Daylight Savings Time - A Capitalist Plot

In the Arctic, daylight savings time is nothing short of an absurdity. It's only a few weeks after the first day of spring, but already we have about 16 hours of daylight and twi-light. And by the time we reach mid-May, night-time darkness will only be a memory.

I don't know of how many of you are kept awake at 3:00 AM by kids, and I mean really young kids, playing out in the streets in hordes. But I can tell you that by the time of summer solstice, I would kill for a couple of hours of night. Deep, dark, ebony-flavoured night.

So I ask you, just who benefits from all this springing ahead and falling behind?

Yes, I understand the arguments (saving electricity, giving the farmers more daylight working hours, encouraging people who are afraid of the dark to shop after work), but it seems to me there are workarounds for each argument far simpler than screwing around with the clocks.

First of all, any savings in electricity and fuel costs gained by having one more hour of sunlight in the evening are immediately eaten up by having to turn on the lights and stoves 60 minutes later into each morning. Come on now, it's not like we're actually gaining daylight, we're just shifting it around like 3-card monte.

And more daylight hours for farmers - give me a fucking break! First off, do farmers actually have to work longer hours than they already do? And it seems to me that all the "ancient" professions - fishing, hunting, farming and hooking - work according to the normal diurnal timetable of the sun, moon and tides anyways. So this argument is entirely bogus.

Longer daylight shopping hours? It's not like we need more opportunities to spend our cash, with the Shopping Network, the Internet and corner stores going full bore 24/7.

So I ask you once again, who gains by removing one hour from the clock in April only to sneak it back into the deck in October?

Here's some hints - what activity (at least in North America) starts in April and ends in October? And what activity occurs usually in the evening during the working week? And what activity's greedy tentacles extend far into Washington's backside to push its evil agenda?