Times have changed for daylight saving

Rome, it’s still only 8am in London and phone calls to businesses go unanswered.

Unsurprisingly, pro-Brexiteers are opposed to any change to the current regime. Indeed, presumably in brilliant anticipation of the Brexit vote, Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg six years ago went even further and made a tongue-in-cheek proposal that Somerset, the county of his constituency, should have clocks 15 minutes behind the rest of Britain.

He said this was the case before times in the UK were standardised in the 1840s. Before then clocks were set locally, often by the churches, depending on the position of the sun.

Given how infrequently much of Britain sees the sun in summer this must have led to some chaotic timekeeping.

Mixed time zones can certainly be confusing to visitors to Australia where New South Wales and Queensland finish up on different times during summer.

I once stayed in a hotel that straddled the Queensland-NSW border and there was an hour difference in the time at opposite ends of the building.

A noticeboard giving details of a conference to be held there had to clarify the event was being held in the NSW part of the hotel and thus started an hour earlier than residents in the Queensland portion might imagine.

Cities, too, can get caught up in the time muddle.

In 1965 the Minnesota cities of St Paul and Minneapolis – separated only by the Mississippi River and considered a single metropolitan area – couldn’t agree on their summer time. St Paul decided to start its daylight saving early to conform with most of the nation. Minneapolis decided to stick with state law – and turmoil ensued.

In fact, daylight saving created so much confusion in the US in the 1950s and 60s that on one bus route from Ohio to West Virginia passengers had to change their watches seven times in 55km.

Sometimes the clock confusion can even have fatal consequences.

In 1999, in the Middle East, the West Bank was on daylight saving while Israel had just switched to standard time. West Bank terrorists smuggled some time bombs over the border to their Israeli counterparts but a misunderstanding over the time on the bombs led them to exploding as they were being planted, killing three of the bombers.

A chilling reversal of the expression ‘‘killing time’’.