An age old argument is brewing once more with a Conservative MP proposing once again that the UK move in line with Central European Time and effectively abandon GMT, but do the arguments stack up?
The general ideas behind the argument have remained very similar over the years with suggestions that this would help promote tourism and safety with longer daylight during the evenings, but also moving sunrise an hour forward which has little effect for anyone in Summer.
The trouble comes in Winter where especially in northern England and Scotland, sunrise can be as late as 8am anyway, so moving this forward 2 hours means some areas would not become light until at least 10am for the more northerly reaches of Scotland. Last time this was tried from 1968 to 1971, a significant increase in road injuries were reported in Scotland.
The Scottish Parliament did suggest recently that if the UK moved times, it might consider staying with the current time differences which would cause quite a bit of confusion – effectively moving England and Wales in line with France, but Scotland being at least an hour behind.
Could this help tourism? One of the newer arguments for this change is that it will help evening tourism as people will be able to stay out more and presumably spend more money in outdoor attractions. Personally I can’t quite see how this works, as anyone who has actually travelled north of London will tell you, it gets a little bit chilly in the Winter evenings thus it would be highly unlikely that more tourists would venture out except perhaps under the pub beer garden heaters.
Could we perhaps become fitter? One new idea that has been proposed is that being lighter in the evenings would assist the country in getting fitter by encouraging more people out and about, but perhaps the same argument will apply about the weather? Granted, being colder we would all burn more calories.
Quirky arguments: As with all debates, there are quirky arguments on both sides with Mail on Sunday columnist Peter Hitchens complaining that not only does it affect the milking in northern Scotland, but it will mean we’ll all be watching Newsnight when it’s light outside.
The big question is – could this possibly work? Can we really drop GMT or is that too much part of our culture?
UK Resources:
Visitor attractions around the UK (daytime & night-time)
Hotels in the UK
UK self-catering cottages
