It’s coming round to that time of year when our clocks spring forward to British Summer Time or rather GMT+1. But should there be differing time zones within the UK?

Some campaigners are looking for the South West (at least) to be on SDST – that is Single/Double Summer Time or rather GMT+1 in Winter and GMT+2 in Summer. Now in Scotland and probably Northern Ireland this really wouldn’t work – it would be far too dark to get up in the mornings. Take today for instance – sunrise will be at 06.26 in Ballymena (according to the Met Office iPhone app) but under these proposals it would be 07.26. That is only sunrise – not when it is really light!

Would we therefore need to have differing time zones? And if we are changing just by hours – why not revert to the old way of having time being what it is by the sun in each place – not limited to GMT. As illustrated here, one minute of time is 15′ of longitude. So Ballymena where I am currently is, 6degrees,17 minutes 54seconds W (longitude) so by my reckoning that is about 25 minutes behind GMT… so seven o’clock am (Ballymena time) is about 0725 GMT. I wonder could we start adopting this for local clocks?