British Summer Time...How Was It For You?
British Summer Time (BST) ended at 2 a.m this morning and as we revert to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) everyone gets an extra hour in bed overnight, but it also means it will get darker earlier in the evenings. BST is a bit of a dinosaur really, it starts off with people saying the evenings are getting lighter, then you get longer evenings accompanied by the smells and sounds of grown men pushing bits of meat around a thousand barbecues before BST, like the metaphoric dinosaur, tails off towards the end of October.
RoSPA wants the clocks to stay one hour ahead of GMT in the winter and two hours ahead in the summer to avoid the 450 deaths and serious injuries it says the change causes. The proposal would mean it would not go dark so early in the winter. Britain will be on GMT until the end of March when it will go back to BST.
The group said last year deaths and serious injuries among pedestrians rose to 738 in November from 609 in October, after the clocks had changed. This included a jump in the number of children being seriously hurt or killed to 186 from 165.
This argument about changing clock times comes up every year. Those who argue that summer time should be kept all year round are opposed by those who say such a system would disadvantage those in the north when dawn would be delayed until after the morning rush-hour.
It seems bizarre that the change can't be lined up with the Autumn equinox so that the change takes place as close to 21st September as possible, then at least changing the clocks would fall in with the end of summer and the beginning of the third season of the year. Everything seems out of sync these days though, remember those halcyon days when autumn was signaled by the final of the 50 overs Cricket competition at Lords and the beginning of the rugby league and football league seasons, now both our national summer and winter sports are played all the year round and the Rugby League season is played out during the summer months!
Perhaps the clock changing could be tied in with the first frost of the year, so that's December for us in the beautiful south and June for those poor bastards living in the Western Isles.
4 comments:
I don't understand why we cannot leave the clocks throughout Winter as they are and put the clocks two hours forward in Summer.
If its a problem for Scotland and beyond, its been suggested let those areas that suffer more darkness, have their own time zone.
I know America and Canada is bigger but they have different zones and manage.
I'm sure someone will have a reason they can explain why this would not work.
But as you suggest if its lighter through the evening, people could stay out and enjoy their leisure time longer, street lighting would come on later saving energy and so on...
Doesn't it just boil down to having to decide if you want to got to work/school in the dark or come home in the dark?
Not my favourite time of year by a long way : I feel a blog coming on.
I will have to look this up but I do know that during WWII the UK did move forward by two hours for some reason and it appears to have been a success so I would like to know why we we returned to the old idea.
The idea about picking a better time to do the change sounds too logical for those who make the decision but I do know that even when America and Canada put their clocks forward or back they are always a few weeks behind the UK.
I can't stand the clocks going back,dark evenings bring on my winter gloom !
Draw the curtains, light the fire, and hibernate til April.
Post a Comment