I'm all for spending political energy on issues that make the biggest difference. But as I see democratic backsliding in so many parts of the world, I've found myself feeling quite sentimental about these kinds of low stakes debates that wouldn't happen anywheres else but in a democracy.

And in particular, what is the role of backbenchers if not to bring light to these issues that clearly aren't going to receive the attention of cabinet (or shadow cabinet, for that matter)?

But I think the counterpoint is why shouldn't we? Should we stop expecting government to look for little, incremental benefits to our lives because they don't deliver the highest impact?

At the same time (pun not intended), while repeal would be a clear net-benefit, it's also clear that the benefits would be small. And faced with so much resistance from people who've become (irrationally) fond of it in a small c conservative sense, why should we spend political energy on this topic?

It is useless as an energy demand policy (which was its original purpose), so on those merits (it is a failed policy) it should be repealed. (I understand most experts recommend that if we were going to stop changing the hours, we actually switch to DST all year round.)

I've vacillated between caring deeply and very little about this, but I think it's an interesting example of the role of legislators, and what is the point of democracy.

IIRC it was a shared grade between both teams - so we prepped together so we knew the main points we were going to discuss, but as we got into the details of arguments we broke out into our individual teams because there still was a before and after poll to see which team had "won".

What has been your experience with debate style assignments? My fondest memory of this format was a standard debate format, followed by reactions from the prof afterward highlighting any missed points. Requiring live reaction to arguments also takes away the ability to use AI as a crutch?

Understood :) Makes a lot of sense, especially #3!

Genuine question: what is making you unusually reticent? I have to assume partisans accuse you of trying to influence outcomes every time you write about politics, so why try to avoid those accusations for this particular race?

Any chance you'll cover this as an upshift on an upcoming ep of the pod? Don't have a Bloomberg sub and curious how it got revived!