Daylight saving?

This article has made me angry today. Mike Rutherford has said that the clocks shouldn't go back because it would be safer for children coming home from school. Sounds good enough at first, almost plausible, then he makes ridiculous statements like:

"Better still, so that they can commute more safely during light mornings AND light afternoons, why not shorten the school day in winter and make up for lost time in the balmy summer months? For heaven's sake, Scotland - with its proud, independent heritage and its very own Parliament - could even have its own time zone if that’s what the majority of its residents want."

Now I don't live in Scotland but that comment really makes me irate. How ridiculously ludicrous to suggest that the school day should alter in length according to the time of year, have an hour or two less in winter and then extend them in summer by the same amount. How is that even vaguely workable? And as for his comments about Scotland, they seem like closeted racism to me, he's saying 'who gives a monkeys about Scotland? If they don't like the dark let them live in the sun-blessed south'. The truth is, changing the day to make it sunnier in the afternoon instead of the morning doesn't mean the sun shines any longer. There are going to be accidents on the roads when there are children about, whether that is in the morning or the afternoon. Besides which, as schools finish at around 3 o'clock now anyway, most children should be home or nearly so before darkness falls. Change that time to the morning and it will certainly be dark when the children are arriving, come December it will only just be light by the beginning of the school day as it is.

Addition -
GreenwichMeanTime.co.uk say this about an experiment in the 60s to do away with daylight saving:

"In 1968 to 1971 Britain tried the experiment of keeping BST - to be called British Standard Time - throughout the year, largely for commercial reasons because Britain would then conform to the time kept by other European Countries. This was not good for the school children of Scotland as it meant they had to always go to School in the dark. The experiment was eventually abandoned in 1972, Britain has kept GMT in winter and BST in summer."