Morning:
13°c
OVERNIGHT, for almost everyone, life has suddenly got better. No, no need to check the name on the column - it's still me. I haven't had a compulsory brain transplant from Hazel Blears or even a free delivery of state-subsidised porn.
What happened at the weekend was something that not even the Royal Bank of Scotland could spoil: the clocks went forward. Isn't it amazing how much difference it makes? Suddenly it is light when you come out of the office. Suddenly, our horizons expand to evenings in the park and trips to the country.
Our physical as well as our mental health benefits: sunlight is our primary source of Vitamin D, absorbed through the skin from the ultra-violet rays.
It saves other lives, too. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents says there would be around 450 fewer deaths and serious injuries on the roads each year if mornings were darker and evenings lighter, simply because there are more people about in the evenings.
The sunlight robbery makes things easier for criminals. Many older people won't go out after dusk. For five months of the year, they're held captive in their homes by Greenwich Mean Time.
But most of all, keeping the clocks forward - GMT plus one in winter, GMT plus two in summer - would be the single biggest, and simplest, thing we could do for the environment. Years of effort have been devoted to so far largely fruitless attempts to cut CO2. Ten thousand civil servants, recycling officers and greener transport co-ordinators have spent entire careers on policies which, even if successful, will have no more than a minimal impact on greenhouse gases.
Yet moving the clocks would save, at a stroke, around five per cent of this country's energy needs. And there's no downside. You don't have to give up your car or your curling-tongs. It can happen precisely because few or no sacrifices are required.
Northern Scotland objects to GMT plus one because it wouldn't get light there until around nine in midwinter. Sorry, but the interests of the few can't block the interests of the many. How about starting work later? Or, since Scots already have their own parliament, why not their own time zone, too?
Politicians and, too often, the rest of us, measure achievement by quantity - GCSE grades, GDP growth, bus passenger spaces. But the GCSEs are dumbed-down and devalued. The GDP growth triggered a destructive consumer frenzy. Attempts to increase transport "capacity" led directly to ... the bendy bus.
We should want quality, not quantity. We shouldn't want to have more, we should want to have better. We shouldn't want to be richer, we should want to be happier. Politicians, fixated on their meaningless fiddled statistics and targets, have overlooked some obvious things they could do to make us happier.
At this week's G20, the assembled suits will plough through the usual quantity agenda, approving (or not) the latest pointless fiscal stimulus. The demonstrators will be making the usual demands for money of their own. On both sides, it will be sound and fury, signifying nothing, and probably forgotten within weeks.
Wouldn't it be great if, instead of talking about money, the G20 talked about daylight? If all the countries agreed to move the clocks forward by an hour? Not the sort of thing serious politicians do, some may mutter. But if people's health and happiness aren't serious enough for our leaders, there's something wrong with them.
TfL pedals into more stupidity
TFL JUST doesn't get cycling, does it? The latest manifestation of “Transport for Livingstone's” campaign — possibly unwitting, possibly deliberate — to sabotage everything Boris wants to achieve is its absurd decision that the hire bikes in the Mayor's new Paris-style Vélib scheme will not be provided with locks. You'll only be able to ride them between Vélib docking stations — and will then have to walk to wherever you actually want to go. If you can't lock the bike up, you won't be able to leave it safely anywhere else.
City Hall sources have muttered before about the bike-blindness of David Brown, TfL's director of surface transport. Memo to the esteemed director: the whole point of a bike is its flexibility and freedom. It's not a little one-passenger bus, only to be used between designated stops. And unless the transport bureaucrats realise it, their Vélib scheme will be a humiliating failure.
The politicos' new ploy
HAVE you noticed how politicians on TV have started to interview themselves? Typically they'll be in the gunsights of some Paxman/Humphrys-style grilling, then they'll suddenly veer mid-answer into self-interrogation mode (“Do I think our new policy on the slaughter of the first-born will be popular with everyone? No, but it is overwhelmingly the right thing to do.”) It's a wonderfully brazen new variation on the age-old politician's trick of answering the question they want to answer, rather than the one you've asked them. We'll be hearing it a lot over the next few summit-heavy days.
Reader views (6)
I agree wholeheartedly with Andrew Gilligan. How about an ES campaign urging MPs to see the light? Plenty of countries have different time zones. But would the Scottish MPs in Westminster allow the devolved assembly to take such a timely decision?
- Chrisw, Watford UK
Yes, even the Americans have extended "daylight savings time" by 3 weeks so why can't we make it permanent or at least extend it as well?
- Westl, Putney England
An added benefit of moving the clocks forward an extra hour is that we would be in the same time zone as western Europe.
- Bloke, London
That's funny, I thought it was Boris Johnson's Velib scheme.
- Adamb, London
We've been to Holland at or around Easter on holiday for the last couple of years. It was striking that it was still light at 21:00 at that time of year - they are an hour ahead of us. It was brilliant when on holiday and it would be great here - I typically get home from work around 19:00 weekdays - the extra hour of light would transform my life as I could be much more active outside rather than be trapped inside in the evenings for 7 months of the year.
- P Hall, UK
The shortest Day is 21st.Dec. The clocks go back two months before at the end of Oct, BUT forward three months later at the end of March! Clearly we would be having too much fun if the evenings were lighter in March! The usual excuse for this misery (and motoring deaths) is Scotland. Well they can make their own decisions now.
- R Jones, Bristol UK
