I HAVE an app on my phone which tells me that while its 13.03 in Newton Abbot, it’s 18.03 at Mawson Station, which should be born in mind when next visiting Antartica.

It also tells me that it’s 13.03 in Lisbon, while a few miles away it’s 14.03 in Barcelona.

These two major cities are only a relatively few miles apart. The purpose of all this will become clearer as you read on. We are just getting used to the clocks changing again as winter approaches.

I fail to see why we continue with this outdated action and have railed against this practice since schooldays, when it meant that after school sporting activities stopped when the daylight went an hour earlier after the October half term.

Today, perhaps more than ever, we need to reconsider this action, as we surely ought to be maximising the best use of daylight.

An important consideration currently must be the conservation of energy and the lowering of fuel costs. The sooner we lose daylight in the afternoons then the sooner energy is turned on, which is bad for climate change and people’s purses.

The less we go out the less exercise we get, and of course exercise is good for our general health and well-being, but also for the economy, as money is spent when people are out and about.

Another major consideration must surely be the safety of all, but particularly schoolchildren, and it has to be safer to get home after school in the light?

Maximising daylight hours here in the west country would benefit tourism and farming, and with the added pressures both of these have been subjected to of late, any help must be a welcome bonus?

As a nation we made maximum use of daylight during the two world wars of the last century, in order to save energy use and maximise farming activity, so why not now?

One of the arguments put forward by those who wish to see the current situation maintained is that children in Scotland would be going to school in the dark (which obviously counters my earlier point re children getting home safely in the afternoons) and also farmers north of the border would be working in the dark ‘til mid-morning, to which my response has always been let Scotland have its own time zone.

I made the point earlier re Lisbon and Barcelona being fairly close. They are in fact 625 miles apart, which is remarkably similar to the distance between Newton Abbot and Inverness, and in the words of Michael Caine, ‘Not a lot of people know that’.

My point is that no good reason exists for there not being different time zones on the British mainland, and the sooner we again retain British Summer Time for 12 months of the year the better.