Last Sunday was the worst day of the year. The last Sunday of October is always the worst day of the year—the clocks change and my life as a commuter is plunged into darkness. I don’t know why we do it. It causes more people to suffer from SAD—seasonal affective disorder, which affects about 2 million people in the UK and more than 12 million across northern Europe—and, worse, it causes a significant increase in fatal pedestrian collisions on our roads.
Estimates by the Department for Transport’s own research suggest that a move to adopt Single/Double Summertime (an adjustment to the clocks of GMT plus one hour in winter and GMT plus two in summer) would be worth almost £140 million annually. The road-safety organisation GEM Motoring Assist notes that official figures show that, in 2013, twice as many pedestrians died in December compared to June and that there’s a 10% increase in road deaths in the four weeks after the clocks go back.
This simple change would cheer many of us up, give us longer summer evenings, add millions to the economy and avoid an estimated 80 deaths and more than 200 serious injuries on the UK’s roads each year.
-
Caveat renovator: The TV star, the writer and the salvation of a crumbling farmhouseThe actor, writer and comedian Robert Webb and his comedy writer wife Abigail Burdess embarked on a renovation project in 2019 which became far more than they imagined — and just as the job is at last complete, they've decided that it's the right time to put house on the market.
-
'People always think that, working on The Telegraph, I'll be told that things aren't right wing enough. But in 37 years, I've never, ever been told that’: The Telegraph’s cartoonist Matt on his consuming passionsThe Daily Telegraph cartoonist Matt — AKA Matthew Pritchett — talks to Lotte Brundle about his career as a cartoonist, his love of Snoopy and how he ‘stole’ his wife from Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen.
