Daylight Saving Time has been in the news this week with claims that fiddling with the clocks could reduce CO₂ emissions, just as wartime politicians discovered that fiddling with the clocks could reduce energy consumption. Laudable goals, but I fear the practice of turning the clocks forward in spring, then back in the winter, has been so ingrained into all of us for the last 90-odd years that we’ve lost sight of what an utterly insane idea it is in the first place:

Q: How can we reduce our energy bills?

A: By meddling with time itself! Mwahahahaaa!

Lunacy. Sure, it’s a solution, but it’s such a monumental, disruptive hack that it boggles the mind, if the mind is willing to be boggled by such things. How did it become acceptable to solve social and economic problems by messing with such a fundamental part of our shared society? It’s like abolishing every third Monday to reduce Monday blues - by skipping straight to Tuesday. It’s like switching the national language to French during the summer, to attract continental tourists, and then switching back for Christmas.

If mangling the country’s timestamps is acceptable, I have a further suggestion: since the City of London is arguably the most important part of the British economy, optimise its timezone for maximal productivity: at 5pm, put the clocks 4 hours back to EST to take in the afternoon trading in New York, then at New York 5pm, switch forward 13 hours to Japan Standard Time for a couple of hours sleep before the start of Tokyo trading. At Tokyo 5pm, switch back to GMT to begin the next day’s work in London.

I call it Daylight Trading Time: elevating insanity to brilliance.