zip accident wrote:If Brexit was inevitable the stock markets here ought to be panicking, but they're not.
Not necessarily true.
That would require stock markets to have foresight and pre-empt events before they happen.
But, actually, stock markets operate very much in the here and now to events as they happen - within nanoseconds, these days - so the inevitability of Brexit might well cause mass dumping over time, as its consequences play out, but until that actually plays out, they'll continue to react to the situation as it stands, where Brexit has not happened yet.
Basically, in the meantime, there's still money to be made. So they'll continue doing that, right up until events don't let them.
zip accident wrote:There was an EEC thing about BST being stopped or something, what's happening to that? Brexit's chased it off the news, is that deliberate?
Yes, some idiots who don't comprehend how reality works - and what the real problem actually is - were campaigning to switch the UK to Central European Time.
And, yes, in the context the Leave vote and Brexit, they've gone deathly silent, realising just how much on a hiding to nothing they are with that silly idea.
Sorry, but time zones as a political instrument is dumb.
They exist because the Earth is not flat. As the globe turns, and also orbits the Sun, when it gets light and dark varies by longitude and season.
I've covered it before, but I say it's stupid because if you want to operate on CET then just wake up an hour earlier, go to work an hour earlier, have lunch an hour earlier, go home an hour earlier and so forth. Do that and leave everyone else who doesn't need to be on CET alone.
The problem is not the clocks. The problem is our insistence on a universal homogeneous reaction to what the clock says.
In the midst of the campaign for switching to CET, I saw one of their campaigners argue that, if only the UK was operating on CET, then our tourism industry would make an extra billion a year. He thought this was a killer argument. But this actually just left me thinking that they're idiots. I mean, if you know that opening and closing an hour earlier would net an extra billion then why aren't you doing this already? Why do you need an Act of Parliament for this?
You know where your signs say "opening hours: 9 to 5"? Just change that to "opening hours: 8 to 4" instead. Extra billion. Sorted.
Why does everyone else - who has no such requirements - need to be permanently disturbed in their routines?
There was talk of rush hour traffic. But this only emphasises my point. "Rush hour" is an issue because we insist on cramming all commuting into an hour every morning. Have you seen how otherwise dead the vast majority of roads are outside rush hour?
The problem is not when do we all cram onto the roads at the exact same time - and then wonder why they're all log jammed - but the fact that we weirdly insist on doing this in the first place. If some folks went to work at 8am and others went to work at 9am and others went to work at 10am - and the kids went to school at 10am too, as it has been scientifically shown that this would be beneficial to those going through puberty who have changing sleep patterns - then it's not "rush hour" but "rush 3 hours".
The load is more balanced. Everyone experiences a third less traffic. Problem solved.
It matters not what it says on the clock. We could, for example, replace the numbers 1 - 12 on the clock face with the letters A-L instead. It's "G" o'clock. It's half past "C". Or we could name the hours after the signs of the Zodiacs - seeing as there's conveniently the same number of them - and I'll see you for lunch at half past Virgo.
What matters is our reaction to these mere symbols. The idea that everyone must be arriving at work or school at the exact same time - be that 9am or "K" or "Saggitarius" or whatever you want to call it - is the actual source of our woes. Or, in the case of those who want to be on CET to match their trading partners, the fact that they're not going to work at the exact same time as their suppliers / customers - but the actual answer to that, of course, is just to change your working hours so that you are.
As for the arguments about driving home in the dark. Well, all a clock change can do is shift it an hour one way or the other. But the variation in when twilight starts and ends over the year is way more than one hour.
And, in terms of lighting conditions, twilight is worse than night anyway. When it's fully night, folks turn on their headlights. But, during twilight, it's a mixed bag and some folks have and some folks haven't. Some of the street lights are on and others aren't. Dusk is also horrible because the Sun's down low near the horizon and, thus, potentially drivers are having to look towards the Sun (and as they drive around, changing orientation, sometimes they do have it in front of them and sometimes not, and as you take a corner, it can suddenly catch you unawares). Basically, we have those sun visors you can pull down for twilight - you don't need them at night or during the day. The transition - because it's neither one nor the other at twilight - is the real issue. And unless you're proposing constantly changing the clocks by 6 hours either way during the course of the year, not just a single hour, then there will be some point during the year when it'll be twilight as you go to work or come home.
This, to my mind, though, is symptomatic of the same kind of ignorant mentality behind Brexit.
Blame the wrong thing - the clock, "brown people", etc. - for all your woes, in a "scapegoat" red herring fashion, and then rush headlong into "fixing" the thing that was never, in fact, ever the cause of your troubles in the first place. Then stand around wondering why nothing ever seems to improve.
Jobs are getting scarcer and more unreliable because of increasing automation. The economy is down the shitter because the bankers fucked us over in 2008 (and our politicians have no fucking idea how to manage the economy, clearly, as every political stripe, in their turn, has taken their turn to do the wrong thing and screw it all up).
And none of this is being fixed, as our politicians are still fighting some ideological battle over Marxism - a century or so out of date - and won't even acknowledge the previous two causes as existing, let alone the thing that actually needs fixing.
"Words ought to be a little wild - for they are assaults of thought on the unthinking."
- John Maynard Keynes
