I like the idea of presenting leap seconds as a change in timezone or time offset. But instead of redefining all the UTC-offset timezones, e.g. redefining EST/E

I like the idea of presenting leap seconds as a change in timezone or time offset. But instead of redefining all the UTC-offset timezones, e.g. redefining EST/EDT from UTC-5/UTC-4 to TAI-05:00:35/TAI-04:00:35, what if we redefined only UTC in terms of an offset from TAI? I think this is actually equivalent to what we have today, but it makes the relationship to TAI more obvious, and it should be easier than leap seconds for developers to understand, because they can reuse their cognitive models for time offsets. So leap seconds simply gets re-branded. Instead of saying 'a positive leap second will be introduced at the end of June 2015.' We'll say 'on 1 July 2015 00:00:00 UTC, UTC time will move from TAI-00:00:35 to TAI-00:00:36.' ADD: I suppose this is more than a "re-branding", as it results in the abolishment of second 60. Under the current system, with leap seconds: 2015-06-30 23:59:59 UTC = 2015-07-01 00:00:34 TAI 2015-06-30 23:59:60 UTC = 2015-07-01 00:00:35 TAI 2015-07-01 00:00:00 UTC = 2015-07-01 00:00:36 TAI Under a system where UTC is a TAI offset, second 59 gets repeated: 2015-06-30 23:59:59 UTC = 2015-07-01 00:00:34 TAI 2015-06-30 23:59:59 UTC = 2015-07-01 00:00:35 TAI 2015-07-01 00:00:00 UTC = 2015-07-01 00:00:36 TAI