October 18, 1995. Copyright, 1995, Graphic News. All rights reserved

TIME TO CALL TIME ON GMT
By Nicholas Booth, Science Editor

LONDON, October 18, Graphic News Ñ When you put the clocks back this weekend Ð not to mention timers and the video Ð you will doubtless wonder why. Citizen, the watch manufacturer, estimates that it takes an average of 200 years to change the 300 million watches, clocks, alarms and videos in the UK alone. But despite calls to keep summertime all year round, the British population remains implacably divided.

Governments, too, will change time at their peril. There were riots in the streets when Britain lost 12 days as we switched from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian one in 1752 Ð to keep in line with the rest of Europe. in 1990, the Home Office invited people to write in with their views and 80 per cent of the 31,000 respondents suggested we should keep summertime all year long. But calls to synchronise our watches with the rest of Europe are hindered by the fact that continental countries run their own timetables for altering their clocks.

British Summer Time  Ð an hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time Ð  was introduced in 1916 as an economy measure. During the second world war, double summertime was introduced and this meant that from 1941-45 British clocks ran in synchronisation with central Europe. Between 1968 and 1971, we kept summertime all year round, as an experiment to see if road accidents would be diminished and energy saved.

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents says that a third of all road accidents occur between 3pm and 6pm, with schoolchildren particularly at risk. The statistics show that there were on average 600 fewer road accidents during those years. Today, claim those who wish to keep us on summertime all year round, some £100 million would be saved in energy and £800 million in revenue from tourists would be raised by having lighter evenings.

But the lobby to keep things as they are is powerful and vociferous. They include farmers, the building trade and most of the Scottish population, including a certain well-known family who spend their holidays at Balmoral. When the government raised the possibility of keeping BST all year round, it is alleged that the Queen herself lobbied to keep the status quo.

The fact is the further north one is during the wintertime, the less sunlight you will see. Glasgow, for example, will see the sun rise 40 minutes later than in London: keeping summertime would mean that the Sun would rise as late as 10am in the northernmost parts of Scotland, where there are only 6.7 hours of daylight.

In the rest of the United Kingdom, farmers would also have to feed animals in darkness and, says the construction industry, more accidents would occur on building sites. According to the Building Employers Confederation, the fatality rate per thousand workers rose from 13.5 per cent in 1967 to 18.9 per cent the next year, when summertime was retained.

The truth is that there is no panacea for something which results from a quirk of geography. And for those who have suggested splitting Britain in half, spare a thought for the good citizens of Eucla in Australia, sited between Western and Southern time zones. The town hall clock keeps self-styled ÔWestern South Australian timeÕ, halfway between the adjacent zones and below the main clock is a sign which reads ÔYes, this bloody clock is rightÕ!

Sources: Home Office, Astronomy Now, Financial Times, Daily Telegraph