Why do we do it anyway?

Farmers? Postmen? School children? World War I? None of the above. The clocks only go back because they go forward in March (from Greenwich Mean Time to Daylight Saving Time), which they’ve done since 1916 after a lifelong campaign by builder William Willett (great-great-grandfather of Coldplay singer Chris Martin). He believed we wasted productive daylight in the morning, and money on lights in the evening, by getting up too late in the lighter part of the year. He was also fed up cutting short his after-work games of golf because dusk was falling. His campaign reached fruition a year after his death. My family are farmers and even they moan about it, and they are the ones it was apparently meant to be helping. – Hazel Kerrison It’s to allow the clocks you forgot to change back in March to correct themselves. – Richard Inns It’s awful when you have children, their bodyclocks don’t change for days! – Xanthe Waite I remember when ‘daylight saving’ was trialled in Western Australia during the 1980s – folks in Perth were complaining the “extra hour of daylight” would fade their curtains quicker! You could not make it up! – Helene Griffiths-Adams It just messes with your sleep pattern and confuses my cat! – Ruth Taylor