Time zones

Sir, – Prof Aoife Foley, a clean energy expert at Queen’s University Belfast, contends that were the UK not to turn the clocks back this month, it could save people €400 a year on their energy bills (“Households could save €400 on energy if clocks do not go back, Dáil told”, News, October 19th).

The good professor accepts this would create complex time zone issues between Britain and Northern Ireland, and the rest of Ireland. But she suggests this could be resolved if the two governments consulted on an emergency proposal to abolish daylight savings this year.

In keeping with the wrangling over the Northern Ireland Protocol, we might opt instead for the approach used by polar explorers and scientists who simply choose whatever time zone they find most convenient.

At the poles, all the lines of longitude converge, thus technically the poles are in all the time zones simultaneously. – Yours, etc,