The Extra Hour

Every Autumn I look forward to the weekend when we put the clocks back by an hour and consequently get an extra hour in bed. Last year I'm afraid that I rather squandered my extra hour, staying up too late for no good reason. This year, by contrast, I was determined to to enjoy it - and I did, luxuriating in that extra hour of rest. I felt a bloody sight better for it. Now, I know that the 'extra hour' is an illusion created by the switch to daylight saving time for half the year, but I'm afraid I'm one of those people whose body clock seems to work better when it is on GMT. Before we switched last weekend I was perpetually tired and weary and not sleeping well. Since then, I've had more energy and have been enjoying better sleep patterns. But it seems that I'm not going to be allowed the simple pleasure of the extra hour for much longer and, even worse, I could be condemned to having my body clock perpetually out of sync.

This awful excuse for a government has resurrected the hoary old chestnut of keeping us on BST all year round. Worse still, they want us to be on Central European Time (CET). Apparently it would be 'more convenient'. For who? We've been here before - back in the 1970s they tried to do the same thing and experimentally kept us on BST for a few years. Not surprisingly, people didn't like it and we reverted to the old arrangement. All the arguments marshaled in favour of permanent BST are bollocks - all that fanny about 'longer days' and 'more daylight'. The fact is that, at any given time of year, there is a finite amount of daylight each day, determined by the tilt of the Earth's axis. If you want 'longer days' then get up earlier. It's that simple. As for the government's claim that it would give us lighter evenings in the Autumn - for God's sake, they're meant to be dark at this time of year! What I really can't understand is why someone as anti-European as Cameron is proposing to effectively abolish good old British GMT and replace it with Central European Time? As far as I'm concerned, they should be enforcing GMT all year round. After all BST was only meant to be a temporary measure introduced in the First World War - it's about time it was abolished, isn't it?