Clock-Shift

Clocks went back to normal at the weekend. I remember as a child I used to always get a depressing sense of ennui around this time of year. The sudden jolt into darkness after school. Knightmare would be on CITV, and it'd be dark and doomy outside. It was only when I got older that I realised it was a consequence of the clock-shift.

I really don't like the messing-around of the clocks. I feel it uproots people from nature. Midday is when the Sun is at its height in the sky - it's a real-world, physical fact - so deciding we're going to start calling actual midday 1 o'clock every summer just seems wilfully dishonest. Of course, actual midday is always going to be relative to where you are on the Earth, so no clock is going to be a truly accurate representation of your daily experience. However, at least keep it in the ballpark. Why purposely shift the whole thing an hour out of whack?

People will make practical arguments for it. I never find them especially convincing, but even so, it's more the principle. Misrepresenting the real world with faulty language because it offers an uptick in GDP, or some other political dividend. It's like saying you'd be happy to call the Sun the Moon and the Moon the Sun if it reduced crime by 5%.

There's also the arrogance. People or governments thinking they somehow have the authority to just decide midday is now 1 o'clock or 2 o'clock, or whatever the case may be. And that we all must then live by it, and use those wrong labels. Labels that contradict basic observed reality.

People talk about how dystopic it is being forced to refer to men as women, and to use the right pronouns and so forth. This isn't a million miles away from that really, but people are used to it, so if you complain it's "What's the big deal?". They're happy to spend two days every year fiddling around with every clock in the house because some bureaucrats in their wisdom want to play God.

Irksome.