There’s been yet another effort to change Britain’s time zone – i.e. putting the UK on Central European Time. This effort has been tabled as a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons by Tory MP Tim Yeo, although he calls the new timezone SDST (see Yeo’s ePolitix blog). The Telegraph lists a whole range of reasons for making the change, in this relatively long piece, although it looks today like Yeo’s efforts to change the timezone have failed due to a lack of Parliamentary Time.

The idea of lighter evenings has always appealed to me, aside from the convenience of being on the same timezone as mainland Europe. Yeo even argues that it will be beneficial to the environment due to reduced lighting, and the economic benefits are to the tune of 1 billion GBP a year as well. His bill even would have allowed Scotland and Wales to have their own say on the issue (the Scots have always been most vehemently against). Last but not least, there’s some irony that a former Tory environment minister should be backing an idea to put the UK on Central European Time and leave that very British creation – Greenwich Mean Time.