ policies dictated from the EU override popular habits.
Around the same time as Spain adopted Central European Time with DST, China went from having 5 time zones (which given the different longitudes it spans probably made a lot of sense) to having just one. Under the Communists in 1949 one single time zone was adopted for the whole country. Known as Beijing Time or China Standard Time it is UTC+8. DST was observed for 5 years between 1986 and 1991. In 1913, Alison Schrager, in an article in online magazine Quartz, suggested that perhaps America should have only 2 time zones and cited China as an example of this being a workable proposition. In fact, of course it does cause problems, but apart from some mild inconveniences (sunsets at midnight and darkness until 10am for example in Xinjiang province at certain times of the year), the biggest problem is the way it exacerbates a political problem between the Han and the minority Uighurs peoples. Mao Zedong’s imposition of China Standard Time was, of course, of itself a political act designed to assist in the imposition of a unified country on a vast area recovering from a highly damaging civil war.
In both Australia and possibly Spain it does look for now as if inertia will rule and that current practices with all their differences, in both these countries will hold sway. Is that good or bad? Who knows, but a general aversion to change is hard-wired into so many (take the other recent example of the New Zealand flag) that perhaps we should just look at these as further indicators of the human condition and be fairly convinced that in spite of all the excitement over our June referendum and claims of scaremongering by the ‘Remain’ lobby, the fear of change may well prevail. Unless changes are imposed from ‘on high’ by autocratic rulers it would appear that the status quo is generally the preferred option for most of us. As for the clocks, we can mess with them all we like, but sadly there is nothing we can do about time, so perhaps the answer to the Daylight Saving Question, or even the Time Zone question, is to get on with making the best use of whatever system we are living under and to make all those hours and minutes count, whether at the beginning or the end of the day and whether it is light or dark in our particular corner of the planet.
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