good ol' democracy

[Nitestick]

time for a little rant

looks like i will be stuck with daylight savings for the next three years thanks to a bunch of bureaucrats and the now apparently defunct democracy of my state. pure and simple daylight savings has never been a popular concept in my city and even less in rural areas of the state. we have had three referendums on the issue and each one has returned the same result:

NO

but of course that isn't good enough any more. without referendum we are now entering a three year "trial" . whether people think it's a trivial issue it doesn't change the fact that they have effectively bypassed the democratic process. that can not be considered a good thing, a government bypassing the process at any point can not be seen as a good sign for the future.

the quoted reason for the lack of a referendum: it will cost too much. all good and well, referendums cost millions. so instead would it not make more sense to just leave the darn clocks alone? apparently not because democracy costs too much and they are not interested in a democratic decision.

the best metaphor i've seen in my life: "if you asked a woman for sex three times and she refused each time yet you continued you would be charged with rape, no means no".

 

[Apokalipse]

what if nobody turns their clock back, even if they try and instigate daylight savings anyway?

 

[Nitestick]

interesting idea . the thing i find bizarre is that one of the main reasons was that apparently our businesses need it. of course these are the "struggling businesses" in australia's best state economy at the moment

 

[Apokalipse]

that's non-sequitar. how does changing the clocks back an hour help businesses?

 

[Nitestick]

daylight savings is putting the clock forwards is it not? they argue that the time difference from west to east cripples business which it clearly doesn't.

 

[Apokalipse]

and yet they've given no statistics or substantiation to demonstrate that

 

[Meithan]

Daylight saving time is designed so that we get more daylight in the afternoon. There's no relation to time difference between the coasts. DST is moving one hour of daylight from the morning to the afternoon. In practice, the effect is that it's darker in the morning when you get up, but the sunset occurs later in the afternoon, so there will still be light when you finish working.

Personally, I barely get affected when DST kicks in and out. I actually do like that it's darker in the morning and brighter in the afternoon. Without it, I feel the day ends up too quickly.

Also, I think people who complain about it are just whiners. If you secretly set their clocks forward one hour without them knowing, they wouldn't really care. They'd just think "Wow, it's almost as if it's darker in the morning now. Must be summer". But I may be wrong.

 

[molsen]

i don't see how DST is that big of a deal. it's only an hour, which you have 24 of in day. spring forward, fall back.

so one day in a year you lose an hour and one day in a year you gain an hour. talk about a minor adjustment.

 

[Meithan]

Exactly my point, thank you molsen. However, we still have to respect that some people don't like it, and some may even have a good reason not to. Everyone's entitled to an opinion. I just happen to like DST.

Regardless, the thread was not about DST itself, but about the government's refusal to conduct another referendum in nitestick's state. If people don't like DST, whatever their reasons be, they're entitled to be heard by the government, and it's in their power to force a change. At least such should be the case in a democracy, and I agree with nitesetick on this.

However, you still have to give a bit of credit to the government's decision in this case. If they already went through three referendums, and none was successful, then it means a large enough portion of the population is fine with it. Democracy is about majority (or two thirds, in some cases). It's not about everyone agreeing on something, since this is utopic.

A referendum should be allowed every once in a while to see if general opinion has changed, but doing it too often is pointless and supposedly a considerable issue to the budget. Every couple years should be a good compromise in my opinion.

 

[The General]

i don't see how DST is that big of a deal. it's only an hour

Exactly, so why make everyone change their clocks if it's only an hour?