Why can't the clocks go forward now?

[Itisnoteasybeingdifferent]

Half past seven and it is broad daylight.
Which means that a new time of half past eight would be safe for going to school...
Yet we have to wait in the dark evenings...

We are past the solstice by much the same time as the clocks go back before. Why is winter deprssion still forced on us?

My dd leaves the house at around 7.50 for an 8.30 start. It's only just light by the time she leaves. I would not want her to walk in the dark.

In Glasgow in the depths of winter it gets Dark at 4pm which is horrible.

It does everywhere. In fact having just looked at the lighting up times Birmingham is only 3 minutes later today than Glasgow, but it's 25 minutes the other end of the day.

BST all year round please!

I wish it were BST all year. I absolutely hate it when it's dark before about 6, it makes me so depressed. At this time of year I am literally counting the minutes until the clocks change. I can nearly cope with it getting dark at 5 but there's nothing more depressing than December and January when it's dark by 4, it really puts a hold on our lives and is so depressing

GMT puts the clocks back not forward
No, GMT is the 'natural' time for the UK, with the sun at it's highest at 12:00. BST puts the clocks forward an hour, so midday is at 13:00.

Ifailed - I meant in relation to the times in the post I quoted.

Though if you're being pedantic, it's only a convention, not a natural law to call the time when the sun is at its highest '12 o'clock' - it could just as easily have been decided to call it something else - it depends when you start your day.

In fact the word 'noon' comes from 'Nona hora' the ninth hour of the liturgical day, when the service ' None' was said. Later, from about the 12th century the prayers of None began to be said earlier, at the time when the sun was highest, and the name moved with them.

Stilitvert in my office I organise a team meal for the Monday after the clocks go forward in October when it is suddenly dark in the evening and it's still a long haul to Christmas. Only curry can relieve the gloom!

Rustybear What a pleasure to meet another member of the Pedantic Society!

Are you also a member of the Apostrophe Police?

I feel cheated when the clocks go forward at the end of March. All that dull, dank battle to through January, February and March to get to an acceptable length of day light by about 2 minutes at a time, and just as we've limped to the later end of March where it finally gets dark at quite an acceptable time, bam! Suddenly we get an extra hour to enjoy in the evening. Why can't we get that leg up earlier in the year?

Better still, why can't we be on Central European Time? It works well for France and Spain who are around the same longitude.

British length of day is so rubbish in mid winter (I live quite centrally) and I'd rather have that concentrated later in the day so that it's of use to school children, as whatever you do, there's not enough to give daylight to someone working 9-5.

What was weird, was being on the Trans-Siberian with the train running on Moscow time, and daylight running 5 hours ahead. Dark at 2pm in September!

In midwinter, there's only 7:30 hours of sunlight in, say, Manchester, so people will be travelling to and from work in the dark, unless you make a dramatic change to the time zone (+ or - 2hours).
For school kids with a typical 6:30 hours in school, it would be nigh impossible to agree a timezone that allowed the whole country's children to travel in the light, indeed the further north you go the less daylight there is in winter (e.g. for Inverness they get over 1/1 hour less than Manchester).
Of course we could go back to the pre-railway times and have local time.