The clocks go back but the world just keeps heating up

Depending on your personal daily routine, it's a fairly safe bet that you'll be eating your evening meal with the lights on tonight.

- with Joe Riley

Sunset in this part of the world is at 4.59pm. On Saturday it was at 5.53pm.

One wonders just where the fingers are now pointing on the world's first public clock in Padua, which dates from 1344AD?

Whatever, the ending of "daylight saving time" for what most of us term British Summer Time at precisely 2am yesterday is the psychological switch which begins the run-up (or, as far as I am concerned, the rundown) to the rigmarole of Christmas.

Like the vast majority of sane folk who would prefer the extra daylight during the evening, we are forced once more to concede that the entire time-meddling exercise is a conspiracy to benefit farmers who face a winter of early morning milking in the Shetlands.

If SNP leader John Swinney ever gets his odious revived talk of Scottish independence over the line, perhaps a significant concession would be the establishment of a separate Caledonian time zone. We can only hope.