The moment Britons get an extra hour of sleep is fast-approaching as British Summer Time creeps to an end this weekend, bringing gloomier, murkier days with the clock change.
Timepieces up and down the nation will go back 60 minutes this coming Sunday at 2am as Greenwich Mean Time makes its annual grand return.
However, with the decision to introduce daylight saving time back in 1916 to preserve energy during the Great War, many people have come to believe that the tradition is “outdated”.
This year, the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has even called for European Summer Time to be thrown out once and for all, sparking a lively debate on GB News.
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The tradition to shift clocks backwards and forwards was debated live on air
|GB NEWS
Speaking on Good Afternoon Britain, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) Christopher Snowdon and Daily Mail columnist Peter Hitchens went head-to-head to discuss whether the time has come to abolish the time change.
“There is no such thing as daylight saving. The amount of daylight remains exactly as nature provides it,” Mr Hitchens told hosts Tom Harwood and Nana Akua.
“Nor will the evenings get darker because the clocks are put back to their truthful position on Sunday.
“The evenings will be as dark as they would always have been. The fantasy that you can alter the amount of light by falsifying the clocks is an absurdity," he blasted.
Dubbing the clock changes, which happen in October and March, “clock-fiddling”, Mr Hitchens continued: “There's absolutely no reason why millions of people each March should be compelled to get up an hour earlier.”
He further said that the clocks going back and forth simply acted as a "national intelligence test", with many often not knowing whether the hour is going back or forth whenever the time comes.
He added: "I call this the biannual national intelligence test. Every six months or so, the whole country has its intelligence tested, and, by and large, fails because most people don't understand.
"Most people don't even know which way the clocks are supposed to go on. Well, most people don't even have a proper clock and have and have to check."
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However, the "crucial" effect takes place in March, when the "Government orders the whole population to start work an hour earlier".
"Now, if they actually did that by saying, you've all got to get up an hour earlier, everyone will say, 'what are you talking about? What a ridiculous idea that's presented.'"
Mr Hitchens then goes on to describe the biannual event as "fact-free drivel", lambasting the Government for forcing Britons to "swallow it" as it has become a habit.
"But there is actually a genuine time which exists," he added.
Tom and Nana appeared amused watching the guests debate
|GB NEWS
Meanwhile, Mr Snowdon offered an array of arguments against the Mail columnist. First, he highlighted, just as Tom did, the collective action problem.
"People go to work at certain times, they have office hours, and those office hours are based on what everybody believes the time to be.
The point here is not that anybody believes that the daylight savings actually creates more daylight. It just creates a daylight when people can actually enjoy it."
He explained how there was an energy-efficient benefit of the clock changes, just as originally intended back in 1916.
Safety for women also comes into play, as more women would be more inclined to want to walk home from work while it was still light outside.
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