Forums Forums General Forums A - Z Lifestyle If Scotland should leave UK

If Scotland goes with the 'Yes' vote, there are now mumblings in the news that there may be little reason not to alter the clocks. Scotland was always considered to be the problem, causing us to keep the same time in wInter as summer and not move the clocks backwards in October, as we do each year.
There are obvious advantages on the global stage for trading etc. but for us in the North West, what would you prefer?
The 1960's saw an experiment of this and I remember that in the depths of winter, this area was still in darkness at 9am. London call the tune, generally according to their advantages, but in this area our children will be going to school in the dark, which is just as dangerous as possibly coming home in the dark. With mums and dads being expected to work longer hours and more variable hours, are we asking too much in this region to keep GMT ?


In the winter months, at 8.30am it will still be dark in the North West area,(which extends a long way) when our children are travelling to school, some in very rural parts.

As you say granny London calls the tune, what we want or say holds no interest for them, we are already a part of a divided country, maybe we should throw our lot in with the Scots and declare UDI (up de ill)

The Lighter-Later campaign state that its safer to have lighter evenings than mornings, as well as numerous other benefits:

1 Cut at least 447,000 tonnes of CO2 pollution – equivalent to more than 50,000 cars driving all the way around the world – each year [1]

2 Save 80 lives each year and prevent hundreds of serious injuries by making the roads safer [2]

3 Lower our electricity bills by maximising the available daylight and reducing peak power demand [3]

4 Create 60,000–80,000 new jobs in leisure and tourism, bringing an extra £2.5–3.5 billion into the economy each year [4]

5 Reduce crime and the fear of crime [5]

6 Help make people healthier and tackle obesity by giving people more time to exercise and play sport outside in the evening [6]

7 Save the NHS around £138 million a year through reducing road casualties [7]

8 Improve quality of life for older people [8]

9 Make the nation happier – including reducing the effects of Seasonal Affective Disorder [9]

10 Demonstrate that dealing with climate change can be good for the economy, good for people and good for society as a whole

http://www.lighterlater.org/benefits.html

It does seem ridiculous to waste so much useful daylight in the summer, say from May to September. If we put the clocks forward by two hours in those months, it would be light from around 6am - 7am, but wouldn't go dark in the North West until around 11pm in midsummer. A version of this, called British Double Summer Time, was used during the Second World War.

I would support keeping summer time for winter months and then double summer time in summer. Yes, I remember when UK experimented with this many years ago - and it was great. Personally I never really noticed the mornings being darker a bit longer. I have relatively little interest in the Scotland angle to the discussion.

Snod