How good DST is for you, depends on where you live and what your time zone is. Some time zones are set for economic and political reasons rather than to match up clock time with the time of day. For some places DST lines up with the position of the sun, for others it’s the exact opposite.

Here in the Netherlands, our time zone matches up with a longitude between the German/Polish border and Rome. Basically, we’re off by an hour for most of the year, we should really be on UK time. Portugal, Spain, and most of France have it even worse.

What would be shifting an hour in the wrong direction for the east-most European countries in the same time zone, is fixing the offset for the west-most countries.

There are even worse places in terms of time zones. China has one single time zone for example, as does Brazil, while both of them should really be on three. Africa’s time zones seem to be divided between “sensible” and “was once as French colony”. Alaska is just more than an hour off for the heck of it, it seems, as is the west-most part of Canada.

Some countries even have north-south time zones divides (Australia, America). Kiribati probably has the worst time zone, lining up with Hawaii and Alaska geographically, but it’s a day ahead because it lies beyond the date line (but mostly trades with Australia and other islands on the other side of the date line), but New Zealand is also pretty far out there for no good reason.

Take a look at this map and you can see how silly time zones are. I’m betting most DST proponents live in places where DST fixes their clock.