SUMMER TIME HERE TO STAY

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 615, 18 March 1929, Page 8

SUMMER TIME HERE TO STAY

THE return to standard time was followed by threatening skies and heavy rain, as if the elements themselves conspired to suggest that artificial Summer Time was indeed over, and that the fall of the year and the onset of winter were giving it an exit no mere Act of Parliament could possibly provide. There is no real reason, however, why Summer Time should have ended when it did. The people would have welcomed longer evenings for another month yet, particularly as this period of contracting twilights is possibly the time when the extension is needed most. The success of Summer Time this season has been unqualified. The benefits it confers hai r e been welcomed, and the mild changes it involves have been accepted quietly. It is beyond doubt now that the principle will he adopted permanently, but a battle may rage round the margin of time to be observed in future.

After the defeat of Mr. T. K. Sidey’s full-hour Summer Time measure in the early session last year, the modified Summer Time Bill finally passed was a hasty political afterthought. In the election some good friends and some sworn enemies of the full-hour measure fell. Mr. W. S. Glenn, whose hostility to Summer Time was pronounced, lost his seat in Rangitikei, but his lieutenant, Mr. A. M. Samuel, survived. Mr. A. Harris will lead the Summer Time faction in the absence of Mr. Sidey, but he will lack the support of Mr. E. P. Lee. Summer Time probably gained more friends in the election than it lost, and the bitter opposition of former years is hardly likely to be repeated, except as to the measure by which the clocks shall be advanced. When that measure has been determined, and the members are satisfied that the hour, or the halfhour, or whatever it may be, is best for the country, a permanent Summer Time Act should be passed and the range of the measure should he widened to cover at least five months instead of four.

Instead of being a hardy annual, Summer Time should become a perennial. There has been talk in some quarters of advancing tlie clock half an hour all the year round, but the late winter sunrise in the South makes this quite impracticable, and a generous measure of recurring Summer Time will be much more acceptable to the country, as g whole. ....