The interminable debate about British Summer Time and the alternatives to it comes around as regularly as the time switch itself. The arguments about milking cows in the dark and the gruesome early morning demises of school children contend every year with the vision of Britain as a European-style evening paradise, with people effortlessly enjoying glasses of rosé at outside tables – and with those same school children felled on their way home.
Like most non-ideological political questions, the essentialist arguments are undermined by history, a history which goes back beyond Ben Franklin. As recently as a century ago there was no such thing as British Summer Time at all. We just took what the clocks gave us, until the need to save coal forced the Government’s hand during World War 1, in a way that rhymes with the 10:10 campaign’s energy-saving support for change. The Second World War saw more movement in the same direction, with the summers on Double Summer Time, and the winters, confusing, on British Summer Time.
Side note of irony on that: the Daily Mail currently lambasts “Berlin Time“, presumably because it implies some sinister German plot to harmonise our clocks as well as our currencies, yet (to put it into the only language they understand) Churchill defeated Hitler with British clocks all set to “Berlin Time”.
Even the news today that Tim Yeo, consistently one of the most interesting Conservative MPs, is proposing separate timezones for Scotland and the rest isn’t really news – he made the same call in 2007. Still, you’d have to assume this is an argument the SNP would be instinctively sympathetic to. For one thing, it would add a little more division from the rest of the UK. For another, if both sides really do want different times, the alternative is Scotland that makes decisions for the English on their timezone, which is surely against the ethos of self-determination.
Attempting to step back a little, some things we do are necessarily synchronised or “clock-dependent”, and some not. Whatever our timezone, we can only ever watch the same football match live at the same time. No amount of political wrangling will change that. However, all other things being equal, the time at which a farmer gets up to milk the cows isn’t “clock-dependent”. In fact, if you milk cows at the same hour on the clock it’ll surely be pretty disruptive for the herd when the clocks change in either direction? Not that I know the first thing about farming.
As you may know, I’m about to step out of formal politics for a while to get into business, and I intend to follow the daylight myself. My productive hours are later in the day, and why I’d set the alarm in the depths of winter to get up in the blackness of the night, goodness only knows. It’s a luxury of self-employment, for sure, but if I lived in the Highlands I’d be arguing for schools and workplaces to follow the daylight too as far as possible – recognising that many people will always continue to have to work shifts, not just those employed by essential 24-hour operations.
Surely, aside from those jobs that require shifts, working hours are just synchronised for convenience, not because everyone has to be at their desk by 9 and away by 5 (does that still apply to anyone?). Would it not be easier if we treated those standard hours as a guideline for the working day, not a uniformity to be ruthlessly imposed?
We’re supposedly part of a single European market that spans a wide range of time differences, so why do people living in Lerwick have to get up at the same time as those living in Hawick, or Chiswick, or even Wick? Local employers and councils being more responsive to their latitude seems a better option than the disruption of different time zones, and also a better option than the endless bickering which unnecessarily sets up the interests of the Highlands and the Home Counties as in conflict.
Beyond that, and leaving aside the safety arguments for now, the argument as currently fought is primarily a matter of preference, not principle. Are you a lark who loves to get up for a run round the park? You’ll prefer the current arrangement, replete with light mornings. Are you an owl who doesn’t know what on earth to do with a morning hour but who loves to the social evening time? Then, like me, for all those clock-dependent activities, your instinct will probably be for DBST. But wouldn’t it be better not to have to argue about it?
#1 by Barbarian on October 30, 2011 - 1:41 pm
Personally I think we should just stick with what we’ve got. People are used to it and that extra hour in bed is definitely worth looking forward to!
I don’t see why we should move two hours forward, why can’t the rest of Europe move two hours back?
#2 by Angus McLellan on October 30, 2011 - 3:22 pm
Let’s not exagerrate. It’s only one hour, not two.
But if you live in the north, and 55 degrees north is nearer the pole than the equator, there isn’t much can be done about it being light for most of the time in highest summer and dark for most of the time in deepest winter. There’s roughly a month and a half in the year when Aberdeen or Glasgow look to have 7.5 hours or less daylight. The only way to get round that fact would be to have shorter school and working days in midwinter.
