How times have changed

It’s more than a month now since this year’s daylight saving was introduced and it’s significant that the event now seems to create little or no controversy, unlike when the measure was trialled in 1974 and introduced the following year. At that time there was quite vociferous opposition to putting clocks forward by an hour in spring, particularly from dairy farmers who objected to having to get up an hour ‘‘earlier’’ to milk their cows.

In the ensuing 40-odd years this opposition has dwindled but, according to a government website,

41 per cent of dairy farmers still disapprove of the switch from NZ standard time every September. However, the public is now very much in favour of the measure, a survey in 2008 revealing that 81 per cent of Kiwis welcomed it.

So, while we have put the daylight savings controversy to bed, it’s still very much a controversial issue in other parts of the world. Only last week Morocco suddenly decided to stay on permanent daylight saving time.

And the debate is on again in Britain where, just as residents put their clocks back last weekend, debate raged over a European Union proposal to end the biannual ritual and have a unified EU time. At present in summer, Britain has a one-hour time difference with most of the EU and this is seen as a barrier to frictionless trade. For instance, while it’s 9am in Paris or Rome, it’s

8am in London and phone calls to businesses go unanswered.

Unsurprisingly, pro-Brexiteers oppose any change to the current regime. Indeed, presumably in brilliant anticipation of the Brexit vote, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg six years ago went even further and made a tongue-in-cheek proposal that Somerset, the county of his constituency, should have its clocks 15 minutes behind the rest of Britain.

He said this was the case before times in the UK were standardised in the 1840s. Before then clocks were set locally, often by the churches, depending on the position of the sun. Given how infrequently much of Britain sees the sun in summer, this must have led to some chaotic timekeeping.

Mixed-time zones can certainly confuse visitors to Australia, where New South Wales and Queensland finish up on different times during summer.

I once stayed in a hotel that straddled the Queensland-NSW border and there was an hour difference in the time at opposite ends of the building. A noticeboard giving details of a conference to be held there had to clarify the event was being held in the NSW part of the hotel and thus started an hour earlier than residents in the Queensland portion might imagine.

Cities, too, can get caught up in the time muddle. In 1965 the Minnesota cities of St Paul and Minneapolis – separated only by the Mississippi River and considered a single metropolitan area – couldn’t agree on their summer time. St Paul decided to start daylight saving early to conform with most of the nation. Minneapolis decided to stick with state law – and turmoil ensued.

Daylight saving created so much confusion in the US in the 1950s and 60s that on one bus route from Ohio to West Virginia, passengers had to change their watches seven times in 55 kilometres.

Sometimes the clock confusion can have fatal consequences. In 1999, in the Middle East, the West Bank was on daylight saving while Israel had switched to standard time. West Bank terrorists smuggled some time bombs over the border to their Israeli counterparts but a misunderstanding over the time led to the bombs exploding as they were being planted, killing three bombers.

A chilling reversal of the expression ‘‘killing time’’.