British Summer Time

it was started soon after the war. to help farmers get their harvest in earlier.. but i cant see the point now as farming is done by machinery. and i hate the dark evenings and mornings.but being england its one of stupid laws .lol...

Around 12th night Lilyflower when the days are noticeably lighter all round. A day worth celebrating!

I wouldn't mind the clock change if I could actually get an extra hours sleep. Alexa is good if you are a questioning sort of person, I use it as a cooking timer you can hear her all over the house. One clock in the kitchen all the other time is on the electrical gadgets!

I hate the clocks changing and the dark evenings. I count the days until the solstice on the 21st December but there is 'hang over' where the evenings stay dark while the mornings get slightly lighter. I have looked out every year for when one can notice it being lighter in the evenings and that dosen't arrive until about 5th January. Luckily Christmas diverts one's attention somewhat from the gloom!

Um... we have a clock in every room - including the bathroom. Especially the bathroom. I’m a bath lounger and don’t take my watch or phone in there.

Don’t you need Alexa in every room? I don’t have it and don’t understand how it works. I don’t see the advantage.

I do! Well not in the bathrooms! I like a decent clock! I find the tick soothing! No probs with being 'dated' either. I have digital fitbit on my wrist and the time on my phone & laptop, in the kitchen the ovens have clocks but I have an analogue wall clock too in the dining area. In the front room I have a small clock on a shelf and in the day room a clock made for my DH by a former student. The guest bedroom had a small traditional alarm clock..it's one I had years ago at college. There are wall clocks in the other 2 bedrooms and in our bedroom we just use the radio clock. All I need now is Alexa to tell me the time!

GrannyAnnie2010

What!!
Hours spent turning clocks back and forward? Just how long does it take to alter...say...3 clocks twice a year?
I bet you spend 100 times that amount, if not more, on social media in a day.

Who on earth has clocks in every room? How dated.

Looking at the globe we should be on the same time as France and Spain, not an hour behind.

I think we should keep things as they are. It was done for a reason and that reason has not been disproved.

Don’t we do it in particular for Scotland, which is fair enough? Quite a big difference for them. I’m in south, so would be fine to keep it on BST.

I remember a time- in the late 60s I think - when they did stop it & it was fine. I think they went back to it as some farmers up north said it made milking a problem. I'm sure the cows would have adapted.
Ditch it I think.

I think the changing of the clocks is outdated and there is no need for it.

Codfather, I beg to differ, I think there were fewer accidents:
“The death toll on the roads continued its upward trend over this period. But analysis for the Department of Transport, taking into account other changes such as drink-driving laws, showed there were 11% fewer fatalities and serious injuries in England and Wales and 17% fewer in Scotland during the hours affected by the clock change. A small rise in morning accidents in northern Scotland was offset by a huge reduction in accidents in the afternoon”.
From www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/dec/20/british-summer-time-changing-clocks-accidents-daylight
Also this article points out, that children benefit from the longer afternoons at weekends and holidays and would not be waking early for school. Moreover, it states, even Scottish farmers are not so resistant since with new technology they can work in the dark. We live in a rural area and often see tractors and combines working in the dark with their powerful lights.

Oh yes, bbbevan. My oven clock is now at the right time, having spent the whole year on GMT.

Isn't there always one clock you forget to change? ?

During the 60/70's when they experimented with keeping the same time which happened to be BST, the biggest whingers were those who had moaned about changing the clocks twice a year! The experiment was abandoned for two reasons:

1) Overall accidents increased during the winter months!

2) Dawn didn't occur till late mornings in the North of the British Isles!

Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when it ended and it really annoys me to hear this whining every time! When the snow's heavy on the ground or there's a sharp frost, just remember you would have been out in it an hour ago when it was even colder.

It's a faff having to change the clocks - it may seem excessive but I've one in every room which is seven in all (no, I don't live in a mansion) which isn't counting my wristwatch or the boiler. The car changes itself on its next journey and the landline on the next call - I often call myself from the mobile to do this. I have to get someone at the supermarket to change the mobile which makes me feel like a bit of a chump. I'd like them to stay the same for obvious reasons. I don't know why but it makes me feel a bit strange for the first day afterwards.

Think of the poor night shift workers who had to do an extra hour this weekend! Some on contracts, don’t get extra pay!

I think I am right in saying that the previous experiment to have British Summer Time all year round did result in fewer road accidents concerning children. I think, no scientific evidence for this, is perhaps the children are more subdued in the morning and less likely to be mucking about and showing off. The reason it was not adopted, if I recall correctly, was because the Scottish people (particularly farmers) were adamant about keeping GMT as the dark mornings last so much longer there.
If I was in charge, it would be British Summertime for me and double in Summer!

I think they should stay at Summertime now. They started off in World War 1 with Germany.......but........

Story goes that the idea was started by Englishman William Willett who led the first campaign to implement daylight saving time.
While out riding on horseback early one morning around the desolate outskirts of London in 1905, he had an epiphany that the United Kingdom should move its clocks forward by 80 minutes between April and October so that more people could enjoy the plentiful sunlight. Willett published the 1907 brochure “The Waste of Daylight” and spent a lot of his personal fortune calling for the adoption of “summer time.” Year after year, however, the British Parliament stymied the measure, and Willett died in 1915 at 58 without ever seeing his idea come to fruition.

NanKate I too could quite happily hibernate until BST then I think how much we have to fill the winter evenings with our Tv's etc etc when our ancestors had nothing but candlelight or went to bed as soon as it got dark.

My friend told me a slightly naughty joke about her dyslexic neighbour. He was very worried after reading that cocks will go black on Saturday night!

BST causes me a lot of trouble, with a DS and DD in Perth, Australia and a DS in Sydney. Perth experimented with changing the clocks, for 2 years, then the population rejected it. Sydney does change the clocks. Trying to keep track of the various time differences, so that we can chat, drives us all crazy.
As for 'getting an extra hour's sleep' when the clocks go back, forget it. I can't linger in bed. Once I'm awake, I am up - so it just means an extra hour out of bed. I wish that they would just forget about BST altogether.

There was a letter in an Australian paper not long ago from someone who was complaining that, whilst most states changed the clocks, Queensland did not. This man was annoyed and thought Queensland ought to change the clocks so that they could have two hours extra daylight like the other states.

Sounds very odd to me re this stone moving. Whereabouts Maw? Moving Stonehenge??
I think they had to move the stones even further when they had double summer time winterwhite