At the third (sorry, fourth) stroke, it will be...

I've been trying to get my head around this leap-second business. If I've got it right, it's to bring the atomic clocks back into line with what the earth is doing. Apparently, on a very small scale, the earth is getting ever more slow in its orbit around the sun, which means that the atomic clocks are racing ahead and have to be corrected every now and again. So far, so good, but what I can't understand is that there is apparently a strong suggestion that we should ditch GMT altogether and switch to atomic time. But this would be the tail wagging the dog surely? To the extent that "real" time exists, it is measured by events in the natural world - sunrise and sunset and the passage of the seasons. If there is any discrepancy between those things and what a clock or a calendar says, then it is the clock or calendar which must give way, surely?