I've had it with the clocks going back – it just makes all our lives more difficult ✒️ stefanohat
Stefano Hatfield: ‘Who wouldn’t want more daylight in the evenings at the end of the school or working day?’
Like many of you, I find the last weekend of October the most depressing of the year. The annual turning back of the clocks signals even more formally that “winter is coming” than the release of theHowever, this year I feel I’m not such a lone voice railing against the pointless misery of it all, as politicians and academics alike argue for ending the biannual clock-changing practice. It can’t happen soon enough.
I was surprised to learn that the UK only reintroduced “Daylight Savings Time” in 1972, after a brief three-year experiment by Harold Wilson’s government in scrapping the measure first brought in during the First World War. In 1916, advancing the clocks by an hour for summer was deemed an energy saving measure to help the war movement. Today, beyond the debate about sleep deprivation and depression, there is an economic argument against the change.
by not turning the clocks back in October. With energy shortages possible as a result of the Ukraine war, Foley claimed that with household energy demands peaking between 5pm and 7pm during winter, if clocks stayed on DST, daily savings of £1.20 on electricity bills would be possible. She argued there might be greater savings in the commercial and industrial sectors too, suggestions that the Government has refuted, claiming the current biannual change is the “optimal use of available daylight”.