William Willett
The old phrase,“Time and tide wait for none”, reminds us that it’s that time of year again when the clocks will go back by one hour, at 2.00am tomorrow morning.
This one hour change will take Ireland from Daylight Saving Time (DST) to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), making the mornings brighter and the evenings darker, until our clocks go forward again on March 26th, 2017.
Edwardian British builder William Willett first promoted the idea of British Summer Time in 1907, however same only became a reality on May 21st 1916, thus marking this year the 100 year of DST in Ireland.
On a more sombre note; with clocks going back tonight, the Road Safety Authority are urging motorists to exercise extreme caution over this bank holiday weekend. Nine people have died on our roads over the last seven days; bringing our Irish road deaths to 159 persons to date in 2016. This figure compares to 127 for the same period in 2015; an increase of 25% in road deaths so far this year.
George: The USA doesn’t change out of Daylight Savings Time until NEXT Sunday, November 6th. That should make travel and international phone calls a lot of fun this week!