Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

It is interesting the way so much of what happens is unforeseen by politicians and especially governments.

Suddenly the new week looks a good deal less attractive from Whitehall than Mondays in the dynamic post natal period of the coalition government. Now there is revolution in the Middle East, unemployment is rising fast, growth has stalled, inflation looks menacing, a divisive referendum campaign is opening, there is confusion and u-turns in several directions and, to cap it all, government borrowing is rising to even dizzier records. There is more. Are the GPs really to be trusted with all that money? Can the government really not get to grips with the banks? What about this business with the European Court of Human Rights? 

It is a time for steady nerves and calm deliberations. All eyes will turn to the Chancellor. Can he come up with a budget for growth which will give morale a boost and set a path to recovery? Much depends on George now. It could soon be his moment.

There is new impetus to bring the U.K. into European time, which would mean permanently one hour ahead of GMT and two hours in summer. This has been the case twice in my lifetime; once during  WWII, when it was known as double summer time and once in the early seventies, when the experiment was known as British Standard Time. The wartime arrangement was with good reason, reducing the need for blackout. The BST idea was predicated on the current argument about longer days.

After the war, because of public opinion, we went back to GMT. The same thing happened after two or three years in the seventies. It sounds a clever idea, but in the end people do not like going to work and taking the children to school in the dark for most of the winter. Neither do they see advantage in daylight after eleven p.m. in the summer, or  even midnight in Scotland. Additionally there becomes a longer gap with the America. Business links have to get started one hour later, leaving only two hours of our office day left. Of course everyone works longer hours nowadays, though to what effect is far from certain.

Anyway it will be interesting to see what current consultations produce as a policy. Let us hope we are spared a referendum.