Editor, The News:
I agree absolutely with Glenn Mitchell (“Survey skewed to favour daylight saving,” The News, July 31) that the survey put forward by the B.C. government (in such a limited way) regarding choosing whether we move to daylight saving time 365 days a year, or keep the status quo.
The survey was skewed to favour daylight saving time and completely ignored the other choice, which would be staying on standard time, 365 days a year.
The European Union is having a debate on all three choices, not just trying to lead respondents into choosing daylight saving time as the new standard.
Time is a human construct and evolved around where we are in relation to the sun, and thus follows our natural circadian rhythms and the rhythms of billions of other organisms on the planet.
I did, in fact, respond to the survey as not in favour of daylight saving time year round.
Unfortunately, because of its skewed nature and no “comments /other” box, I was a bit flummoxed until I noticed one could respond directly to the government bureau taking on this task. That is what I did.
Personally, I feel we are better off with just staying on standard time.
Why are we intent on trying to fool our senses and natural rhythms?
We are not repositioning the earth or the sun.
We cannot add time to our clock nor subtract it.
In the most natural way, we achieve more daylight in the summer here in our hemisphere, no matter what.
The disruptions in our body clocks, the additional accidents on our roadways and mistakes made in a thousand jobs that rely on acuity of thinking, not to mention just the pain of adjusting every single clock (and there are so many time pieces and electronics these days) in our lives makes it important, I think, to pick the most natural time form there is and stick with it.
Darlene Mercer
Pitt Meadows