This community is a place created for the people of Melbourne and Victoria. We are a positive, welcoming and inclusive community. We might not agree about everything, but we always strive to stay civil and respectful.
The focus of our discussions is based around things that affect Victoria, but we are also free to discuss our local perspective on wider issues. Or head to the regular Daily Random Discussion thread to talk about anything.
Ongoing discussions, FAQs & Resources (still under construction)
Adoption Certificate for Nellie, the Daily Thread numbat (with thanks to @Catfish)
Or, for those boring old manual clocks, you will have to put them forward an hour yourself. Alternatively, feel free to save time now and manually add an hour in your head every time you check the time, then after a few weeks get around to actually changing them, then spend a few weeks confused about whether you changed them or not and if you still need to add an hour and checking the time on your phone to make sure.
Sad to see North America isn’t the only continent stuck with this archaic ritual.
Yup. The worst thing is, while Europe has voted their intention to end it, and some American states are talking about possibly doing the same, in Australia our fight is trying not to get it introduced in those states who don't already have it. There seems to be very little talk about getting rid of it from the states that do it.
Which is so unfortunate, because it's more than just a quirky "archaic ritual". It has real measurable consequences—people die from daylight saving time. And it lacks any real benefits—prople like to talk about economic benefits, but studies fail to find them.
Can you throw some evidence/examples about people who have died from daylight saving time ?
It's not something where you can attribute a particular case to DST. It's more like climate change, where we know from overwhelming evidence that it results in an increase in problems overall, but not which specific instances wouldn't have occurred otherwise.
Specifically, it leads to notable spikes in traffic crashes, heart problems, and suicides, among other problems. It's been quite extensively studied from a variety of angles, and all of them come down on the side of DST being problematic. Here's a handful of them:
I'm particularly a fan of the penultimate one linked there, which states:
Doesn't get much clearer than that. I have to admit to being surprised at it though, because until I learnt that I actually had advocated for the possibility of permanent DST in some areas.
https://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(19)31678-1
The US increase is inapplicable to Australia. There is no evidence of that DST affects traffic collisions here.
Yep. Just as I was getting over seasonal depression from getting up before the sun, we change the clocks and I get plunged back in.
But at least we get to stay up later, which means that it is even more tiring to get up in the morning!
Maybe with your lifestyle. An extra hour of sunlight at the beach throughout summer is a very real benefit for me. I love DST and look forward to it every year.
It's not about my lifestyle or yours. It's about the empirical evidence which points to significant health detriments caused by DST, and which fail to find evidence supporting the DST advocates' claims that it's good for the economy.
None of that has anything to do with my reply, though. I am only contesting your claim that DST has no real benefits.
Correct. That is the case.
When ever I would go camping at the beach in summer, I would get up earlier in the morning and go for a walk. It was still fresh, not too hot and the beach wasn’t crowded by day-trippers.
This is the correct way to get an extra hour of sunlight at the beach in summer.
I assume that you go to the beach in summer to get away from the Rat Race of 9-5, peak hour traffic and other artificial time constraints.
Do not become beholden to a clock to tell you that it is time to get up. If it is time to get up, get up!