Minister rejects call for Britain to adopt ‘Churchill Time' in the summer
Calls for Britain to learn 'wartime lessons' by moving the clocks forward by two hours during the summer months have been rejected by the Government.
Labour MP Alex Mayer pressed the case for double British Summer Time (BST), dubbed 'Churchill Time', as a way of reducing energy usage, improving mental health and potentially reducing road accidents.
Business minister Justin Madders acknowledged there are 'a number of benefits' to the proposal, which was adopted during the Second World War, but said the Government believes the existing approach provides the 'optimal use of the available daylight across the UK'.
Clocks go forward one hour at 1am on the last Sunday in March to provide more daylight in the evenings during what is known as British Summer Time, with the change taking place this year on March 30.
They then go back one hour at 2am on the last Sunday in October, with the next change due on October 26.
Ms Mayer, the MP for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard, noted BST was established during the First World War in 1916, before she highlighted the 'experiment' of double British Summer Time during the next global conflict.
She told the House of Commons: 'As Britain faced peril, Winston Churchill took the decision to move the clocks two hours in advance of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in the summer and one hour in advance of GMT during the winter months.
'Why? To save energy. The crisis at the time meant that bold ideas were required.
'We needed to think outside the box. Today we face a different emergency – the climate crisis – but one where the same prescription could really help. I believe we should learn the lessons of wartime Britain and move to double summertime.'
Ms Mayer said such a change could help reduce emissions by 'making better use of the daylight that we have', adding: 'By choosing Churchill Time, we can reduce our energy use and lower our carbon footprint.
'When it's lighter in the evenings, households and businesses switch on the lights and heating later. That small shift spread across millions of homes adds up to a significant difference.'
Ms Mayer added changing to lighter evenings 'can prevent hundreds of accidents and injuries every year' on the roads.
She went on: 'And sunshine cheers us up. The NHS says that a lack of sunlight may lead to lower serotonin levels, which is linked to feelings of depression, but getting outside has got many mood-boosting benefits.'
Replying to the adjournment debate, Mr Madders said: 'The Government believes the current daylight savings arrangement represent the optimal use of the available daylight across the UK and changing the current arrangements would impact all citizens in the UK and Northern Ireland, and would require public consultation and an assessment on the impact on businesses across all sectors of the economy.'
He said moving to double British summer time would result in darker mornings in the winter and he cast doubt on the impact of the proposed change on reducing road accidents and energy usage.
Mr Madders went on: 'Moving to double British summer time would also create a time border between Ireland and Northern Ireland in a scenario where Ireland maintained its current approach to time.
'This non-alignment could cause problems for transport, particularly aviation, the tourism trade and business in general with higher impacts if there was only a part-year alignment.'
Mr Madders said the north of Scotland would have 'no daylight in the winter before 10am' under double British summer time, adding: 'While in the rest of Scotland sunrise would be at 9am, so children in Scotland would travel to and from school in darkness.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Washington Post
27 minutes ago
- Washington Post
We're witnessing a historic test of two assumptions about Israel
Natan Sharansky, a human rights activist and former Soviet dissident, is a former Israeli government minister and deputy prime minister. Early Friday morning, Israelis woke up to the news that our government had launched a targeted military assault against the Islamic Republic of Iran, striking its military facilities, nuclear sites and top military leadership. As we brace for Iran's response and the possibility of a longer war to follow, we are also witnessing the historic test of two assumptions that have long guided Israeli and international policy.
