Sunday, March 29, 2009

quicko: voting in western australia

So I just found out that Western Australia is going to have an election, and it has what is probably the most exciting issue I've ever heard of on the ballot: whether or not to keep daylight savings time.

It seems that for the last three years Western Australia has been trialing daylight savings to see if the people want to keep it, and now it has come time to vote.

It's not as clear cut as you may think. Businesses aren't necessarily in favor, as it puts them three hours behind Sydney time, and it's a bit frustrating to keep in contact at, say, 4 pm in Perth as everyone in Sydney's already gone home. Just how precisely they've dealt with managing a 17 or so hour time difference to New York, London and Paris for the last century or two but grow queasy with a 3 hour one to Sydney evidently is not an issue these businesses have felt necessary to raise.

There's also the trouble of the children. They don't, you see, like to go to bed when it's light out. Ah, well, they'll grow out of it.

Everyone else seems to like daylight savings time, though, for reasons the rest of us have known and loved for ages. Perhaps Western Australia will soon catch up, but I'm afraid we'll have to wait an extra hour to find out.

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