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DST (Daylight saving time) start late March walked past to the last weekend of September. But since 1996 we (the Netherlands and the rest of Europe) added a month under pressure from the British and the Irish to synchronize with the summertime in the United Kingdom. DST will run until the last weekend of October.

Now we use a double summer time which means that we are in the winter one hour and in summer two hours ahead of UTC (UTC is almost the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)), because we are basically in the same time zone as Greenwich . However, the UK's summer time is one hour ahead of UTC.

So the question can be asked differently: Why (looks!) do British want to have their summer time another (extra?) month (till october)? Or DST starts there a month later?

I've questioned this also at earth science but they told me it belongs to politics

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    I don't think "under pressure" from the UK is quite right, there was a consensus on the need to synchronise the various rules (e.g. France originally followed neither the German/Dutch rule nor the British/Irish one) and a string of EU directives about this. At the end of the day, the current rules do more-or-less match the British practice but the foremost concern was to agree on a common rule. Currently, DST/summer time starts and ends at the exact same time (day but also time of day) everywhere in the EU.
    – Relaxed
    Feb 20, 2016 at 12:15
  • Summer = tourism = $$$
    – PoloHoleSet
    Jul 11, 2017 at 21:22
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    @PoloHoleSet that does not compute. Tourists tend to travel in the summer because the weather tends to be nicer. Pushing the civil clock ahead earlier or later in the year won't affect that.
    – phoog
    Aug 11, 2017 at 20:30
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    @PoloHoleSet but we're talking about why it's been extended into October from September. That's neither summer nor tourist season.
    – phoog
    Aug 13, 2017 at 22:38
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    @PoloHoleSet you don't seem to be paying very close attention. The end of summer time has been the end of October since 1996 (earlier in the UK and Ireland). Yet October is not tourist season, even with this having been in place for over two decades. Official discussions and debates on the question do mention tourism, as well as "leisure activities," but hardly as a major factor in the analysis. Far more significant are commuting and energy use.
    – phoog
    Aug 14, 2017 at 13:56

1 Answer 1

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Why do the British want to have their summer time another month (till october)? So that Scotland and northern England has daylight at a reasonable time in the morning in October, and because the UK wants to retain a single time zone.

On the 22nd of October 2017, in Aberdeen, the sun will rise at 07:57 BST and set at 17:47. This allows most people to travel to and from work/school etc. in daylight. Most people working outdoors will be working during the hours of daylight. If the clock change were to take place in September, during October there would be an hour of daylight while most people were asleep, and commuters would be travelling home in the dark. Of course, Cornwall has noticably longer hours of daylight, but no UK politician would suggest dividing the country into two time zones

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