Messing about with the clocks

It's that time of year again, time to mess about with the clocks, going back an hour this time and forward again in the spring. Each time the clocks change the same tired and dreary arguments are dragged out repeatedly of either it's dark in the evening or it's dark in the morning. Master's in stating the bleedin' obvious in my opinion; it's always been dark at either end of the day, unless there is a remote chance that someone knows differently or lives above the Arctic Circle.

Some object to schoolchildren going to school in the dark yet hardly anyone objects to older children returning home in the dark. Seems illogical ...

In the middle of winter it does not get light here until almost nine o'clock in the morning. Children start school at 0830hrs and many have a journey of more than an hour to their respective schools, mostly in the dark. Even the youngest children children at the end of the day do not finish school each day until 1630hrs, the older ones at 1730hrs, all still have to travel to reach home. There are no annual debates here as to the merits or otherwise of 'daylight saving time', it is just accepted without comment. Life goes on, farmers farm, workers work, children learn all without apparent detriment to their wellbeing.

It seems that there is one conveniently ignored factor by those who are pro 'daylight saving time', in fact it is the elephant in the room - there is, at any given date in the calendar, a finite amount of daylight. Has been like that for ever as far as it is generally understood and that no matter the wit of modern man it will remain that way. Immutable, immovable, unyielding, unchanging, just like death and taxes.