• 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.
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