I got up early this morning, with plenty of time to prepare the porridge, shave and read the Sunday paper before taking Mrs SG her bed-tea at 0730. Or so I thought. “I hope you all remembered to put your clocks forward,” said the nice man on Radio National.

So it’s time to get stroppy again about the idiotic practice of putting clocks forward every spring and back again every autumn. In Australia (where I live) we have 5 time zones for half the year: Eastern, Central and Western are with us all the time, and the 5 southern states/territories go onto daylight saving time (DST) while the other 3 stay put.

This is crazy – not just in Australia but in most of Europe, North America, much of Brazil and bits of Africa and Asia. In China, which is a pretty big place, they manage with 1 time zone for the whole country and throughout the year!

There’s a good map at Wikipedia. There are 3 colours, the most interesting of which is orange which identifies the many countries have tried DST and abandoned it. Let’s all do that!

“Ah,” I hear some people say, “but what about the schoolchildren who would have to go to school in the dark? What about the farmers who would sleep through an extra hour of valuable daylight?”

To those people I reply, “Balderdash! Schools, farms, shops, factories and offices can decide to shift their hours of business forward, backward or sideways if they wish – without mucking about with anyone’s clocks!”