HERE we go then – six months of dark afternoons to look forward to. No wonder so many people become depressed.

Sad syndrome is the proper medical name for it – seasonal affective disorder. And the galling thing is that there is no need for this misery. It’s entirely self-inflicted.

All we have to do is not put the clocks back and it would never be dark before 5pm all through the winter. No British government will enact this sensible measure, however, because Scotland (where there is even less winter light) would be up in arms and our government is scared to do anything which might lose Scottish votes.

My view is simple: if Scotland is deemed independent enough to decide to repatriate the Lockerbie bomber to Libya – without so much as a by-your-leave to the English Parliament – why don’t the Scots do what they like with their own porridgy clocks and let us do as we wish with ours?

It’s supremely irritating to know the rest of Europe will not put their clocks back and so will enjoy light afternoons all winter.

Moreover, all our experience and research has shown that dark evenings produce more road deaths than dark mornings. The author Alistair Horne (a rare Scotsman on England’s side) has had an actuarial study carried out and he concludes: “The extra hours of light in the winter evening would save Scots’ lives – more children were run over coming back from school tired in the dark than going to school in the morning.”

And I thought we were all scratching around, desperate to save energy. Why, then, do we put the clocks back when it has been shown again and again that staying on British Summer Time (BST) would be more energy-efficient?

By the middle of November here in London it is dark by 4pm and there’s not much improvement until the middle of January. It’s soul-destroying and – worse for you up in the North where winter sunsets are 20 minutes earlier than ours. So, soon, it will be nearly dark for you by 3.30pm.

I wouldn’t stop at merely continuing BST all year round. I would welcome double summer time – putting the clocks forward an extra hour in March. The present arrangements are crazy. I mean, in June and early July it is dark in London by 10pm. Ridiculously, wastefully, under our present system, it is light by 4am. If the clocks were put forward that extra hour – that is two hours BST – we would not have the unwelcome daylight streaming into our bedrooms at that stupidly early hour when no one needs or wants it.

And two hours BST would mean it stayed light in the evenings until 11pm, giving us all that extra hour in the summer garden with the long evenings a boost to the tourist trade.

The only reason why these sensible measures are not put in place is the self-interest of our MPs who, by their consistent refusal to keep us on BST, have demonstrated that they are prepared to countenance more road deaths and waste more precious energy – anything rather than that they forfeit a few votes.

The majority of people in all walks of life, employers’ associations, chambers of trade, and the unions, are willing to consider amending the law so we can stay on BST.

We need to make a noise about it. Let’s lobby our MPs and tell ’em we’re sick of being kept in the dark.

■ Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael’s, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.