It's high time we stopped mucking about with daylight saving

Wednesday, 31 March 2021

It's that time of year when the clocks change, but why does this happen?

OPINION: It’s nearly that time of the year when my clocks are right.

They’ve been wrong for six months now, just like they are every year, because I don’t know how to change them. It’s not a big deal to live with; you just add an hour to whatever time the clock is displaying and go happily about the day.

But this weekend, the clock in the car, the one on the microwave, and the one hanging in the hallway will be right for another half a year. And that’s the nicest thing I can say about the end of daylight saving.

Every year when we’re forced to put our clocks back an hour, the debate about sticking to permanent daylight saving time is reignited. It’s amazing there’s a debate in the first place, because changing back to winter hours makes us feel bad, confused, and there’s no reason to do it at all.

Dark grey places have never used daylight saving, light grey places formerly used it. Orange places use daylight saving in the southern hemisphere summer. Blue places use daylight saving in the northern hemisphere summer.

* Daylight saving: Your questions answered as clocks go forward

* Time's up: Should we end daylight saving in New Zealand?

Changing our clocks makes us feel bad, confused, and there’s no reason to do it at all.

The first few days post-clock-changing are spent in a time-induced hangover as you blearily negotiate a brand-new world where nothing makes sense. You want dinner at 5pm; drop the kids off to school when nobody else is there; and throw your demented elderly cat into crisis by springing breakfast on it an hour early. Of course your dog is delighted by an early dinner; then demands its usual meal 60 minutes later.

If you have young children, they won’t go to sleep because the routine you’ve busted your back and nerves over has flown out the window. If you don’t have young children, you’re not missing out on anything because you won’t sleep either, or you’ll wake up long before you actually need to.

The other end of the day isn’t any better. Just after you leave work, the darkness closes in like someone’s thrown a sheet over your budgie cage, and suddenly you’re eating instant soup for dinner and in bed by 7pm. Ultimately, you’re disoriented, tired, and depressed; like having jet-lag without the benefit of actually going somewhere.

While New Zealand persists in mucking about with time, other, smarter, countries like much of Asia and South America have abandoned the practice.

Others are at least mulling an end to the madness. The European Union planned to quit in 2021, until Brexit, bureaucracy and the coronavirus got in the way, and in the US, a group of senators has reintroduced a bill to do away with the clock-fiddling and make daylight saving hours permanent.

Not us, though.

Messing about with time is a ridiculous thing to do, and – fittingly – NZ has done it plenty. Our first go at daylight saving was in 1927 to give people more daylight for after-work pursuits; then a 1928 act reduced the advance to half an hour. “Summer Time”, as it was known, stopped in 1945 when NZ standard time was advanced permanently by half an hour.

Daylight saving was revived in 1974, and nearly 50 years later we’re still fiddling about, even though experts warn it’s dangerous. Changing the time only changes our body clocks, which is why we feel so awful.

Studies have shown the chopping and changing increases the risk of heart attacks, strokes and fatal car accidents and, though the risk is highest in the days after the changeover, ill-effects can last months.

Aotearoa may have had more pressing issues on its collective hands of late, but by not adopting year-round summer hours we’re lagging behind. As long as our clocks are going backwards, NZ is too.