LETTER: British spurn call to rise and shine early

From Dr T. J. Dennis

Sir: In "It's time for Scotland to turn the clocks forward" (15 January), Brian Wilson MP reveals what seems to be a widespread ignorance of basic geography in his comment about the inhabitants of "northern Sweden who survive happily on [Central] European time". Leaving aside the fact that northernmost Sweden is inside the Arctic Circle, and at the moment gets no sunlight, he forgets that the country is almost exactly one time zone east of Greenwich, so its choice of European time is entirely appropriate: citizens of Stockholm on CET and the Orkneys on GMT, at about the same latitude, thus have identical local sunrise and sunset times.

He also seems unaware of the one-hour time shift introduced in the UK in the late Sixties, and which was abandoned circa 1972 after public protest.

Yours sincerely,

T. J. Dennis

Birch, Essex

15 January