Special Controversy For Our Loyal Reader in Oban
At 0200 this coming Sunday, clocks all over the UK will be put back by an hour, returning to Greenwich Mean Time. The effect of this step will bring darker evenings across the UK matching the start of the working day to local sunrise times in the northernmost parts of our island. ‘So What?’ you may ask.
The problem is, that most people in the United Kingdom would rather have an extra hour of daylight in the evening, and more importantly, traffic safety experts claim that as many as a hundred fatalities occur each year on English roads because of it. English MPs have recommended that Britain should set it’s clocks to European time, effectively leaving them where they are now in winter. So what’s the issue then?
Historically, the UK policy on setting clocks has been driven by the interests of Scottish farmers. Without the move, it might be nine AM before the sun dares show its face in Scottish Glens - a depressing prospect no doubt, unless of course, one gets up at half past eight. Is that too radical a solution? I wonder? If you happen to live in a place where the sun rises later, why not get up then, instead of obliging the rest of us to change our clocks so that it gets dark in mid afternoon?
5 comments:
Damn and blast it!!!
I just hate it when the clocks go back, I bloody do.
I reckon the afternoons are inherently more dangerous than the mornings. When the bairns are on their way to school, they seem to be more focussed and sensible. On the way home however, they are all larking about and spilling onto the road. That is the time of day when we most need daylight and good brakes. Bugger the shepherds of Arcadia, lets have BST all year round, and maybe even double summer time, like in the war.
Q
"Bugger the shepherds of Arcadia..."
Tut, tut Q. I'm the one whose supposed to be the foul mouthed old git - not you!
Yes, you're right. Drivers and kids are rather more careful in the mornings - kids are crazy in the afternoons, those who aren't shepherded to school in two tonne 4x4s to be dropped off virtually at the classroom door, that is. It's the working class kids that get squashed as they exuberantly dash onto dark roads of a winter evening, not the wan faced, fatsos with the withered legs. I suppose the mums in War Lords Mitsubishis are the ones that do the squashing.
Aeeee! I missed out an apostrophe in the comment above! I do hate the way I can't even edit my own comments.
It really only gets to be a real issue in northern lattitudes. I live on the 55 degrees North line. It actually runs through the top corner of my garden honest 55.000000N crosses my property. We get about six hours of daylight in midwinter, but up in Inverness which is 57.29N, or in John O' Groats, the most northerly point of the mainland at 58.39N, the days are considerably shorter. I suppose we have to decide whether the majority of the population or a tiny minority of people are to be inconvenienced. I'd guess less than half a million people live in the north of Scotland - probably a lot less. The UK has a population of 59.2 million.....
Come on Oban reader - what's your take on this? I know you check this place out three times a day, so leave a comment my friend. I'm not even sure what day length you get up there in mid winter. Skye is maybe my favourite place, but I've only been in summer when the days seem to be about twenty hours long. Quite near you really I'd say - Skye. Maybe you can see it on a clear day...
Post a Comment