Comments on: BST: good for tourism, road safety and climate

By: John77

John77 — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 20:52:19 +0000

The whole idea is a con. If you want people to get up in the dark and start work an hour earlier, why don’t you just ask them to do it? If there is any sound argument for starting work at 7 am and requiring me to get up before 5 am to do so, why don’t you try to explain them? There has been every opportunity for those who want to start work earlier to do so, so why have they not done so if it is so beneficial? A few companies start work early to match the working hours of continental suppliers/customers/competitors but the relatively tiny number who have continued to do so (in contrast with the fad in the eighties) demonstrates that this is rarely worth the effort.
The morning rush hour includes children going to school but they finish school before the evening rush hour, so it is more important for the former to be in daylight. One of the reasons why a previous experiment was rejected was an unacceptable rise in the number of children killed in rush hour accidents in the dark. The overwhelming majority of the UK is farther west than Greenwich so sunrise can be half-an-hour later than in London and asking children to travel to school before dawn in order to “boost tourism” (why should the clock change boost tourism? – answers on a postage stamp, please) is unjustified in terms of a cost/benefit balance. Dr Hillman’s suggestion that it would save on electricity costs is weird since the cross-channel cable saves massive amounts of wasted investment in generating capacity as long as the French and British demand peaks are an hour apart. The suggestion that there will be more daylight hours (“the extra hour of accessible daylight”) if you move the hands on your watch is audacious but just a tad implausible

By: Mr. Sensible

Mr. Sensible — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:16:16 +0000

Cim I happen to agree with you that we should stick to just GMT all year round.

By: Guy S

Guy S — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:28:29 +0000

Sorry that you feel that way, Alex. I live in North Wales, not South England, and I think it’s a great idea.

By: Alex

Alex — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 14:20:23 +0000

Unfortunately these ideas always come from people who live in and around London who make it seem like such a great idea, but have no idea how the rest of the country lives. Putting the clocks forward for winter is a total nightmare (it was tried and abandoned pretty quickly), when it did not get light till half 9. This has the potential for disaster for kids going to school and people who have to work early in the morning but choose not to cycle.

Why don’t people in the south just go to work earlier (where they can) in the winter, and companies should change there working hours to fit in with this, where the workers can’t decide.

Leave our working and school times alone unless you are suggesting schools start later in the north, and thus people will have to go to work later and then hay presto, they don’t get the benefit of lighter nights.

Typical Southern English arrogance and the quicker this is put to bed the better.

By: Mark Staniland

Mark Staniland — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 10:44:35 +0000

Clocks forward & summer is upon us. Put them forward once more? These clever folks seem to think so: http://bit.ly/df0Q9r

By: blogs of the world

blogs of the world — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 06:08:48 +0000

Let the sunshine in: Why permanently changing our clocks is good for tourism, road safety … http://reduce.li/n4ilcc #foot

By: Morus

Morus — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 23:55:27 +0000

John Cooper – I appreciate the principle, but I don’t see why (instead of making 8am into 9am) people don’t just start work at 8am on winter-time. People could just change the hours they do things, rather than change the actual clocks. This has always struck me as silly. It’s not like working hours, rush hour, or anything requiring daylight is immutable. Fit your hours around the clocks, rather than the other way around!!

By: cim

cim — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 22:49:37 +0000

Meanwhile, up in the North, if we kept BST in the winter, the sun wouldn’t be above the horizon before 9. We also get more snow and ice up here than the Southern counties, but there’d be an hour less for it to melt before people had to get to work. There might be fewer accidents in the south in the evenings, but there’d be far more in the north in the mornings.

Surely it would be easier to switch to 8-4 working hours in the parts of the country far enough south for this to make sense, and keep Greenwich on GMT.

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:57:59 +0000

I remember the experiment when I was at school. Going to school wasn’t much cop but coming home in the light and having a couple of hours daylight in the afternoons was great.

Then there was doing my homework in the light even in the winter!

I live in the West Midlands so already enjoyed the sun setting after 6pm before the vernal equinox – an effect noticed even more the further west you go.

Some of the main beneficiaries of keeping BST in the winter will be those living east of Greenwich where the sun sets before 6pm at the equinox and where it gets dark earlier in the winter too.

By: Mr. Sensible

Mr. Sensible — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 16:47:55 +0000

Agreed with you there, Sarah. I’ve never really understood why we do this.

And I just find this proposal rather confusing.