Daylight Savings, Credit Crunch, and the Appearance of Doing Something

I do not like to think that I am a cynic. I have noted, however, that every cynical person begins their rant with that disclaimer. I'll compromise and suggest that, although I have my cynical moments, I am on the whole optimistic. In case it is not obvious, I am about to be cynical. If you are upset by such things, look away now.

Daylight Savings Time. It is called something else here, I think, but the concept is the same: by moving the clocks, we somehow get a beneficial effect. I have struggled for years to come to grips with what it all means this moving of the clocks. I am not good with time in general and so the idea of shifting the clocks to save something finite has always baffled me.

Today I had an epiphany. Daylight Savings Time is another manifestation of the credit crunch. When we had all the daylight we wanted, we squandered it. (Whose fault is that? We must have a public inquiry.) Now that it has become scarce, the government has stepped in to conserve this scarce resource.

Once I understood it in those terms, daylight savings time made sense to me. The government has taken what we had anyway, called it something else, obliged us to accommodate (and be grateful) and kept it. If they could figure out how to tax it, I daresay they would.

Perhaps down south sliding the clock morning wise makes sense. If school children and office workers can catch the bus in daylight, well I am happy for them, but couldn't they just leave the clocks alone and get up earlier? Can the government give another hour of sunlight in the evenings, too, so school children and office workers see the light on their way home? If not, then what is the virtue in daylight savings? Where are they saving it? Have they invested it wisely? Will they give it back to us?

Up here we get so little sun now that one hour one way or the other still leaves me in the dark. The sun gets up about 9 am now and lolls low on the horizon until going back to bed about 4pm on a bright day. On a grey day, well, perhaps that is what the government is doing with all those daylight savings hours---saving for a rainy day.