Sigh, must we have this debate every year? And why has this suddenly become “news”? If you read some of the opinion columns about David Cameron speculating on the merits of double-summertime hours you’d think that we’re all suddenly going to live forever if we do it. Four disabled schoolchildren per year won’t get run over by evil bankers’ footprint-guzzling carbon-windmills and everyone will have a beach hut. Unless you live in Scotland, in which case you’re going to start living in perpetual gloom and needing to eat lunch by candlelight.

Time zones are dictated by geography and astronomy, not by politicians. There is simply no case for moving away from GMT unless we can automagically move land mass currently sitting on the Prime Meridian hundreds of miles eastward. Much as it’s entertaining to watch a whole nation throw its collective haggis out of the pram, annoying the Scots isn’t enough of a reason to do this.

The artificial construct of Summer Time only began because of the supposed needs of agriculture and industry in World War I. As we’re not at war (until the Germans kick off again; it’s getting about time) if anything the whole continent should change to GMT. Or go back to the good old pre-railway days when the time in your local town depended on where the Sun was in the sky. It’s only a number. You can go to school or work when it opens and closes and that could vary instead of being fixed – it certainly does in the Med area.

Frankly if you choose to live somewhere inconveniently away from the Greenwich Meridian then it’s your own look out.

The whole thing is a solution that is desperately looking for a “problem”.

UPDATE: The timezone doesn’t appear to be a Schedule 5 Reserved Matter for Scotland. Why not? It would make sense, surely?