SUDDENLY it’s dark at teatime. Before the year ends it will dark by mid-afternoon. Once again our precious extra hour of ‘summertime’ light has been snatched from us – coincidentally with most schools’ half term.

For how long has the possibility of permanent summertime been debated? For at least half a century. Tried in 1968, it was never repeated, in deference to protests from Scotland, where dawn in the far north didn’t arrive until after 10am.

But isn’t Scotland opposed to Brexit? It should be alarmed, therefore, that the EU is poised to render redundant our annual agonising over moving the clock. Out of the blue it has announced its intention to an end the seasonal changing of the clocks. Under its plan, from next April every EU nation will be required to adopt permanent summertime. Where Westminster bent the knee to Scotland, Brussels wields a whip. If the Scots ever succeed in throwing off the perceived yoke of Westminster in favour of the imagined benefactor Brussels Scottish crofters and others unhappy to be groping in the dark in mid-morning might well just have to lump it.

There’s a wider point. Our failure to settle the clock issue over at least four decades reflects a messy, yet democratic, consideration of points of view. The EU, in contrast, just sweeps ahead. Its precipitate move on the clocks illustrates perfectly why we need to leave. Even post-Brexit we will have to accept whatever change to the clocks the EU makes throughout our ‘transition’ period. That many of us would welcome permanent summertime is irrelevant to how such EU proposals emerge and undemocratically become law.

IF you don’t go back as far as 1968, how about 1987? The most eye-rubbing images from that year were of US and USSR generals witnessing the destruction of nuclear weapons on each other’s territory. Their political masters, Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan, had signed a treaty to eliminate all land-based nuclear and conventional missiles with ranges of up to 3,400 miles.

Now, US President Trump is being castigated for considering withdrawing the US. Not revealed is whether all the proscribed weapons have been scrapped. Three decades seems long enough to have done the job. But there’s no doubt the US and Russia each still possesses enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over. And since China is not party to any deal, the world is less safe than before Gorbachev and Reagan put pen to paper.

FROM time to time I highlight stories which show why April Fool spoofs are a waste of time. A classic appeared the other day. NASA has spotted a perfectly rectangular iceberg. It resembles a box lid – or a huge icebound football field. In customary April Fool style, the report quotes “an expert”, who explains: “Such tabular icebergs appear when an angular protrusion breaks from an ice shelf. The sharp edges of this one probably indicate that the iceberg only recently detached itself and wind and the sea have not yet had time to shape it.” If you read this report on April 1 you would congratulate yourself on spotting the spoof. But it was published on October 24.