• Clock watching
Sir: Peter Hitchens’s cover story ‘Hour of Surrender’ (29 October) was predictable, reactionary and dangerously short-sighted. The argument for changing the clock is simple: daylight is a limited and valuable resource — to maximise the benefits afforded by daylight, we should have more of it in evenings when we are most active rather than in the mornings when we are asleep. Nowhere is this more true than on our roads, where Mr Hitchens has a particular blind spot to the evidence. The UK’s leading road safety bodies (including the Scottish branch of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents) are unanimous: when it comes to road safety, children are more at risk on the way home from school (when they take longer, less direct journeys) than in the morning (when they go straight to school). Mr Hitchens may be a fine journalist, but he is no statistician.
As for this being a Europhile plot, nothing could be further from the truth. The only reason for introducing daylight saving is because it is better for British people and the British economy. Rather than to help with the harvest during the war, the time-zone change was implemented to save fuel, cut accidents and boost the economy — which it did. The argument that daylight saving will boost the economy still holds true today — estimates predict that it would create in the region of 60,000-80,000 new jobs. In these tight times, this is an opportunity for job creation that is hard to ignore.
What’s more, when asked (rather than spoken for) the British public consistently back the plan in opinion polls. This is also true in Scotland where an open and rational debate is taking place about the benefits of change.
When you look a little closer, clock change turns out to be a rather deft political move.
Daniel Vockins, 10:10 campaign manager;
Tom Mullarkey, Royal Society for the Protection of Accidents (RoSPA);
Kathleen Braidwood, RoSPA Scotland;
Rob Gifford, Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety;
James Stibbs, Sport & Recreation Alliance;
Adrian Mahon, British Association of Leisure Parks, Piers and Attractions;
Kurt Janson, Tourism Alliance;
Colin Stanbridge, London Chamber of Commerce & Industry
Sir: Peter Hitchens and James Forsyth confirm my view, not that ‘the Tories are a party of southerners, run by southerners for southerners’, but that the press is run by southerners for southerners. Speaking as a northerner, I absolutely dread the day the clocks revert to GMT. Dark mornings I can bear — it’s the prematurely dark evenings I hate. It’s bad enough that it rains all the time without it being dark as well. So speak for yourselves gentlemen, but not for me.
Michael Ross
Ulverston, Cumbria
• Sacrifice at St Paul’s
Sir: The sad thing about the protesters who have ‘sacrificed their jobs’ to camp outside St Paul’s Cathedral (‘A broad church’, 29 October) is that in order to maintain their lifestyle some may be forced to borrow from those whose usury they deplore. Now that really is a shame.
Robert Vincent
Hampshire
Sir: On my way home from church this morning I decided to walk past the St Paul’s protest camp. I found the people pleasant and the camp clean and well organised. The protestors are giving anarchy a bad name.
Richard Lynam
London
• Saved by empire
Sir: Vernon Bogdanor may be correct in suggesting the ideology of empire was short-lived and rapidly forgotten by 1906 among British people (Books, 15 October).However, in 1914 and 1939 the empire suddenly re-emerged as a valuable and indispensable means of survival. Military personnel, raw materials and food supplies sourced from it made all the bloody difference. Britain is supposed to have stood alone in the dark days of 1940-41. It did not. It had the empire with it.
Bruce Farland
Wellington, NZ
• Strong feelings
Sir: In her poisonous account of Sir Roy Strong’s garden (‘The emperor’s new weeds’, 29 October), Anne Wareham describes quite a different place from the one I often visit. When I go to the Laskett I see one of the most interesting gardens to have been created from scratch in the last 40 years. I see the only garden I can think of that works as the story of the life of its creators. At the same time I see a contemporary take on the Tudor garden, laid out by an eminent scholar of the Tudor period. As for the thistle that gave Ms Wareham such pain, I see it as one of the most beautiful of English natives and if a good one sprang up in my own garden, I too would hesitate before wielding the hoe.
Garden-making is the most personal of art forms, and the differences between gardens are a cause for celebration and not censure. One of the glories of England is that so many people open their gardens to the public. Sure, this may often be associated with tea and charity, but if Ms Wareham and her taste gestapo have their way, many garden gates are going to clang shut for ever.
Andrew Lawson
Oxfordshire
• Crumbs!
Sir: Peter Jones’s article (‘Shelf hatred’, 29 October) must have rung bells for many academic staff and researchers at other institutes of higher learning. However, he omitted one ‘improvement’ that I hear is encouraged at some university libraries: the consumption of food and drink.
Brian Sparkes
Southampton
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