After 14 years of political deadlock, there is little sign of a breakthrough: the US and France are backing an historic intervention, while Britain, Russia and China are strongly opposed. The matter at stake? Whether the leap second should be abolished.

A decision is due at a UN meeting in Geneva next year, but the government has decided to take stock of public opinion and will announce a consultation today.

A leap second has been added to the world’s computers roughly once a year since 1972 to compensate for the fact that the Earth’s rotation on its axis is very gradually slowing. Without these corrections, the atomic clocks that keep international time (UTC) would drift out of synchrony with the Earth’s night-and-day cycle, and, 800