Daylight Saving Bill

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. He has been a passionate supporter of a clock change for some time. But let us get back to Peter Hitchens. [Laughter.] He is one of the few voices that are against the daylight saving, but I believe that he now acts as a drag anchor against that great British newspaper the Sunday mail—[Interruption.]—I am sorry; The Mail on Sunday. He is anti-change; he is anti-technology, so the idea of moving the clocks abhors him. That is slightly odd. Because he does not like inventions and technology, one would have thought that using the light bulb less might appeal to him, but he does not put that argument forward. He would rather put forward a wartime rhetoric with references to Berlin time to foster prejudice against the Bill. ““Why Berlin time?”” it has been asked. ““Why not Gibraltar time, Madrid time, Paris time or Rome time?”” Clearly, those descriptions would not conjure up the same worrying image as the UK crumbling to the mighty powers of Berlin after the sacrifices that we made in two world wars. I say to him, ““Peter, you are potty. Clearly, you are a very, very angry man and stuck in the past. You are a cross between Alf Garnett and Victor Meldrew but without the jokes.”” He is a restless regressive: the King Canute of politics, fighting the tide of change. He will never lose sight of the past because he has chosen to walk backwards into the future. This is nothing to do with Berlin or wartime images. The only connection with the war is the fact that we first adopted a time change during the war because it was useful. [Hon. Members: ““Churchill time!] Yes, that is what we will call it—not Berlin time but Churchill time! To summarise, moving the clocks forward would provide the entire country with about 200 hours of extra daylight in the evenings—after a normal working day for adults and after the end of school for children. That would change our lives. It is hard to imagine a more simple, cost-effective piece of legislation that would dramatically change our way of life for the better. Sunshine brightens our day, our lives and our spirits; it makes our world happier. We should utilise this valuable resource to coincide with the period of the day in which our modern world is at its busiest and most dangerous. Carpe diem, Mr Deputy Speaker; let us seize the day.