Talk:British Summer Time

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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

Dates

Shouldn't there be a section telling what dates the actual time changes take place? I know on other articles it lists the starting and ending date for the Daylight Saving Time switches? —Preceding unsigned comment added by RTHonVDS (talk • contribs) 14:28, 22 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The quoted wording of The Summer Time Order 2002 makes the dates clear enough. 82.163.24.100 (talk) 19:36, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

GDT

The reference to "Greenwich Daylight Saving Time (GDT)" should be removed. The term GDT is not used in Britain, other than by ill-written operating systems of foreign origin. And the variation of the clocks in Europe is not in general, and is not in Britain, called "Daylight Saving Time"; it is called "Summer Time". 82.163.24.100 (talk) 19:36, 18 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed - I shall act upon your suggestion. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:39, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

When does BST start and finish ?

I find it hard to believe that the "Summer Time Order 2002" actually means anything. It states that BST and GMT start and finish at 01:00 hrs. Most TV and Radio stations will tell you that is when you should do the clock change. However, anyone that has a "radio-controlled" clock or watch, that receives the ( MSF - 60 KHz ) time-signal transmitted by Arqiva from Anthorn, Cumbria will witness that BST and GMT still start and finish at 02:00 hrs NOT 01:00 hrs. Who is right ? Telephoneman1959 (talk) 02:52, 29 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The time changes from 01:00 GMT to 02:00 BST, and from 02:00 BST to 01:00 GMT. My radio-controlled watch does just that. Joseph Myers (talk) 21:18, 29 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

That's interesting Joseph. Our MSF clocks are very cheap affairs that have very little on-board intelligence. I would expect that they do only what they are told by the transmission. Maybe watches such as yours, which are probably quite recent, will have some form of intelligence in it's firmware. It would be nice if someone that has full knowledge of the MSF time signal could describe how it is used by these clocks and watches. Telephoneman1959 (talk) 23:31, 29 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Radio controlled clocks and watches tend to be programmed to sync with the signal on the hour every hour. The time signal transmits the full time and date information each minute. I have two devices: a clock that receives the signal every hour, and a watch the receives the signal at 1:00 GMT each day (and failing this, retries each hour for the next few hours). Therefore, both devices will respond to the change in summer time at the correct hour. The MSF Time Date Code specification does however say that a sort of "warning bit" is set for 61 minutes before the change in summer time to warn clocks that a change is imminent. My watch certainly went forward at 1:00 GMT on Sunday. Of course, if you have poor signal reception, the device may fail to set the time at 1:00 and may re-try at 2:00, and therefore show the wrong time for the intervening hour.

I don't quite see your argument anyway. The Summer Time Order 2002 states that summer time is, "The period beginning at one o'clock, Greenwich mean time, in the morning of the last Sunday in March and ending at one o'clock, Greenwich mean time, in the morning of the last Sunday in October." So radio controlled clocks move forward at 1:00 GMT and go back at 2:00 BST, which is quite correct. I don't see that the clocks require any extra intellegence. If they change when the signal indicates, they will switch to summer time at the correct hour. JRawle (Talk) 10:41, 30 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the above information... I was not aware I was arguing at all, just giving the facts about two analogue MSF clocks I have, that always go forward at 02:00 hrs on the day when BST starts. I reckon I have had them about 15 years. We have a reasonable signal-strength, they never fail to go forwards or backwards. They did it when the signal came from Rugby and they still do it now that the signal comes from Anthorn. Until I read this page I was unaware that the dear-old government had changed the time at which BST started from 02:00 hrs to 01:00 hrs in 2002! Now I know that, and that all the TV and radio and newspapers are not wrong, it won't worry me anymore... I'll just have to remember that my clocks are behind for an hour from 01:00 hrs until 02:00 hrs on "BST Day" ! Telephoneman1959 (talk) 01:11, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

British Summertime redirect

I changed this from a redirect to the novel of the same name to this page since I believe more people are going to search for this subject rather than the book (especially now the topic of whether or not to bring Britain into line with CET is now up for discussion). I have also put a dablink to that article from here so people will still find it. Cheers TheRetroGuy (talk) 15:07, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Update template

As far as I know, the Private Member's Bill has now been passed, and the Coalition government are planning to release a statement regarding changing to CET this week. 2.102.76.28 (talk) 17:48, 21 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The Daylight Savings Bill is at the second reading stage. It'll still be a long time before it's even passed. In addition, the bill is not for an immediate change, but for an analysis of the effects of such a change, followed by a trial period if that analysis is favourable.

