Fordyce Maxwell: 'Last night we sprang forward one hour. But is this a good thing?'

Published on Saturday 27 March 2010 19:17

DID you remember? Kitchen clock? Alarm clock? The one on the mantelpiece that gains two minutes a day anyway? The family heirloom worth £40 in anybody's money with wonky hands liable to fall off every time they're adjusted? Wristwatch?

No trouble, glad to help by reminding you that last night we sprang forward one hour from Greenwich Mean Time to British Summer Time.

Is this six-monthly tampering a good thing or an unnecessary nuisance? Discuss, as we do from time to time.

You can check one old saying – "Change the time, change the weather" – by looking out the window. It can happen, but not often enough to satisfy any rule of scientific probability.

Nor can it date from earlier than 1916 when the summer time change was introduced. Too late for William Willett, the London builder who had campaigned for it for years. His personal clock stopped in 1915, one of the million minor ironies of history.

But his argument for moving clocks forward an hour in spring, reducing time spent in bed when the sun shines and transferring it to evening for work and play, is unchanged. During the war it was extended to double summer time, two hours ahead of Greenwich to help farm work and, incidentally, courting couples.

There are still enthusiasts for double summer time, plucking figures freely from the air. This month it is "introduce double summer time to provide more than 8,000 jobs and boost tourism income by 3.5 billion".

Arguments for and against gain or lose strength as actual hours of daylight change from the tip of southern England to Shetland. No daylight until, say, 8am might suit the Cornish tourist trade, but mean darkness until 10am in the north of Scotland. What about the Scottish building trade or farmers anxious to check and feed animals outdoors?

That led to the suggestion five years ago that Scotland could have its own time zone. Why not, except that resetting your watch to fly across continents is one thing, resetting to cross the Tweed another.

Some of us remember October 1968 to October 1971 when the country stayed on Greenwich time plus one – the setting we have just moved to – without ill effects. Total road deaths fell by about 2,500 over those three winters. Iceland, with five hours daylight in deep winter, sticks to Greenwich time all year round.

Until now, for simplicity, I've favoured Britain doing the same. But after spending as much time last week reading about the history of, and reasons for, time change as I had about the American healthcare debate and emerging not much wiser on either, I've come to the conclusion that changing clocks, even with wonky hands, isn't such a big deal. Technology means that many timers – car, boiler, watches, computers – now change automatically. And farmers and insomniacs like me tend to turn night into day anyway. What else is electric light and tractors lit up like mobile Christmas trees for?

Only six months to go until we do it all again.