The End of British Summer Time for Another Year

Once again, summer comes to an end. You can really feel it in the air now can’t you? It’s turning cold, dark and wintery. It’s not all bad though, because the clocks go back this Sunday so you’ll get an extra hour in bed and it should be a little lighter when you get up too.

Have you ever wondered why we do this thing of putting the clocks backward and forward? The idea first came about in the early 1900s when it was proposed that the clocks would be put forward 20 minutes a week during each week of April, then back again in September. Thankfully this never happened. It’s bad enough trying to remember to change them twice a year. There’s always one clock in the house that isn’t changed for months, and the clock in the car just never gets changed!

The point of the whole process, is basically so we can make the most of the daylight hours. There’s more daylight time to work outdoors, and it’s lighter in the morning making it safer for us to get to work and for kids to get to school. It’s also good for saving energy as you don’t need the lights on for so long!

So we’re going to have darker nights now until March 25^th next year when we’ll be putting the clocks forward again.

Interestingly, when the concept was first brought in, it was much more troublesome for everyone to change their clocks as most standard clocks could not be put back by one hour. The mechanisms simply wouldn’t allow for moving backwards in time, so they had to be put forward by 11 hours. However, people most likely didn’t have as many clocks as they do now as they were much more expensive and of course we didn’t have clocks on our ovens, phones, computers and the like back then!

Willet, who first came up with the idea of daylight saving is actually the great great grandfather of Chris Martin, the lead singer of Coldplay. We wonder if his songs ‘Clocks’ and ‘Daylight’ are a reference to Willet?

Will we keep this system forever? There are plenty of people who want to stick to just one time and not bother with all this to-ing and fro-ing every six months. In fact, a recent survey showed that 53 percent of people would like to just move the clocks forward and then leave them be forever.

Perhaps Willet would have liked one of our British Summertime private plates? He could have C13 BST, D16 BST or MS05 BST. Or perhaps two plates would be needed for when we change over to Greenwich Meantime. A plate such as G14 GMT. G20 GMT or W5 GMT would work well. So when you change the clocks, you could also change your plates!