I'm with the newspaper correspondent this week who suggested the clocks change *every* weekend

With the clocks going back last weekend here in the UK, we've had the annual debate about whether it's all worth it. I'm with the newspaper correspondent this week who suggested we move to "Greenwich Generous Time", whereby the clocks change *every* weekend, going back by an hour on Saturday night to give us all an extra hour in bed, then moving forward again at 9am on Monday morning. Nice.

More seriously, the main argument against changing the clocks is the sheer cost of the exercise in man-hours (and mistakes). That I understand, but one aspect I've never seen added to that calculation is the cost of designing equipment to enable the time to be adjusted by everyday users in the first place. Sure, it might only be an extra button, or a few extra lines of control code, but it must add up. In many cases, for industrial equipment using real-time clocks, changing between UTC and summer time twice a year is the only reason for having to provide a time-adjustment facility to everyday operators, otherwise it could simply be a scheduled maintenance feature, which wouldn't involve the same complexity of user interface, or the cost.

Thanks to the many hundreds of you who completed our survey last week - I've met my part of the deal, and the Asia Earthquake Appeal will soon be in possession of my entire loose change collection (which turned out to be alarmingly valuable). I'll summarise what you've told us in next week's newsletter.