UK’s ‘daylight saving’ bill clocked by Policy Council
Saturday 29th October 2011, 2:29PM BST.
Jeff Fox, of Jewellers Ray & Scott’s, with the London 2012 Olympic Games countdown timer and an antique clock. (Picture by Steve Sarre, 1193034)
Jeff Fox, of Jewellers Ray & Scott’s, with the London 2012 Olympic Games countdown timer and an antique clock. (Picture by Steve Sarre, 1193034)
THE Policy Council is monitoring UK discussions about putting the clocks forward by one hour for a three-year trial period.
UK ministers yesterday said they were considering moving to Central European Time and were consulting their counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland about the idea.
‘The Policy Council has been made aware of proposals in the UK’s private members bill entitled “Daylight Saving Bill” and the recent government announcement in response to this bill,’ said a Policy Council spokesperson.
The issue was last discussed in the States in 2009 but deputies decided not to take any action at that time.
If adopted, the change would mean that for one autumn the clocks would not go back, bringing the UK into line with much of Europe.
The following spring the clocks would go forward one hour, which would be two hours ahead of Greenwich Mean Time – or double summertime.
Supporters of the idea have said the lighter evenings would promote outdoor activities and cut winter road deaths.
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I heard Alderney is planning to put their clocks forward by 50 years to be in line with Guernsey!
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As long as we have the same time zone as the UK I don’t care. And why do people call keep calling Double Summer Time? This to me would mean an extra 3 months of beach weather!
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How kind of Mr Corbin to give us that much sense.
And I thought we were just 2,000 drunks clinging to a rock, so time has no meaning, except when the landlord calls it.
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Here we go again – cue Roffey.
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“Supporters of the idea have said the lighter evenings would promote outdoor activities and cut winter road deaths.”
What about the road deaths that will come from sleepy people driving to work in the dark?
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I have long advocated this and hope it happens.
In practice I guess this is pretty uncontroversial in the Channel Islands – if Brittany can cope with it we can! But I’d still take the dark winter mornings over the dark evenings.
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Excellent please please do it. We should be permanently on British summer time all year round and no changing the clocks full stop. I absolutely hate the clock changing its completely unnecessary.
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Two points.
1. Why does Scotland not just have a different time zone? If you drive south from Dover to Calais there’s a one-hour time difference, so why not when you pass through Hadrian’s Wall? The USA, Canada and Australia all have multiple time zones – Adelaide is HALF an hour different from Sydney and Melbourne!
2. Would it not be better to advance the clocks by 2 hours in late March and back 2 hours in late October? Then we would get all the double summertime benefits but our winters would be exactly as they are now.
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Keith – I agree that it is less of an issue for us than in the UK. However, I do think that we have to be in the same time zone as the UK, since that is where most of our business comes from and it is one of our big selling points. It will be interesting to see what the UK does.
SS – it may be a minor inconvenience to change the clocks twice a year, but that is nothing compared to having to remember the current time difference to other parts of the world. At least with daylight saving we know that country Y is X hours behind for all, or at least most, of the year.
Personally, I’d like to leave it as it is. I don’t understand why people say that longer evenings in the winter will result in more time for sport – most sports people I know do their training in the mornings!
Frankly, the whole idea seems to be promoted by people who are too lazy to get up at a decent time ;-)
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GM – in those examples of multiple time zones, the zones change as you go east-weat, not north-south. This is because it is bad for our body clocks to be trying to live in a time zone that doesn’t reflect the natural balance around noon.
The problem with these proposals is that they tend to favour more light in the afternoons and evenings, which is not natural. It is pandering to the lethargic.
Under the proposals, people in the north of England (not just Scotland) would be dark for most of the morning and then, in the summer, would be light until after midnight. That is simply not natural.
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correctioon – I didn’t notice that you’d mentioned Australia. It does have different time zones north-south, as well as east-west, but I think that we can give them that as the distances are huge! The UK and Channel Islands would fit within any one State many times end to end.
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I get the east to west not north to south
But how come spain is +1 hours yet Portugal which is further west is same as UK
Then ever further west the canary islands are same as UK as is Madeira ????
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Terry
I’m not sure that I follow your argument. How is extra daylight in the afternoons and evenings “pandering to the lethargic”? More daylight hours during the leisure hours of the majority would suggest to me that there is far greater opportunity to pursue healthy sporting and leisure activities!
The point I make about Scotland is that it really isn’t a major issue for one country to be on a one-hour different time zone to its neighbour. Ditto England and France. Just adjust watches when crossing the border. Its really not beyond anyone to do that (or at least shouldn’t be!).
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Our longitude also has different time zones north to south from Europe to Africa. Look in your computer time zones during summer under Casablanca and Monrovia versus London and Lisbon.
In Summer time Morocco, Liberia etc. Stay on UTC because they are nearer the Equator and don’t suffer huge seasonal variations in daylight hours.
I assume that tropical parts of Australia are in the same league.
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Yes for my business it would be ideal not to move the clocks back, but we have been through all this before in the islands when I was at school, we were all issued with flurescent sashes etc but it was plain dangerous going to school in the dark and that was in the 60/70′s, can you imagine what it would be like now with high volumes of traffic at peak times and how many parents would let Johnnie and Mary wait for the bus in the dark, because I know I would not,so inevitably more traffic, believe me it would be very dark at that time of the day and we started school at 9am back then, I believe some schools start earlier these days. Be careful what you wish for, as I say it would suit me fine, but I do think of others. I expect if UK decides we will have to follow.
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When landing in Guernsey airport the stewardess announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are landing at Guernsey, please put your watches back 100 years”
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Better to leave things as they are,lots of clocks etc ,that set themselves to the correct time because they are programmed to do so,if they start swapping things around it will cause more confusion.
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I don’t agree with the arguments above for keeping daylight saving.
Northern France, Norway and Sweden, for example, are all on central european time. They all have substantially darker mornings in the winter than the UK and substantially lighter evenings in the summer than the UK. Yet, they all seem to cope without any fuss and their inhabitants have greater life expectancies than the UK too.
Lighter evenings, especially in the summer, make people happier and increase their quality of life, and mean less wasted hours of daylight are spent in bed in the mornings.
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Or we could leave the clocks exactly as they are and just get up an hour earlier ?
Personally I’m thinking of moving my household permenantly to Sandringham time and sod the rest of the world ….
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I think you will find Norway has one of the highest suicide rates in the world, because of the dark harsh winters, and Bergen all year round has one of the highest rain falls.Mind you the summer evenings are beautiful,but that only makes up a couple of months of the year.
Totally off topic but the cost of living there is one of the highest too.
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Norway has one of the highest suicide rates in the World? I think you’ll find an Island not far from the French coast with a reputation as a tropical paradise that offers tax efficient advice for billionares has one of the highest suicide rates in the World.
You don’t need to live in a dark, cold place to want to end your life. As for the Island’s suicide rates read page 2 of the the Guernsey Press earlier this week and I beilieve there have been ’38′ unexplained deaths this year, a significant number of which have been suicides.
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St Marcouf – your life expectancy argument doesn’t really hold water. After all, Guernsey follows the same timezone as the UK and yet it has a higher life expectancy than Norway, France and Sweden.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html
Personally I’m not fussed what they do, I do think we should stay in line with the UK though as it is our major trading partner.
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So what time zone will my iMac, iPhone, Plasma TV and atomic alarm clock automatically change to? That’s right UK TIME!
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