LOOKING FOR SUNLIGHT

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 425, 6 August 1928, Page 8

LOOKING FOR SUNLIGHT

THREE cities, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin, are now considering, more or less officially and more or less definitely, schemes under which it may be possible to retain the advantages of daylight saving. Quite eertainly these were so obvious and so much enjoyed last summer that it would be foolish to let them go again at the bidding of a Parliamentary division. It would be an amusing sequel to that division, and by no means an unlikely one, if the cities were followed by the towns in a successful extra-Parliamentary re-enactment of Mr. Sidey’s Summer Time Bill or a series of close local modifications on it. The evidence of such a movement throughput New Zealand would be as convincing as a referendum. There will be difficulties, probably, in the way of local schemes. There may be initial difficulties iu securing a working agreement on details, and it will not be possible to dispose of these by the Parliamentary “short way with dissenters”— by legislation that must be obeyed. They may survive, therefore, as difficulties and inconveniences in the actual operation of local schemes. But the goodwill of city communities toward daylight saving is so general that probably few will think it to their ultimate interest to stand out.

Where they do hold aloof, and by so doing inconvenience others, or where other inconveniences incidental to purely local schemes are felt, these checks will be slight in comparison with the continued individual and general benefits. Moreover, one may assume that they will be regarded as incidental to temporary and local arrangements, not as inherent in a national scheme and prejudicial to its readoption.