LET THERE BE LIGHT - 27 September 2009

High pressure has resulted is us enjoying (unless your preference is for rain) a great indian summer - long may it continue. October means that we will be putting our clocks back by an hour resulting in lighter mornings and darker evening. Yet there are some good reasons as to why we should leave our clocks as they are and join in with the rest of Europe, except Portugal who operate on the same time zone as the UK, and change to Central European Time (CTE). The arguments are stronger than it just being nicer for us to have lighter evenings, although that is true - I hate it when it gets dark at 4pm in the winter months.

Keeping our clocks on CTE would mean that in England during the winter it would get dark around 17:00 hours and in the summer around 23:00 hrs.

The safety of our children would properly be the strongest argument. Although keeping the clocks where they are would result in our children going to school in the dark (in reality a lot do anyway) evidence provided by Cambridge's Centre of Technology Management would suggest that because children are more likely to spend more time on the streets after school rather than before, we would reduce the number of accidents and deaths on the road. There are more accidents during the afternoon rush hour than the morning because motorists concentration is lower so making it lighter might help. During an experiment some 40 years ago when British Summer Time was in use for three years there were 7,500 less deaths and serious accidents.

The Centre also suggests that not putting the clocks back is much greener in that our use of electricity would reduce by 1-2 % in winter as we would be spending more of our waking hours in daylight and that child obesity levels would fall because children would be able to play outside for longer (not only children I would suggest!) There would also be benefits to the economy as we would be trading at the same time as other members of the EU.

One would have thought that with such evidence, saving lives, decrease in obesity levels and business benefits we would move to CET, but the opposition comes from Scotland where they fear that it would remain darker for longer in the morning. We maybe, but they could always adjust the start time for school or workers as they do in Scandinavia - I doubt there would be too many school children complaining if school started later in the morning! Now that Scotland in an independent country - they could always do their own thing if England and Wales decided to change to CTE.

I would just like the lighter afternoons and evenings during the winter but when one considers the benefits it appears a no brainer to me!