Lighter Later Bill Fails

Here in the UK, there has been a campaign to move the clock forward by 1 hour throughout the year.

The campaign goes by the name of Lighter Later and is the brainchild of the 10:10 organisation, a team whose main aim is to encourage everyone to cut their carbon footprints by 10%.

However, the campaign, and the Lighter Later Private Members Bill that grew out of it, has gained widespread support from over 120 MPs in the Commons, 90 national organisations, the UK government and opinion polls.

Why? Because it has a lot of benefits besides carbon cutting by 500,000 tonnes per year:

• Save 80 lives a year on the roads and hundreds of injuries.
• Lower all our electric bills by maximising use of available daylight hours.
• Create 60,000–80,000 new jobs in leisure and tourism, bringing an extra £2.5–3.5 billion into the economy each year.
• Reduce crime and the fear of crime.
• Encourage people to exercise more.
• Save the NHS millions by reducing road accidents.
• Improve the quality of life for older people.
• Reduce the effects of seasonally affective disorder.
• Match daylight hours more accurately with when most people are actually awake.
  

(More detail on the benefits here)

So, with all those benefits and such widespread support, you'd expect the Bill to have got through it's third reading today (20th Jan. 2012) with ease.

Sadly that was not the case, as a group of 10 MPs deliberately wasted time so that it never made it to a vote. More here.

That's UK democracy in action for you: It doesn't matter about the thousands of people who supported this bill or the millions that would have benefited from it, when you've got a handful of MPs who just don't want it.

Disproportionate power in the hands of a few.