By Rab Bruce’s Spider

Boris Johnson has been at it again, claiming the Scots are stealing daylight from the English because of our resistance to changing the current system of using Greenwich Mean Time during winter and British Summer Time during summer.

It’s becoming almost an annual event now, and there is little doubt that, sooner or later, the likes of Boris will have their way and we will move either to BST all year round or perhaps even Double British Summer Time, with BST applying during winter and BST +1 applying in summer.

What most of the people arguing for this don’t seem to recall is that there was an experiment with this in the late 1960s. Some of us can remember going to school in the dark, with fluorescent strips on our schoolbags and shining armbands on our coats. It was cold, dark and miserable and the experiment was abandoned after a couple of years.

The odd thing was that, overall within the UK, the increase in road deaths during the dark mornings was offset by a greater decrease in evening road deaths although this was complicated because it coincided with a change to drink drive laws so it was difficult to ascertain whether the evening decrease was entirely due to the lighter evenings.

It is a tricky call but there are a few solutions to it. First of all, it should be remembered that the actual hours of daylight don’t change – it is only the clocks that change. Scotland, being further north, really needs to stick to GMT / BST but if that changes, a simple solution would be for Local Authorities to amend school opening hours so that children continue to travel to and from school in daylight. That might also ease congestion on the roads if other commuters stuck to the traditional 9 to 5.

A more radical solution would be for Scotland to operate in a different time zone to the rest of the UK. NO doubt there would be some initial confusion, not to mention howls of outrage from BritNats at Scotland being different but let us not forget that countries all across the world operate in different time zones and manage it perfectly easily. Just look at the USA where several different time zones apply. It is accepted as normal, although that probably wouldn’t prevent the BritNats from claiming it would be impossible in Britain because we are incapable of managing without the time of day being dictated from London.

The other solution is for Westminster to impose the change across the UK and then sit back and watch the reaction in Scotland. I think this is my favourite one. You can just see the Grievance Meter going through the roof.

Not that this would stop Boris from pandering to the South East of England and imposing the change anyway. Sometimes I almost wish he really would become Prime Minister because he seems to be doing his best to put the final nails in the coffin of the failing Union.

Tick tock.