#3 by Doug Daniel on October 30, 2011 - 8:05 pm
“There’s roughly a month and a half in the year when Aberdeen or Glasgow look to have 7.5 hours or less daylight. The only way to get round that fact would be to have shorter school and working days in midwinter.”
Sounds good to me!
I have actually thought that we should do this for a while, the only problem being that companies would inevitably expect us to work longer during the longer days. But it seems bizarre that we go to work in the dark, sit in offices for the entire duration of daylight, then go back home in the dark again.
#4 by Stuart Winton on October 30, 2011 - 10:55 pm
“People are used to it and that extra hour in bed is definitely worth looking forward to!”
So you might not be so keen in the spring then!!
#5 by Indy on October 30, 2011 - 2:01 pm
It makes hee haw difference to me personally as the nearest I ever get to a farm is my local farmers market. But it occurs to me that the milking of cows may actually be clock dependent if you consider that the milk then has to go to the dairy and from the dairy to the shops.
#6 by Doug Daniel on October 30, 2011 - 8:23 pm
“Surely, aside from those jobs that require shifts, working hours are just synchronised for convenience, not because everyone has to be at their desk by 9 and away by 5 (does that still apply to anyone?). Would it not be easier if we treated those standard hours as a guideline for the working day, not a uniformity to be ruthlessly imposed?”
Nice idea James, and it’s one I have sympathy with (not least because I think it’s inhumane to have people missing the entire daylight hours being chained up inside). However, having worked for a company making software for councils, as well as for a bank’s IT department, I’ve experienced first hand that there are practical reasons for being able to rely on people being at their desks between core hours of the day. At my current job, support calls for people in Asia or Australia can lead to a simple problem taking days rather than hours to resolve, simply because the time differences require asynchronous communication.
In an ideal world there is no reason why your theory shouldn’t work, but it’s about as likely to become reality as my idea that with the internet, email, video conferencing and instant messaging services available to us, there is simply no reason why the majority of people cannot work from home instead of commuting into city centre offices. Like you, my vision is probably tainted significantly by my current circumstances, since there really is no reason for software developers to sit in an office with colleagues, especially as we all speak to each other over IM and email already as it’s quicker than walking to the other side of the room. But that perhaps isn’t the case for other office workers.
Incidentally, I would LOVE to work a 9 – 5 working day; however, I’ve yet to work for a company that didn’t consider 8:30am to be the start of the working day. I’ve no idea what Dolly Parton was singing about, but you can tell she never worked in IT for the energy, financial or local government sectors.
#7 by Barbarian on October 30, 2011 - 11:53 pm
I like the idea of working from home, and in my job I could spend 50% of the time at home. I’d save 2 hours commute a day and get more done with the kids at school.
Meetings can be done with conference phone / video calls quite easily. I think it is changing the way many companies work and to get them trusting staff. Teleworking would also reduce sickness absences as well.
#8 by Steve on October 31, 2011 - 11:09 am
I’d prefer we stayed on BST all year round.
We should set the clocks to maximise the amount of daylight we all get.
I’ll bet that many more people miss daylight hours in the mornings than in the evenings, either because they get up after sunrise, or because by the time they’ve got themselves up and about, curtains drawn etc. the sun’s been up for a while.
I doub’t many people go to bed before it gets dark in the late afternoon/early evening!
For that reason alone, I think people would benefit from keeping BST all year round, which gives us an extra hour of daylight in the evening at the expense of a darker early morning.
#9 by James Morton on October 31, 2011 - 1:35 pm
An extra hour of daylight is why King George created Sandrigham Time, so he could hunt longer during the winter months, this would be in use until 1936.
GMT doesn’t enter the picture until 1884 and this is replaced with Univerisal coordinated time or UTC. But this is also affectd by DST or daylight saving time and this used by several countries, not just the UK.
I think it will be a debate that will rage on and rage on, but the actual history behind it, and how it has changed over the years has been lost to many – especially the tabloids who see the sinister hand of europe in everything these days.