The clocks have gone back in the UK in the last couple of weeks. That means the sun comes up while I’m asleep or having breakfast, and is gone by the time I leave work. I’d rather it was the other way round, and that I had an hour of daylight at the end of the day instead.
It’s not just a matter of preference either. Many of us waste the first hour of sunlight because we’re in bed, and then we need to turn our lights on earlier to compensate. If we didn’t put them back we’d make better use of the daylight hours, saving electricity and thus carbon emissions. Electricity consumption is higher in the evenings than in the mornings, so it makes sense to use the daylight later. The evening rush hour is also busier than the morning, which means there are more accidents in the evening. Changing our daylight savings time would save energy and make our roads safer too.
It’s a little thing really, but it’s an easy thing too. We should do it. The main opponents to reforming the system are Scottish farmers, but they have decided they will not oppose measures to switch to ‘single double summer time’. Government will vote on it on December 3rd, and if you’d like your MP to support one of the easiest ways to cut carbon emissions, drop them a line.
Lighter Later has a form you can fill in to contact your MP.
The Earthbound Report 
I wrote a post a while ago about the history of the campaign for daylight saving time, which you might be interested in: .
Andrew
The URL for that post is: http://thenextwavefutures.wordpress.com/2007/11/02/saving-daylight/.
Thanks, I read a book on this called ‘Saving Daylight’ a few years ago. When I first moved to the UK I was fascinated/bemused by the idea of moving the clocks backwards and forwards.
I’d rather just change the times we do things at. A normal working day for me is closer to 8-4 than 9-5, which achieves the same thing without messing about with the clocks.
The Romans had a different idea altogether and changed the length of an hour instead. Every day throughout the year was divided into 12 daylight hours, irrespective of how early the sun went down, and they had different sundials for different seasons.
It does make us seem a little pathetic if we need the government to legislate that we should get out of bed earlier…