Time for Clock Changing to Clock Off for Good?

It’s the last weekend in October and as we roll over in bed for another hour on Sunday morning before getting up to put back by one hour all our timepieces and central heating programmers, do we give any thought as to why we are doing this? They did in Mexico three years ago. In the Daily Telegraph (28th October 2022) we read that Mexico  scrapped daylight saving time. The measure had been approved in both Mexico’s congress and senate and was signed into law by President Andrez Manuel Lopez Obrador. The clocks there were put back for the last time at the end of October 2022 with the exception of some municipalities contiguous with the USA which wished to stay synchronised with the giant to the North.

The Mexican government had come to realise that changing the clocks twice a year is bad for human health because it disrupts people’s circadian rhythm and leaves them tired. It’s an enlightened act by the Mexicans which I find myself applauding. A disrupted circadian rhythm doesn’t just leave people tired. Tiredness can lead to irritability, lassitude and error which is not great for personal relationships, productivity or for any activity in which safety is critical. The article in the Telegraph goes on to cite reasons for not abandoning clock-changing twice a year including some frequently trotted out by the lobby who would like to see the UK on European time permanently.

Come to think of it, we haven’t heard much from the folk who would have us permanently on European time in recent years. They used to pop up regularly about this time to expound on the benefits that would accrue if we were not to put the clocks back in the winter and have “double summertime” in the summer. Perhaps it’s something to do with Brexit.

In my working life as an airline pilot, time-zone crossing was something which happened almost every day I went to work. Airline crews have to cope not only with anti-social work routines but those on long-haul routes deal with crossing several time-zones in the course of one flight. On arrival at their destinations, they immediately find themselves severely out of phase with local time. This is commonly called jetlag, a term which should really apply to those flying Eastwards. The phenomenon should be called jet-advance for West-bound flights. A run of several such duties with shortened or lengthened exposure to daylight will mess with body clocks and leave crews deeply fatigued which is why there are strict flight-time and duty limitations placed on them. Some say not strict enough.

That’s the extreme but the principle of being out of phase with our natural biorhythms still holds good even for one hour time changes. It would be far better for us to stay on natural time which is governed by the Sun. After all it is the rotation of the Earth (sunrise, sunset) and the orbit of the moon (tides etc) which govern all the rhythms of life.

I think it would be a good move if Britain too were to abandon the annual clock changes. Why do I say that? Let’s take a look at it.

Ever since it was decided that the line of zero longitude should pass through Greenwich, much to the chagrin of the French who wanted it through Paris, The Sun reaching its zenith at Greenwich has determined noon Greenwich Meant Time, or Universal Co-ordinated Time (UTC) as it is now. Before the advent of railways, time keeping was a bit messy. Local time in the UK was everywhere based on local noon so, according to the Sun, midday in Bristol was somewhat behind midday in London. The necessity to produce timetables for trains dictated that the whole country should be on the same time. A sensible move, and we can all understand why.

Given that the Earth rotates once every 24 hours and there are 360 degrees of longitude (180º West to 180º East), one hour of Earthly rotation or the arc the Sun follows in one hour equates to 15º of longitude. Therefore, when it is noon at Greenwich it is 1pm at 15º East and 11am at 15º West, natural time. Those who holiday in Cornwall or West Wales can see evidence of this because sunrise and sunset are 15 to 20 minutes later than in London. Ireland is further behind but since longitude 7.5 degrees West runs through the heart of the island it’s sensible for it to be in the same time zone as Britain. If it were on natural time, it would be 30 minutes behind London.

The Summertime Act of 1916 introduced the clock-change following a campaign by builder William Willett. Farmers had something to say about it as well. It shifted an hour of daylight from the beginning of the working day to the end which people in certain occupations maintained was more congenial for them. We even had a period of double summertime for a while between 1941 and 1945, presumably because it was better for mounting bombing raids and organising invasions.

Then there was a British Standard Time experiment between 1968 and 1971 when Britain remained on GMT+1 for the whole year. I was at School in Edinburgh and University in Aberdeen during those three winters and I remember them well. Dawn wasn’t until nearly 9am although I will admit it was quite nice not being plunged into darkness shortly after 3pm.

Back to the present. By putting our clocks forward by one hour at the end of March we are putting ourselves on a local time natural for longitude 15º East, basically the German/Polish border. If we were to adopt European time as some would like us to do, we would put our clocks forwards to UTC+2 for the spring, summer and early autumn months, a time optimised for 30º East. That’s Chernobyl time. Good for solidarity with Ukraine but we would be two hours out of phase with the Sun which would not reach its Zenith until 2pm. That means that during hot spells the hottest time of day would be between 5pm and 6pm.

The working conditions for construction workers and farmers and the technology they employ have moved on since 1916. Anyone who has observed farmers harvesting late in the evening or motorway maintenance teams working under powerful lights can see this. Heavy industry is largely a thing of the past and most people work at occupations which keep them indoors. There is surely no need for us to change to British Summer Time in March any longer. I’ll go further: Not only should we not be on European time but since nearly all of France and the whole of Belgium, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Spain and Portugal are West of longitude 7.5º East, those countries should really join us in our time zone. Portugal is the only one which does.

So, it’s time to grasp the nettle and do away with British Summer Time once and for all. Put the clocks back this weekend and leave them on GMT. There will be those who squawk because it doesn’t suit their particular circumstances. We should ignore them. Things would stay as they are in winter but in summer the mornings will be lighter and the evenings darker. There will still be the same amount of daylight, folks. Just not where you’re used to having it. I’d avoid sleeping in an East-facing bedroom without total black-out unless you want a 3.45 am sunlit reveille. And put in earplugs because cock-crow and the dawn chorus will be then too. Despite that, we’d all feel a lot better because we’d be living permanently with the natural rhythms of life.

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This article (Time for Clock Changing to Clock Off for Good?) was created and published by Free Speech Backlash and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Iain Hunter