Time

Tomorrow (or on Sunday depending on how time obssessed you are) we all put the clocks back an hour to GMT. This is a singularly depressing day for most as it means winter and long nights are officially upon us. This time of year all the usual arguments surface - should we not put the clocks back? This did happen for three years between 1968 and 1971, although I cannot remember and doubtless took no interest in the debate at the time, and I have no recollection of what effect it had on me as a school child walking to school. In fact one of the arguments against the experiment, particularly from the north of Britain, was that school kids put themselves in more danger walking to school in the dark. However, I cannot find any statistics from the experiment that bear this out.

The experiment proved deeply unpopular in Scotland, yet there are now counter arguments that Britain, Scotland included, should adopt Single/Double Summer Time or SDST. This entails retaining British Summer Time in the winter months, and advancing the clocks an hour in March, resulting in time two hours ahead of GMT, or to put it simply, having the same time frame of most of Europe. It is argued that the resulting extra hours of daylight would allow kids to get more exercise thereby staving off the onward march of childhood obesity. Sounds fine in theory, but how do you prise kids away from their Wii or Playstation to go out and run about for an hour?

Of course, SDST also results in mornings oop north remaining dark until 9am and later, and the hoary old child safety argument rearing its head again. This is cited by the Scottish Government as a reason for not implementing the plan. Surely a simple way round this would be to start the school day later? There are so many legal obligations on employers nowadays to allow flexitime etc, that I can't see it being a problem for working parents.

There is also the added benefit of reduced accidents as evening rush hour in the dark is more dangerous than morning rush hour under street lighting, as was proved in the '68-'71 experiment.

Another argument in favour is that a big reduction in carbon emissions would result after adopting SDST, and flowing from this is the reduced amount of energy consumed in peak hours. Leaving the clocks at BST in the winter would save 500,000 tonnes of CO2 or to put it another way would be the equivalent of taking 200,000 cars off the road. A no-brainer surely?

Eugenie Harvey, director of the Lighter Later 10:10 campaign, which aims to get businesses, government and individuals to help cut the UK's carbon emissions by 10%, said: "In the UK we love our long summer days. Lighter evenings make us happier, healthier and safe." Indeedy.

Why not adopt SDST and let Scotland have a referendum on it - if they want to stay as we are, then let them.

Oddly should SDST ever be adapted in Britain, then there will be countries in West Africa on the same lines of longitude as us, but by still using GMT would be an hour behind us. Incidentally in Africa GMT is known as Zulu Time. I always thought Zulus were in South Africa, which is 2 hours ahead of GMT - I'm confused now!

From a personal point of view, much as I hate getting up in the dark to go to work, and retaining BST would only make that aspect worse, the extra hour's daylight at the end of the day would more than compensate. Also, I really like the idea of twilight at 11 o'clock at night in the middle of June.

Bring it on!