Daylight Savings Time ends in Europe tonight.

Jo, thanks for the information.

Collapsed last night and forgot. Luckily the phones and computers changed themselves! Loved that extra hour, though I wish we'd all quit screwing with the time.

Laurel, I hear you! Is DST even necessary anymore? Was it ever?

I got home yesterday from Europe and was struck by the changes in the light in England after DST ended. One o'clock pm in York on Monday looked like 4:00 or even 5:00 in the afternoon, because the shadows were so long already.

Ms. Jo,

We'll be going through the change back to Standard Time this weekend. The TV news shows have been active today with the usual warnings about the effects that occur at that time, such as increased traffic accidents. Now that I'm retired, it's not really a big deal. When I was working, the guy on night shift got to work an extra hour on the fall time change day (a 13-hour night shift is no fun!). Of course the guy working night shift in the spring worked an hour less.

I had the strange experience for the first time this year of being on an overnight flight the night the time changed over for Europe. I had changed my watch over to the + 6 hours upon boarding (in Atlanta). . .partway through the flight I realized this didn't match with the monitors, and then it hit me why.

It seems (although it wouldn't seem possible) that our arrival was a surprise even to the ground crew at CDG, because it took them a good half an hour to clear a gate for us to pull into after we had taxied and were waiting. ugh.

No thank you. I remember how gloomy winter days seemed to be during the British Standard Time experiment of the late 1960s to early 70s when it didn't get light until 9am through much of the winter and I wasn't in Scotland but the (English) Midlands - and it was still dark before 5pm.

Even the most southernmost parts of England barely have 8 hours of sunlight during the depths of winter - and for example York mentioned earlier has around seven and a half. It doesn't stretch.

Portugal moved to CST for a few years and abandoned it. Spain may well revert back to GMT after many decades.

Ah, Keith, it is not us preventing the UK from adopting Central European Time. It is the fact that CET is the wrong time, as Marco points out, for most of England as well as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We have only 59 MPs in a chamber of about 650. If regional England does not want CET, then we are not getting CET.