This weekend – the early hours of Sunday morning, to be precise – sees the annual “spring forward” clock-change in the UK, as we switch from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) to British Summer Time (BST). This alteration – along with its autumnal companion-piece when we revert to GMT – has long been the subject of dispute and debate over what form it should take and even whether it should happen at all.
From time to time a cry goes up for an adjustment to the current arrangement, and this past year has been one such period, with lobbying for a switch to Single/Double Summer Time (SDST). This would see the October change being skipped for one year, after which the current one hour forward/back procedure would resume.
SDST would place us an hour ahead of GMT in winter, and two hours ahead in summer, making things darker in the mornings and lighter in the evenings. SDST tends to be supported by people based in the south and east of the UK, while those further north (where there is markedly less winter daylight to play with) and west (where the sun rises later and sets later all year round) tend to be less keen.
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It is worth recalling in this context that not only does Scotland comprise the northern chunk of the UK, but it is also, as a whole, surprisingly far west. There’s an old pub-quiz question: Which of the following is furthest west – Liverpool, Carlisle, Edinburgh? The answer is not what many people – English and Scots alike – might think. An interesting alternative slant on the debate was made recently by Mike Dales, who works part-time at both the Mountaineering Council of Scotland and the Scottish Canoe Association and so has an informed interest in matters relating to daylight and safety in terms of outdoor recreation. The idea put forward by Dales – speaking as an individual, rather than in any representative capacity – is so simple that it’s surprising no one appears to have formally aired it before (although see Richard Webb’s comment underneath last autumn’s piece in The Caledonian Mercury on clock-change politics). Rather than add or subtract hours at the usual late-October and late-March change-points, Dales argues that the winter GMT period should be shortened from the current five months. “Given the amount of light we have to work with in deepest winter,” he wrote on his blog (7 March 2011), “I would say we are currently right to be on GMT during this period of very short daylight hours. However, we are now in March and there is lots of light around. It’s just that a lot of it is around before we leave home on a morning and it would be good to have some of that light on an evening. From a hillgoer's point of view we could have longer evenings in March to enjoy our walk off the hill. Or even just to potter around the garden or go for an evening run. “So, here’s my contribution to this debate. Have the combination of BST and GMT that we currently have, but alter the dates when we fall back and spring forward. I would turn the clocks back a bit later than we do now, say around the first Saturday in November. Then at the other end of the winter, turn them forward a lot earlier than we do now, say around the third Saturday in February. “Of all the months in the year when the current system doesn’t work well it has to be March. Surely we could tweak the current system so we get to use the light available to us in this month when winter starts to give way to spring.” An interesting idea, and one that was picked up by the grough website, which in turn sparked quite a bit of discussion in the comments. Some grough readers were keen on Dales’ idea, but others were sceptical, with several making comments along the lines of “Get up earlier”. The actual amount of time available for use in any location at any point of year will always remain the same, of course – it’s just the way we link it to clock-time that is being discussed. “Many people including myself do [get up early],” said Dales, when asked this week what he felt about the “up with the lark” approach. “But it doesn’t alter the fact that in a month like March when there is a decent amount of light around the best use of that light for the majority of people would be by being on BST rather than GMT. “These last four weeks have had early morning daylight that wasn’t being used to best effect because so many people were either still in bed, or hadn’t left the house. My point is that more people would benefit from an extra hour of daylight in the evening in March than currently make use of that first hour of light in the morning. After all, we turn the clocks back about seven weeks before the shortest day, but don’t put them forward again until 14 weeks after the shortest day.” The pros and cons of daylight-alteration frequently stray into wider political territory – as of course they need to, given the number of occupations and interest-groups affected, and the need for any change to go through the political-legal process – and Dales has given thought to this, too. “Politicians often talk about the Feelgood Factor,” he says. “Well, an easy way of making people feel good in March would be to give us lighter evenings by putting the clocks forward in late February rather than waiting until late March.” Dales isn’t an adherent to the SDST school of thinking: “I completely agree with the altering of the clocks for deepest winter and the arguments for having the extra hour of daylight in a morning when kids are going to school and people travelling to work, but I don’t think we need to stay on GMT beyond the end of February.” He is keen to stress the wider benefit of a shortening of the GMT period – “it would benefit many people in society, not just hill walkers” – but his own interests and occupation inevitably make him very aware of the outdoor-recreation safety benefits. “I read this week of a mountain rescue in Snowdonia a few days ago,” he says, “where two climbers had been benighted on a climb and had to be rescued. A simple navigation error had delayed the start of their climb and at the end of daylight hours that made the difference between completing the climb in daylight and getting benighted and needing to be rescued. That is a one-off example from the mountaineering world, but the incident probably wouldn’t have happened if we had already been on BST.”Donate to us: support independent, intelligent, in-depth Scottish journalism from just 3p a day
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