Samoa loses a day... : Wed Jan 04, 2012 12:29 pm  

Samoa and neighbouring Tokelau altered their time zone, resulting in them skipping a day, moving from December 29th to 31st. This, they say, will bring them into line with Australia and New Zealand, with whom they have trading ties, making doing business with them a lot easier. They did a similar thing 119 years ago, moving in the opposite direction to align themselves with the United States. Richard Branson has chimed in, saying that if they can jump forward 24 hours, then we should have no issue with going forward by a mere one hour so that we're in the same time zone as the majority of mainland Europe. Maybe a more forward thinking move would be to go two hours the other way so that we're somewhere in between Europe and the United States. But that would be silly. Personally, I can't see what difference it makes. Branson's twopenneth... http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/b ... -time-zone BBC Article on Samoa and Tokelau... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16351377

Samoa and neighbouring Tokelau altered their time zone, resulting in them skipping a day, moving from December 29th to 31st. This, they say, will bring them into line with Australia and New Zealand, with whom they have trading ties, making doing business with them a lot easier. They did a similar thing 119 years ago, moving in the opposite direction to align themselves with the United States. Richard Branson has chimed in, saying that if they can jump forward 24 hours, then we should have no issue with going forward by a mere one hour so that we're in the same time zone as the majority of mainland Europe. Maybe a more forward thinking move would be to go two hours the other way so that we're somewhere in between Europe and the United States. But that would be silly. Personally, I can't see what difference it makes. Branson's twopenneth... http://www.virgin.com/richard-branson/b ... -time-zone BBC Article on Samoa and Tokelau... http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16351377

Re: Samoa loses a day... : Wed Jan 04, 2012 12:39 pm  

I lost a day or two over the holidays

Like you though, I can't see the difference for us.

Re: Samoa loses a day... : Wed Jan 04, 2012 12:55 pm  

Firstly, moving by a day and moving by an hour are vastly different.

Moving the day aligns Samoa's weekends with Australia, you can see the advatange that would give when trading with Australia.

Moving the whole of the UK by a part of a day, i.e. an hour, is not the same and would be pointless.
Any businesses that need to align with CET could easily start an hour earlier, there would be no need to change the time for the entire country.

Those parts of Europe that use CET and are longitudinally similar to the UK (e.g. France, Spain) have the advantage of being further South than we are, and hence don't have quite the same issues with winter daylight the we do. So, for them, it was quite easy to adopt CET.

Re: Samoa loses a day... : Wed Jan 04, 2012 1:07 pm  

I'd love to see us move an hour – and then another one for summer.

The older I get, the more I find the winter light – or lack thereof – downright depressing.

So oddly, I'm with Boris Johnson on something.

Re: Samoa loses a day... : Wed Jan 04, 2012 1:24 pm  

Mintball wrote:

The older I get, the more I find the winter light – or lack thereof – downright depressing.

Unless I'm missing something, how would moving an hour or two in either direction give you more daylight?

The days aren't going to get any longer unless you move the whole country a few hundred miles towards the equator, all that will change is the start and end time of the daylight period.

Re: Samoa loses a day... : Wed Jan 04, 2012 1:25 pm  

But surely, given that the world will obviously end on 21st December 2012, any money spent on preparing for such a change in hours could be put to better use?

Tin hats?

Re: Samoa loses a day... : Wed Jan 04, 2012 1:34 pm  

Andy Gilder wrote:

Mintball wrote:

The older I get, the more I find the winter light – or lack thereof – downright depressing.

Unless I'm missing something, how would moving an hour or two in either direction give you more daylight?

The days aren't going to get any longer unless you move the whole country a few hundred miles towards the equator, all that will change is the start and end time of the daylight period.

If we moved forward by two hours when we shift to summer time, then only back by one in the autumn, we'd have darker mornings, but at least we'd get longer afternoons. So for instance, more people would be leaving work in daylight during the shorter days. At the moment, you standardly leave home in the morning in the dark – and then leave work in the dark too.

Johnson has also said that, since that would give longer daylight in summer evenings too, it would be good for tourism, which makes an economic argument.

Re: Samoa loses a day... : Wed Jan 04, 2012 1:34 pm  

Andy Gilder wrote:

Mintball wrote:

The older I get, the more I find the winter light – or lack thereof – downright depressing.

Unless I'm missing something, how would moving an hour or two in either direction give you more daylight?

The days aren't going to get any longer unless you move the whole country a few hundred miles towards the equator, all that will change is the start and end time of the daylight period.

If we moved forward by two hours when we shift to summer time, then only back by one in the autumn, we'd have darker mornings, but at least we'd get longer afternoons. So for instance, more people would be leaving work in daylight during the shorter days. At the moment, you standardly leave home in the morning in the dark – and then leave work in the dark too.

Johnson has also said that, since that would give longer daylight in summer evenings too, it would be good for tourism, which makes an economic argument.

Re: Samoa loses a day... : Wed Jan 04, 2012 1:36 pm  

El Barbudo wrote:

Moving the day aligns Samoa's weekends with Australia, you can see the advatange that would give when trading with Australia.
.

I can see that. What you're saying is that Samoa could only effectively trade with Australia four days a week.

Re: Samoa loses a day... : Wed Jan 04, 2012 2:03 pm  

ROBINSON wrote:

El Barbudo wrote:

Moving the day aligns Samoa's weekends with Australia, you can see the advatange that would give when trading with Australia.
.

I can see that. What you're saying is that Samoa could only effectively trade with Australia four days a week.

No, three days.

The Friday of Samoa is Saturday in Oz.
The Sunday of Samoa is Monday in Oz.
So that cuts it down to only three days aligned.

I think

I once went round the world and lost a Tuesday somewhere between LA and Auckland.
I thought I'd get it back somewhere but I never did.
I guess now that I must have had enough extra hours in various days in different places to add up to a day.