Planning to change the clocks tonight? You’re obeying the nanny state, time expert claims

If you stand on a chair to turn the clock forward an hour this weekend, you’re obeying the “nanny state,” according to a time expert.

When we move to daylight saving time, we’ll let the government tell us “when to go to bed,” claims David Rooney, former curator of timekeeping at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

In a talk hosted in Edinburgh last week by the Royal Institute of Navigation, Rooney said clocks are used by the state as a tool of “moral discipline.”

The horologist, meaning an expert in measuring time, told the audience, “In the summer I get up and go to bed an hour earlier than in the winter.

‘I don’t really want to, but we change the clock twice a year, and that’s why. An Edwardian moralist wanted us to live better lives.’

He told the Mail afterwards: ‘The current arrangement, where the clocks go forward every year, means the government fixes our bedtime and lets us get up an hour earlier.

“I’m not normally one to talk about the nanny state, but when we actually have to go to bed earlier in the summer, due to government dictates, it feels like the nanny state – it seems a little weird in this day and age .’

The Edwardian moralist mentioned by the expert and historian is William Willett – a builder and great-great-grandfather of Coldplay singer Chris Martin, who led the summer time campaign.

In his book About Time: A History of Civilization in Twelve Clocks, Rooney argues that Willett, who began promoting the idea in 1907, used clocks to “cure” the problem of “laziness in the working class” by getting them up earlier to make better use of the summer light.

At the time, graffiti was left on a London street calling the day the clock went forward “All Fools’ Day” and saying, “Get up an hour earlier and kid yourself you didn’t.”

Rooney said: ‘Clocks have been an instrument of moral control for centuries, from their use to stop people from drinking by setting licensing hours, to Greenwich Mean Time used to ensure more reasonable working hours in Victorian factories.

“People voted for DST because it had powerful backers like Arthur Conan Doyle and Winston Churchill.

“But daylight patterns vary across the UK, so it doesn’t make sense for us all to move forward an hour in lockstep as dictated by London.”

It is no longer possible for British cities to each have their own local time zone, as was the case before the expansion of the railways necessitated the use of Greenwich Mean Time across the country from the mid-19th century.

But Rooney suggests that local areas should be able to set their own work and school times from early spring, to account for the fact that daylight hours differ in different parts of the country.

He said: ‘Surely it would make more sense not to move the clocks back, but to change working hours from 9 to 5 in the summer if that’s what people want.

“The schedule of work could be determined locally, rather than by London.”

The idea of ​​daylight saving time was first mentioned by American statesman and scientist Benjamin Franklin in 1784, and it has been in use in Britain since 1916.

Proponents say the brighter summer evenings save energy, reduce traffic accidents and get people outside to be more active.

Some argue that we should return to permanent double daylight saving time, as in World War II, when clocks moved forward two hours in the summer, but critics point out that the sun would not rise until around 10am in the far north west of Scotland. .

Rooney said: “If more people work from home and work less traditional shifts, and 9 to 5 is less common, then daylight saving time to give them more light after work won’t make much sense.”