[Ag-eq] {Spam?} Spring forward: fall back

[Jewel]

On another list to which I belong, the old chestnut of clock  adjustment has come up as it does 
every year.
I thought that you might like to read the following.
Firstly, from yours truly.
New Zealand, being a small country, I believe, roughly the size of California,  observes the same 
time from North Cape in the far north to Slope Point in the far south.
Our clocks go forward an hour on the 1st Sunday in September, making [New Zealand Daylight time: 
NZDT] 13 hours ahead of GMT amd then back to NZST[New Zealand Standard Time] on the 1st Sunday in 
April.12 hours ahead of GMT.
The earliest time adjustment proposal was in 1895, but nothing was done about it but the idea was 
looked at again in 1915, but still nothing was done.
Now what I am about to say is not mentioned in my search on Google, but comes from our study of NZ 
history when I was at school, so it may come as much of a surprise to the brainboxes at Google as it 
may to many New Zealanders.
New Zealand daylight time is, actually, 2 hours ahead of the time as it was in 1940, and that is 
because William Sidey, the mP for Dunedin tabled a bill in the New Zealand parliament proposing 
that, for the duration of the war, clocks should be advanced 1 hour, and this proposal was accepted.
However, when the war was over, it was found that Sidey Time had become, widely, accepted, so the 
bill was never repealed.
Maybe, even the pollies were unaware of the permanent advance of the clocks, because in the late 
sixties, they introduced another experimental bill advancing the clocks a half an hour, and then in, 
I think, 1976, another half hour.
It has remained like that, but there has been a deal of monkeying about with when our clocks spring 
forward or fall back, but the 1st Sunday in April and ditto in October has been standard for some 
years now.
When, in 1976, the advance of an hour was set in place, one small dairying area in the northern half 
of the North Island refused to change their clocks giving as their reason the disruption to their 
cows' routine.  In the months when clocks were on NZST, the cows would begin to wander, , of their 
own accord, down to the cow shed for milking which would begin at around 3/4am, but if the clocks 
went on that hour, the farmer or his dog would have to go out and fetch them in,and no sooner would 
they have become accustomed to coming out at one time, than they would have to change, and cows, 
being creatures of habit, would be disconvovulated again.
I think that Wairua was the only dairying area that refused to march to the beat of the same drum as 
other dairy farmers, but after an elapse of 40 years, surely even the grumpy cow cockies of Wairua 
have accepted that their protest was not worth a bootful of cowshit.
I remember the protests of the * old, and not so * old, to daylight saving.
They, the * old and not so * old could not grasp that the sun was not rising an hour earlier, it was 
the clock-driven humans that were doing that.  Some of the protests ran as thus:  "Paint work on 
houses will fade just that little bit faster with the extra hour of sunlight;  We will have to mow 
our lawns more often!"  etc etc and so on.  It was, really, rather amusing!

         Jewel

from D.  An hour may not seem like much, but when transferring a billion dollars,
the interest may actually amount to something. I assume they just avoid
those times, but could be interesting as a plot for a book.

I find the idea that twice a year Eastern time is either the same time as
Central, or two hours different. Also, since a few places don't observe
DST, they go from being the same or different times as their neighbors, to
vice versa. Must make it a headache if you live in one area and work in
another.