Fast Company
29 minutes ago
- Fast Company
Trump's ‘gold card' visa scheme is pure gilded nonsense
President Donald Trump announced, back on February 25, that his administration would soon debut a 'gold card,' an immigration program that would allow wealthy foreigners, for the low, low price of $5 million, to become lawful permanent residents of the United States. At the time, Trump touted the program as a 'great' and 'fantastic' revenue generation strategy that would help reduce the national deficit, which approached $2 trillion during the most recent fiscal year. 'Wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card, they'll be wealthy and they'll be successful, and they'll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people,' Trump said. He told reporters that gold card buyers would not be required to pay tax on their income outside the United States; that the program was 'totally legal' and 'all worked out from the legal standpoint'—and that he expected it to go live within two weeks. 'Two weeks,' confirmed Department of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, standing behind Trump in the Oval Office. When Trump estimated that the government could raise an easy $5 trillion by selling 'maybe a million' gold cards, Lutnick was unable to suppress a chuckle of delight. 'Wow!' he said. Today, though, anyone hoping to relocate to a budding police state where riot cops might shoot you point-blank for looking at them is still waiting for the chance to cut a check. In mid-March, Lutnick said during a podcast interview that gold cards would be available in 'about two weeks,' and claimed he'd presold 1,000 already. (I assume these sales, to the extent they exist, are handshake deals, since the alternative would involve the Secretary of Commerce personally collecting $5 billion and stashing it God knows where.) On April 3, Trump showed reporters a physical gold card bearing his scowling face and seismogram signature, and (again) said it would be out in 'less than two weeks.' But the delays kept coming. On April 11, Lutnick announced that gold cards would be available 'within a week and a half.' On May 21, he moved the goalposts even further, revealing that a website where 'people can start to register' for gold cards would be online in 'about a week.' On Thursday—three weeks after that update, for those keeping score— at last went live. Trump celebrated the launch on Truth Social as a way to 'ride a beautiful road in gaining access to the Greatest Country and Market anywhere.' On Fox Business, Lutnick claimed to have logged 25,000 sign-ups in 15 hours. But he also acknowledged that these are waiting list spots, and that the administration is still 'getting everything set up.' The website itself most closely resembles an especially lazy phishing attempt; its only content is a contact submission form assuring prospective buyers that the gold card is 'coming,' and urging them to provide their email addresses to 'get notified the moment access opens.' The White House's struggles to get this initiative off the ground demonstrate just how unprepared Trump is for the basic work of governing, on the rare occasions that he expresses any interest in engaging in it. A key part of his pitch to voters has always been that, as an outsider to politics, only he has the Business Guy Mindset necessary to transform the federal government from a bureaucratic morass into a slickly branded, profitable enterprise. But fulfilling his more ambitious promises is always harder than he expects. As a result, an idea that Trump once suggested would single-handedly wipe out this country's $36 trillion national debt is, four months later, still taking the form of a bare-bones website that looks like it is soliciting interest in a new over-the-counter erectile dysfunction medication. At the announcement earlier this year, Trump explained that gold cards would replace the existing EB-5 visa program, which allows immigrants to obtain green cards if they invest at least $800,000 (and usually more) in a new business, and create at least 10 full-time jobs in the United States. In a Cabinet meeting, Lutnick clarified that the gold card program would technically 'modify' the EB-5 visa program, allowing buyers to obtain a 'license' from the Department of Commerce that would entitle them to make a 'proper' EB-5 investment. In response to a question from reporters, Trump asserted that the program does not require legislation because it allows buyers to obtain lawful permanent resident status and a 'very strong path to citizenship,' but does not directly confer U.S. citizenship. advertisement law limits EB-5 visas to around 10,000 per year, which is of course nowhere near the million units Trump and Lutnick imagine selling in short order. The amount of the required capital investment, too, is set by statute, and nothing in the law would allow Trump to increase it to $5 million just because he feels like it. His distinction between programs that confer citizenship and programs that only confer lawful permanent resident status is nonsensical, as is Lutnick's reference to a 'license' from the Department of Commerce. Depending on what he has in mind, Trump's promise that gold card holders will enjoy some form of VIP treatment—'green card privileges plus,' he called it—probably also hinges on Congress's willingness and ability to pass a law to that effect. Absent congressional action, Trump's best bet for making this work might involve using his statutory authority to allow gold card buyers to enter the United States on the grounds that doing so entails a 'significant public benefit,' since a willingness to fork over $5 million to the Treasury Department arguably qualifies as such. But this status—the product of a legal process known as parole—is typically temporary, and is not even considered a form of 'admission' to the United States. It also would not make gold card buyers lawful permanent residents or give them a path to citizenship, which are things that people who pay that much would reasonably expect to get in return. Given that the Trump administration has spent the last several months gleefully repudiating the very concept of parole, I understand not wanting to pay seven figures for the right to be in the country for as long as Stephen Miller feels like allowing it. The lingering uncertainty around the program's specifics has resulted in a gold card market that is likely cooler than Trump might have imagined. Earlier this month, NPR interviewed several