See The Dawn, Enjoy The Sunset: The No.10 Petition For Daylight Saving
October 26, 2008 02:00 AM
This is the day and date when the clocks go 'back'. We have an extra hour in bed on Sunday morning, and then... darkness an hour earlier until next Spring. And most of us will miss the dawning of the day as well, since the majority of people in the UK no longer keep agrarian hours. So let's do something about using daylight in the best way, in the modern world: Sign the No 10 Petition for 'better use of sun'.
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We've reached the Summer Solstice or Longest Day, but still the demand for more evening light, energy savings and greater road safety yearlong won't go away. Now it's the turn of Senators in Jersey to try to align their community with Central European Time, which we Brits call Double Summer Time. And U.K. politicians too are thinking again. Given the many benefits of CET, let's hope this time endorsement of the idea is compelling. Perhaps where Jersey leads the U.K. may follow? ... ... 
U.K. clocks go forward on Sunday morning, 30 March '08, and the lighter evenings which British Summer Time brings will cheer up almost everyone. But there would also be many other anticipated benefits, from road safety to energy conservation and healthier lifestyles, were we to keep 'Daylight Saving' all year. A Downing Street petition has now been set up to urge a continuous BST trial period of three years, with research to establish the extent of these benefits. ... 
'Incremental' is the mode of choice when we talk about the massive changes required for the sustainability of ourselves and our planet. People find it hard to make large or sudden changes, so we try to do them bit by bit. Seen like this, the benefits of daylight 'saving', keeping lighter evenings, become increasingly compelling. ... 
British Summer Time begins at 2 a.m. on Sunday 25th March this year (2007). Surveys suggest that both safety and energy saving would ensue from BST year-round, and a large majority of people will welcome the lighter evenings. But why have we just had to endure five months of days which end before the afternoon teabreak? ... 
An online pledge-petition has just been created in support of lobbying MPs for the experimental introduction of 'daylight saving'. Twenty-first century climate change, with its requirement that we save energy wherever possible, makes the need for this proposed three-year experiment even more pressing. ... 
One hundred years ago a London builder, William Willett, decided to cost 'Daylight Saving' hours in terms of health, happiness and energy. Judging from the MSN and Google search engine referrals, many of us would like to see the same thing happen again. ... 
The nights are drawing in, and the debate is beginning once more... Must we really turn our meagrely lit afternoons into even more gloom? Maintaining the extra hour of afternoon daylight year-long, over and above British Standard Time (BST), well compensates most people for even darker mornings, as reports by RoSPA amongst others have demonstrated. The net benefits to the economy, energy savings, health, safety and, for instance, for the leisure industry, would be many.
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'Daylight saving' is a strange notion. But 'daylight energy saving' is a very different consideration. How we arrange the hours of light and darkness across our working day has many impacts - which makes it all the more curious that so little high profile or current research has been focused on British Summer Time and rationales for why the clocks 'go back' in the Winter. ... 
British Summer Time is welcomed by almost all of us - more daylight when we can use it is much appreciated, as Lord Tanlaw's proposed 'Lighter Evenings (Experiment) Bill' acknowledges, for reasons of health, safety, energy savings and business benefit. So why do we need to revert to the darkness next Autumn? The answer appears to be historical drag, a reluctance to be 'European', and an obdurate insistence by some of national identity over common well-being. ... 