Around this time of year I get half a dozen emails demanding an end of the practice of turning the clocks back one hour to Greenwich Mean Time and promising all sorts of economic benefits from doing so.
Some of my correspondents have simply forgotten, a few others weren’t even born when we last tried exactly that experiment. We kept British Summer Time all year round, but we renamed it British Standard Time. I was twelve when the experiment started in 1968. It was dreadful living in Scotland going to school in the dark. I doubt that any economic benefits were delivered because by 1971 the nation had had enough: Parliament voted by 366 to 81 to end the misery and restore the status quo ante. I’m always amazed that some people want to try it out again.