There is an ongoing fight in this country to be rid of Greenwich Mean Time; the arguments in favour of abolition are that it’s better for school kids to have daylight after school than before, that accidents will decrease, and that it’s an anachronism. The arguments in favour of keeping it are that farmers need the early morning light, Scotland needs some light, and that it would put us on the same time as most of the continent to our south. Including bits hundreds and hundreds of miles to our east.

I’ve always been in favour of keeping it. Partly because the reasons to abolish are pushed largely by people like RoSPA and other nannying folk, and because the reasons don’t form a coherent enough argument for me to think that it’s worth abandoning hundreds of years of tradition.

Now, I have a new reason. For, y’see, for the first time I’m walking a dog every morning as we go into winter. And if the clocks don’t go back from BST to GMT soon, then the entirety of my walk will be done in the dark. Which means several things: foxes are still about, fewer people are about, and it’s difficult to see what the little madam on the lead is up to. So I need that little sliver of daylight.

Also, it’s much more difficult to pick up the dogshit when it’s too dark to see the ground, and the consequences of doing something wrong there are just too horrible to consider…