Tobias Ellwood this morning floats that old chestnut about moving the clocks forward an hour permanently. It remains as daft an idea as it ever was, for one very simple reason: the time tells us something about the light, and if he wants us all, permanently, to move our days forward an hour, then we should all just get up an hour earlier.
In true time, at noon the sun is at its highest point in the sky. We compromise on true time a little by having a standard time for the country - Greenwich Mean Time. (I believe we started using this common time standard widely when the railways were introduced, partly so that train timetables could be planned.)
Now, we get up an hour earlier in the summer, following the earlier sunrise, and it would be an option to do that just by setting our alarm clocks an hour earlier that day. But if we are going to shift around as a society all on the same days each year, getting up an hour earlier in the summer and an hour later in the winter, there is at least a case for coordinating that through a shift in the clocks.
What there is no case for at all - what is simply a stupid idea - is for us to permanently shift the clocks forward, so that 1 o'clock becomes the time at which the sun is highest in the sky. What would that achieve, really? What Ellwood and others want is for us all to rise an hour earlier, for us, for example, to begin working four hours before the sun's high-point in the sky instead of three hours before. Fine. Then have the government workers start at 8am instead of 9am; have the benefit offices open an hour earlier; start Parliament an hour earlier. Everyone else will get the idea quick enough.
If it would be good if we rose earlier - and he could well be right about that - then let's simply rise earlier. But don't mess about with the clocks.