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SPIRIT OF SUMMER FAIR – OLYMPIA, LONDON
Come and visit us at the SPIRIT OF SUMMER FAIR (13th – 16th May 2010) and see our unique range of inspiring designs for summer 2010.
GRAND DESIGNS LIVE – EXCEL, LONDON
Come and visit us at GRAND DESIGNS LIVE (1st – 9th May 2010) and see all our latest designs and unique range of Giant bespoke clocks!
BOUF Design Talent Exhibition – Future Gallery, London
Recent Press Features
April 2010
Clocks Go Forward 1 Hr – Sunday 28th March
Don’t forget to set your clocks forward by one hour on Sunday 28th March 2010, officially the start of British Summer Time. We may be losing an hour but with extra daylight in the evenings and a long summer ahead, there’s plenty to look forward to after the clocks change
The nation will grumble for a day about losing an hour’s sleep. But then it will settle down to months of enjoying the many benefits of an extra hour’s evening daylight: safer roads, happier children and the sheer physical and mental pleasure of spending an extra waking hour in sunlight.
Why then can we not provide a better answer to the annual question: why not keep the clocks turned forward all year round?
The idea of daylight saving – changing time to use the daylight hours most efficiently – has existed, in one form or another, for more than a century. About 70 countries use daylight-saving time in at least a portion of their territories; the only major industrialised country not to is Japan. The idea is popularly attributed to Benjamin Franklin, who, back in 1784, wrote a light-hearted article weighing up the financial pros and cons of natural and artificial lighting. In England, William Willett framed a Daylight Saving Bill in 1907. But it was only in 1916 that the Germans, swiftly followed by their First World War foes around Europe, actually turned the clocks forward.
Since then, the British have dithered about which system they prefer. During the Second World War, Britain lived in what was called Double Summer Time – an hour ahead of Greenwich Mean Time in winter, and two hours ahead in summer – an arrangement which, in effect, put our country in the same time zone as France. In a three-year experiment from 1968 to 1971, the clocks did not change and Britain kept to British Summer Time all year round. In 1996, Parliament considered moving forward to Central European Time all year round – but decided against it.
Yet, by bringing the clock permanently forward, energy costs would be cut and the number of road accidents too. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) believes that the dark winter evenings of Greenwich Mean Time are responsible for 450 extra deaths and serious injuries on Britain’s roads each year – and hence supports a shift to Central European Time all year round, bringing daylight up until midnight in summer months.
Although it seems logical to have more daylight hours when almost the entire population is awake, the 1960s experiment was unpopular with farmers in Scotland, where the sun rises later. Their MPs scuppered the three-year experiment in 1971. Even now, Scottish nationalists are against adopting a time zone that would suit most of Britain’s nearly 60 million people better – but is opposed by Scotland’s rural communities.
The needs of minorities should always be respected in a democracy, but it is surely time to look more creatively at this aspect of a problem that affects the entire United Kingdom. Scotland has long had its distinctive legal and educational systems and now has its own Parliament. If Scottish voters, urban as well as rural, feel so strongly on the matter, they should not object to others exercising their own choice. It would be perfectly within the logic of devolution for the time zone to be a matter of national choice.
Britain’s timekeeping is not only an anachronism, but an economic handicap too. British manufacturers, financial dealers and traders complain with justice of the many obstacles that continue to obstruct the pro-per operation of the European single market, potentially the EU’s greatest achievement. But one obstacle, the lost business hour that goes with Britain’s eccentric clinging to “offshore time”, is homemade and could and should be remedied. For business as well as pleasure, the clocks should go forward, and stay where Britain belongs: in a modern and increasingly globalised world!!
