THE time for our bi-annual debate, or at least muttering, about changing the clocks is once again upon us.

Let me say I applaud efforts to optimise the time we get up and go to work so as to improve our safety, efficiency and health.

What I can’t endorse is the attempt to impose such an optimisation upon us by interfering with our time zone.

If we were to divide on the latter question along party lines I would expect communists and fascists to support it and the rest of us to be opposed.

Given our longitude, the natural zone for us is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), now know as universal time.

Why then, you might ask, is France not on universal time? I can only conjecture that it is because the meridian was not named after a place in France, and that the French are content with a position as a satellite of Germany.

In any case, the practical requirement for the whole of the UK to be in the same time zone makes a clock change too blunt an instrument for fine tuning our waking period. It cannot address local conditions and concerns.

The role of central government is to provide a rational framework within which decisions can be made at the lowest practical level.

On temporal matters that framework is, for us, GMT. The desired optimisations can still be facilitated by each county council recommending a start of business time, which may be different in summer and winter.

John Riseley, Harrogate.