Just back from vacation and good to see that some things never change. In this instance, it’s the discussion of changes to daylight saving time rules around the world.
Back in early 2008 Last year, I recall that the Russian government considered a bill abolishing daylight saving time or ”summer time” in the country. Noting "ample research and statistical data” the bill highlighted that the move to and from summer time had serious negative impacts on people’s health, calling out how the time changes attributed to up to 70,000 premature deaths a year in Russia alone. They cited "medical emergency calls increasing by 12% in the first two weeks after each change, suicide rate jumping 66%, accident rate rising by 29%, heart attack rates – by 75%. "
Now Russia has again been considering a move to eliminate DST, and indications in the press are that they will do just that later this year. I’ve read in the news that Medvedev said he has "decided to cancel the shift to winter time, starting from this autumn," and that Russia will not move to daylight saving time on the last Sunday of October.
A side comment: In his proposal, Medvedev said that the country would not “fall back” and revert to Standard time this fall. But, it would seem better for Russia to in fact move back to Standard time in October 2011, and then not make the “spring forward” change to clocks in March 2012. But who am I to argue with President Medvedev. 😉
We’ll continue to watch the developments on Medvedev’s plan. We do provide some guidance on http://www.microsoft.com/time, that in order to achieve more seamless transitions to new DST and time zones policies, Microsoft requests that governments provide the following:
- Ample advance notice (1 year or more) of the planned change.
- Official published confirmation of planned changes to DST or time zones.
- Concentrated efforts on promoting the change to the affected citizens.
Tags: Microsoft, Daylight Saving Time, Daylight Savings Time, RSS,DST, Russia
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