Daylight saving

Which is easier?  To change the setting of every clock on planet earth or to change human habits?

Like most countries in Europe, Ireland observes Daylight Saving Time (DST), with the clock shifting forward one hour at the end of March and one hour backward at the end of October.  The USA has a similar scheme but uses different dates. The situation is even more confusing in Australia where only some states (the green ones in the map) adopt DST.

Living in a community we have rather more clocks than an average house: I've just adjusted 13 of our more public clocks, and one subsequently fell off its wall fixing and broke its glass - duh...

The EU proposed to abolish the time change in September 2018 following a public consultation, during which, 4.6 million European citizens called for the practice to be brought to an end, however its usage still persists.

George Hudson (who has a lot to answer for) was the first to propose modern DST in 1895 with Germany being the first to implement it on May 1, 1916, in the hopes that it would save energy during World War I. Whether it did is open to question but in any case the system has persisted since then.

If indeed it is better to have lighter winter mornings (at the expense of darker evenings) why change the clock? Whatever is wrong with an institution deciding to shift its starting and ending times by an hour to achieve the same end? 

Having just informed my Physics class that two underlying laws pervade humanity:

(1) there's no such thing as a free lunch, aka you won't get something for nothing, and

(2) cause must precede its effect (as parodied in Alice through the looking glass) aka the "arrow of time".

The latter observes that time moves only in one direction, and DST violates this principle. I wonder what would have happened if I had set a repeating alarm on my smart phone for 01:55 hours last night?  I suppose it would have rung at 01:55 and then again, two hours later, at 01:55. Which underlines the absurdity. If I had been sufficiently bothered I'd have tried it, but I preferred not to interrupt my beauty sleep. And had the switch been during daylight hours, would the sun have moved back?

DST was (and is) clearly a political agenda. No engineer, computer programmer or scientist in their right mind would propose anything so asinine or contrary to reason. We technical people get around it by adopting UTC for any serious investigation, but we cannot totally distance ourselves from DST because we have to live with the rest of humanity who appear to be more politically than technically minded. Hence my spending  half an hour or more adjusting 13 clocks and breaking one.

Having belaboured my point, I admit that there is a Biblical passage about time going backwards (and another about time standing still):

And Isaiah said, “This shall be the sign to you from the LORD, that the LORD will do the thing that he has promised: shall the shadow go forward ten steps, or go back ten steps?” And Hezekiah answered, “It is an easy thing for the shadow to lengthen ten steps. Rather let the shadow go back ten steps [or degrees KJV].” And Isaiah the prophet called to the LORD, and he brought the shadow back ten steps, by which it had gone down on the steps of Ahaz. (2Ki 20:9-11)

about which there has long been the rumour that NASA computer programmers proved that this event actually happened, now mostly debunked. I remember my father alluding to this - it was the sort of thing that would have tickled his interest. This link summarises the subject.