Don’t Mess Around with the Time

The most important thing about the way that we measure time is that it is a standard. You can go almost anywhere in the world find a clock and know what the local time is. If you arrange to meet someone at a given time they will understand when they are supposed to be there without checking with them what they think time it is. Everyone just knows. The one thing that is not standard is daylight saving time. The debate of whether we should have daylight saving time has raged on for years and is not one that I want to rave on about now (maybe another day). So what do I want to rant about now? Ah yes. If daylight saving time is of any value at all, the day and time that it kicks in or goes out must be a set standard. It would be nice to have this standard set world wide but to get the whole world to agree on this could be difficult. At least we should be able to set this standard within our own country and having done so no one should be permitted to change it. This year someone in their great wisdom decided that, because we hosts to the Commonwealth Games, daylight saving would start one week later. It is surely not because the athletes would get confused. A lot of spectators manage to work it out even in other countries. I think that it is probably something to do with TV ratings and money but for the sake of this argument I am willing to concede that there is a good reason of which I am unaware. No matter what it is, the choice should be to either shift the start of the games by a week or to suffer the consequences of the change during the games. The morons who decided to change the start of Eastern Australian daylight saving 2006 are declared this week’s winner of the Dump Things Award.