[LEAPSECS] UK public dialog workshop tweets

[Ian Batten]

On 13 Jun 2014, at 16:28, Steve Allen <sla at ucolick.org> wrote:

> 2014-07-05: Birmingham and Cardiff
> https://twitter.com/LeapSecondsUK/status/476691895469748225

I've signed up for that (it's actually in Tamworth, which is stretching the definition
of "Birmingham" to breaking point).

I'd be happy to turn up with "I am concerned about....but I have spoken to other
stakeholders and they in contrast are concerned about....".  I've attended 
early-stage government  consultation exercises before, and I'm of the opinion 
that the most useful output from them is to get all the issues recorded, rather 
than attempting to influence one way or the other. 

My own views are that from the point of view of the general public, the problems (slow
drift of mean noon) are in the noise floor compared to the error in mean noon
across a time zone or the error in actual noon over the course of a year, and 
therefore the risk of problems ensuring from broken software mis-handling
leapseconds are probably not justified.  On the other hand, those same members
of the general public are unlikely to be concerned about precise interval timing over
midnights using time_t, and therefore have little to gain from changes to the 
current system other than (possibly) freedom from (possible) bugs in software.
As there haven't been any general public affecting leap second issues so far, the benefits
of any change are unlikely to be significant.  

So my gut feel is that "no change" is the most likely outcome, because the benefits to
the public of the change are small, there are significant numbers of stakeholders
for whom it will cause problems, and the British Way (TM) is that you leave alone
unless there are clear benefits (see also: AV referendum).

Therefore the most useful thing to do is record the stakeholders for whom it is a potential
problem (people with DUT1-consuming equipment which assumes DUT1<1), note that
the claimed benefits are rather nebulous, and quietly draw a veil over the whole thing.
Remember, the starting position of the UK government appears to be "no change", so
yelling "CHANGE THIS OVER MY DEAD BODY" is likely to make people look
unhinged...

ian