As such, it's my opinion that the update tag should probably be removed until the bill is actually passed. If anything, it only deserves a brief mention until that point, since if it isn't passed, it will pretty much become completely irrelevant immediately.

--AllenJB (talk) 22:38, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As the original edit was incorrect, I've removed the update tag, leaving the article otherwise unchanged. Mhardcastle (talk) 09:33, 27 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Footnote 8 Reliability

Footnote 8 is technically properly quoted, but may be a bit misleading. The source is an MP politicking. He does claim that '1000 people a day were killed or seriously injured.' Then just a few sentences later he changes his assertion to 'killed or injured.' Wouldn't it be more accurate and encyclopedic to find the source of the data he's paraphrasing and actually quote it? It would remove the 'hearsay' aspect of the assertion, and possible selective use of facts in a political debate. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.179.45.40 (talk) 12:28, 31 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ditto - I find it hard to believe 1000 people were killed per day! over 300,000 per year? proper substantiation required. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.73.8.71 (talk) 09:55, 17 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Why?

The article doesn't really explain the reasons why BST was introduced, or why it is still maintained. Ghmyrtle (talk) 08:48, 27 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

There is no logical reason why anyone needs to mess with the clocks twice a year. If there is something you need to do earlier or later then just do it and leave me out of it! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.116.67.78 (talk) 12:04, 25 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Merge to Time in the United Kingdom

These articles cover the same topic and ought to be merged. The page "British Summer Time" should redirect to Western European Summer Time which is the country non-specific title for the day-light saving time in the UK, Ireland and Portugal. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 21:57, 15 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose – The articles don't cover the same topic. Yes, British Summer Time is a subset, so to speak, of Time in the United Kingdom, so the merge proposal has some logic. But British Summer Time is a broad enough subject for its own article, and this article is pretty extensive right now, so it's best to leave them separate. Note also that there are a number of other articles along similar lines — Daylight saving time in the United States, Daylight saving time in Canada, Daylight saving time in Australia, etc. — Mudwater^(Talk) 13:38, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok not exactly the same topic but pretty much the same content. The overlap is almost total.

The countries you refer to are all in different time zones, are spread across different time zones and all have different rules on daylight saving time. In contrast Germany and France are in the same time zone and operate the same rules on daylight saving time. We do not have articles on Daylight saving time in France and Daylight saving time in Germany. We have a single article on Central European Summer Time. There is a single time zone so there is a single article. "British Summer Time", "Irish Standard" Time" and "Western European Summer Time" are different name for the same thing, in the same way that Full Irish breakfast, Full English breakfast and Ulster fry are the same breakfast. — Blue-Haired Lawyer ^t 15:59, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The U.K. is in the same time zone as Ireland and Portugal, and starts and ends summer time at the same time too. But that doesn't necessarily mean that this article should be merged. This article has a fair amount of material about summer time specifically in Britain. In theory that could be merged into the Western European Summer Time, but I don't see how that improves the situation. Both Time in the United Kingdom and this article, British Summer Time, stand on their own as articles, so I'd still be against the merge and the redirect. As always, I would encourage other editors to join the discussion. — Mudwater^(Talk) 00:14, 23 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There doesn't seem to be much support for the merge proposal, which has been there for three months, so I'm going to remove it from the article.

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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion

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Non-EU UK Summer Time

I have seen it suggested that the EU should abandon Summer Time, starting in 2019. By current rules, EU Summer Time will start on Sunday 31st March 2019 at 02:00 UTC or GMT. By current rules, UK Summer Time will start at 01:00 on Sunday March 31st 2019. The UK will leave the EU late in Friday March 29th 2019, I think at 23:00. So what will, might, or will not UK Time be doing in the last weekend of March 2019? - we seem to have 26 hours to decide in. 94.30.84.71 (talk) 16:42, 27 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

More daylight in the evenings

I think this assertion in the introductory text is ambiguous, if not un-encyclopaedic. It depends on "evening" being interpreted as a clock time rather than as something relative to sunset or twilight, which must have been the original meaning from before mechanical time keeping devices. Similarly morning is ambiguous. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.47.93.63 (talk) 15:14, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

European reform 2021

The European Parliament voted (in 2019) to stop Daylight Saving in 2021, but this has been hampered by the pandemic, and possibly by Brexit. ELH80 (talk) 09:18, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is addressed in the article, at the bottom of the page. --Blurryman (talk) 23:41, 28 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've updated the corresponding section to clarify the future timing. Rosbif73 (talk) 06:29, 29 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]