immigration attorneys who said they'd fielded inquiries from wealthy foreigners who are eager to pay up—which is, to be fair, exactly what I would say if I were an immigration lawyer contacted by a national publication for comment about a program aimed at potential clients who have at least $5 million in cash. Other experts, though, told NPR they anticipate sales in the low thousands; one explained that callers often lose interest once they find out that the $5 million is not an EB-5-style investment that they might recoup, but a de facto donation to the U.S. government. (As London School of Economics professor Kristin Surak points out, if you're a rich person looking to pick up another passport, why pay $5 million for a glorified green card when you can buy Maltese citizenship, and thus the right to live anywhere in the European Union, for about a fifth of the cost?) Nuri Katz, a Canada-based immigration consultant, told Bloomberg that he would expect a grand total of '50 to 200' applicants for Trump gold cards; more recently, in Forbes, he hypothesized that the White House is 'backpedaling' on the proposal because it realized it would 'have to expend a lot of political capital in order to get this done.' Perhaps there was a time when more than a handful of people might have been interested in ponying up for 'green card privileges plus,' whatever that may entail. But regardless of the legal form that Trump gold cards eventually take, the basic challenge of selling them will be that that they are branded with the face of an unabashed xenophobe whose administration is waging a global trade war, trying to bar foreign-born students and academics from entering the country, torpedoing international educational exchange programs, attempting to end birthright citizenship, and snatching noncitizens (and sometimes citizens) off the streets. Chances are that if you are privileged enough to be able to pay $5 million for the right to live in the United States, you are wise enough to decide that that money is better spent on something else. The final deadline for Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech Awards is Friday, June 20, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Israel's overnight strike on Iran in maps and images
Israel has hit Iran with its biggest wave of air strikes in years, targeting the country's nuclear programme, and is promising to continue its attacks. Senior military figures and nuclear scientists were killed in the overnight strikes and there are unconfirmed reports that civilians, including children, were also among the victims. In response, Iran launched about 100 drones towards Israel, most of which were intercepted, according to the Israeli military. Israel said it had launched a another wave of strikes on Friday evening, with reports of more explosions in Iran, but the scale of that attack and the damage caused is not yet clear. Video analysed by the BBC shows multiple strikes overnight in the capital Tehran as well near three reported military sites and Iran's main nuclear facility in Natanz. Israel's military said it had struck "dozens of military targets, including nuclear targets in different areas of Iran". It later released a map of the sites it said it had hit which included nuclear facilities, missile facilities and radar defences, as well as scientists and military commanders. Explosions were first reported in Tehran at about 03:30 local time (01:00 BST), with Iranian state TV saying residential areas were among those hit. Blasts were heard in the north-east of the capital and explosions reported at the airport, according to analysis by the US-based Institute for the Study of War. The BBC has confirmed one of the locations as the site where Iranian media reported that former head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation Fereydoon Abbasi and nuclear scientist Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi were killed. Iran has confirmed that at least six of its nuclear scientists were killed. Iranian state media showed footage of fires burning in buildings and plumes of smoke rising from the city's skyline. Key Iranian commanders have also been killed, including the chief of staff of the armed forces, and the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Among the other sites hit is Iran's main uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, in the centre of the country. Iranian state TV said it was struck several times, with pictures showing black smoke billowing from the site. Israel's military said the strikes had caused significant damage. The facility, about 225km (140 miles) south of Tehran, has enrichment plants above and below ground. Uranium can be used to produce fuel for commercial nuclear power plants, research reactors or weapons depending on the level of enrichment. The Institute for Science and International Security said satellite images show damage and destruction to several buildings around the complex, including the pilot fuel enrichment plant, which holds centrifuges and research facilities, as well as the on site electrical substation that provides power to the facility. The global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said it was informed by Iranian authorities that there has been no increase in radiation levels at the Natanz plant. Iran has long maintained that its nuclear programme is for civilian purposes only. It has several facilities around Iran, at least some of which have been targeted in the Israeli strikes. But many countries - as well as the IAEA - are not convinced Iran's programme is for civilian purposes alone. It has nuclear facilities spread across much of the country. The strikes come as US talks over Iran's nuclear programme, which began in April, appear to have stalled in recent days. The next round of talks was scheduled for Sunday. US President Donald Trump has urged Iran to "make a deal" on its nuclear programme, "before there is nothing left". Other world leaders have called for restraint on both sides. IAEA head Rafael Grossi said nuclear facilities "must never be attacked" and such strikes have "serious implications for nuclear safety, security and safeguards, as well as regional and international peace and security". In a statement to board members, he called "on all parties to exercise maximum restraint to avoid further escalation", saying "any military action that jeopardises the safety and security of nuclear facilities risks grave consequences for the people of Iran, the region, and beyond".
