The House of Commons will shortly be discussing a Private Members' Bill on introducing 'Single Double Summer Time', i.e. changing the clocks year round to provide one hour extra light in the afternoon/evening, with one hour extra dark in the morning as a consequence. There's more information on my website here.
I'm interested in the views of constituents on the topic.You can email me at mark@marklazarowicz.org.uk, post a comment here on my blog, and you can cast your vote in my poll on the issue as well, on the home page of my website.
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10 comments:
This issue has been on my mind a lot lately with the days getting increasingly shorter. The darker mornings I don't mind so much, though I know other who do, but the darker evenings are not fun and I honestly wish we didn't have to switch the clocks this weekend, I'm really not looking forward to it being dark by 4pm. More to the point is the extra amount of energy we're having to use because evenings are getting so dark. It would make so much more sense to leave things as they are just now.
I wonder about the logic of moving the clocks too. I think most people would prefer lighter afternoons, than lighter early mornings. However, this seems to have become a 'nationalist' issue for some members of the SNP. Oh well.
If the change is likely to save energy and reduce accidents, then I wouldn't mind giving it a try. I understand that the experience with British Standard Time from 1968-1971 suggested this was the case, though the findings were published after the debate that abolished it.
One point: do the energy savings and reduction in accidents also apply to Scotland?
In the very middle of winter, it won't make much difference to my journeys to work and journeys to school are in the semi-darkness anyway.
From news reports, it seems that people such as farmers don't like the idea of spending more time in the dark in the morning, but it's not clear to me why they can't rise an hour later (i.e. at the same time relative to the sun).
I would hate the darker mornings, but of course you get the benefit in the evenings, so there's a balance to be struck. I'm dubious about the claim that the change would save lots of energy - you will need more lights on in the morning, so it seems likely the savings would be marginal. But I guess I will trust the research that says there are many benefits in terms of accident savings etc - and hopefully in energy use.
What I don't understand is why the clocks have to be altered by an hour at all - why not just stick to the present summer time hours and have that running all year - in other words, keep to summer hours and don't change the clocks. The only reason I can see to not do this is to make us the same as Europe. Any comments or explanation on this aspect would be appreciated.
I always find it a little odd when you look at a map.
I mean, look at a map of time zones; there's a pretty reasonable one at http://www.worldtimezone.com/
In Europe, the UK, Ireland, and Portagaul are in a green coloured zone on GMT, then you have GMT+1 in blue, and GMT+2 in red.
The 'red' GMT+2 countries are all where you'd expect them to be.
The 'blue' ones are largely in what looks to be the right sort of place, though France looks as though it ought to be in GMT, along with Spain.
So France and Spain are already in the sort of position we'd be with double summer time, relative to their position east-west (though being closer to the equator, they'll get more hours of daylight in total anyway).
Do they have significantly better safety records than we do?
Similarly, the likes of Denmark and southern Sweden seem to be at a similar latitude to us, so should have a similar number of hours of daylight. Like us, they're in the "right" timezone relative to their position on the map; how do they compare to us for safety?
Assuming that we get an even amount of daylight either side of noon, I suppose the question is why we've shifted our working day to be so slanted towards the afternoon; the typical 9-5.30 job has three hours before noon and five-and-a-half after. 8-4.30 would be a closer balance, with the same effect as shifting the clocks; that doesn't seem to be a very popular option though!
(Imagine the effects on traffic congestion in the mornings and evenings, if rather than most companies starting at 9, about half started at 8 and half started at 9...)
Would it be better to encourage more flexible working hours, perhaps?
I can't say as I'm really in favour of the double summertime change, though I'd definitely be strongly opposed to ending up with different timezones in Scotland and England.
In response to the Lighter Later campaign I would point out that we have been here before as the continuation of British Summer Time through the winter was tried between 1968 and 1971. This trial was stopped due to massive unpopularity, to some extent fed by a media campaign highlighting an increase in road accidents to children going to school. As I was going to school at that time I can assure you that I did not appreciate leaving home in the dark for the best part of 3 months and coming home in the dark for the best part of 2 months. In Scotland the difference in latitude makes a very significant difference to hours of daylight availability.
The idea of Lighter Later is somewhat flawed. Why do we need to change the clocks to achieve the same result? Can those in the South of England not just get up an hour earlier, have businesses open an hour earlier and close an hour earlier? Whatever benefits are supposed to be gained by changing the clocks will equally be achieved and those of us in the North will be able to leave our arrangements as they are. This seems more equitable and a lot easier than a change in time-zones somewhere around Yorkshire so none of us really have to get up and go to work in the dark!
On a health and wellbeing note, we need daylight in the morning to suppress melatonin. If we go to work in the dark we go from artificially lit homes on artificially lit public transport to artificially lit places of work at no time getting above the 1500 Lux threshold for the third receptor in the eye to activate our biological clock into day mode. If we go to work in daylight, even the short periods we spend outside are likely to get us into an adequately bright space for this to start happening.
Unfortunately this campaign is another London-centric idea funded by London based do-gooders who prefer holidaying in France to travelling North of Watford. We in Scotland need to be considered in legislation that will have bigger impacts on our lives than it will have on those living in the South of England.
The following is a comment from a constituent who asked me to post it for her, as she wasn't able to do so herself:
I would like the clocks to stay at summer time hours as previous comment has stated. I dont think its a nattionjalist issue, that is silly. Its an issue that divides peopel on where they are form not politics. People i know from further north, and couple of people with farmign backgrounds think it would be awful, people office based furhter south,are like me and would prefer lighter evenings and darker mornings. its hard to get balance right so I'd like to see two years of trial and then a full review of benefits and disandavantages. I woudl like to see a change but at the end of the day, we can all cope with the current situation so any changes that disadvantage my fellow countrymen further north I would not support. thanks for raising the issue Mark.
Belatedly responding to David Sterrat, I just saw a reference to http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1208 - showing the numbers of road casualties - it is extremely clear that the sixties/seventies experiment with this earlier did nothing to save lives, if anything the reverse.
Think I'm rather unconvinced of the need to change.
The arguments for changing the clocks by an hour seem pretty convincing to me. Especially the point that lives would be saved.
The arguments "for" this seem to highlight the positive economic factors, but I think there is an actual cost to doing this.
Most computer systems are coded to understand how the clocks change and will do so automatically. Many of these get the time from a central server which "should" be easy to update, but there will be a lot of legacy systems out there which will make mistakes. Of course this could be another millennium bug and not cause any problems what so ever, but would certainly need investigation before committing.
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