Brown's apology to Turing

graeme

Feeling slightly sick reading Gordon Brown's apology to the late Alan Turing for his treatment in the 50s for his homesexuality. <a href="http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20571">here</a>

The bit about Brown apologising for "all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better." A good number of people in this country are ashamed at how homosexuals have been badly treated for years - why's he apologising on their behalf? The ego-maniac. Is pride the correct emotion?

Brown / Labour only think to 'apologise' to one solitary individual when a member of the public puts a petition together and gets 30000+ signatures. I don't many people expect any Govt. to try and apologise for ever ill in the past, and this just smells like opportunism of the first water.

Gaaah.

Yours,
An old cynic.

ShaunG

Well, yes that was my reaction too. But actually he was responding (as he had to) to a petition on the No.10 website that had been got up by a campaign group asking for an apology. So, in his position, what would any of us have done? Tried to explain that there's no logic in apologising for actions by others in a previous era? Or do the natural thing and put out a statement recognising the achievements of the man and dropping in just enough expression of regret to satisfy the campaigners that they've got what they wanted? You could call it opportunism, but I doubt that No.10 sees it as a particularly good news story (they didn't press release it, and they're no doubt aware it would lead to some negative/ cynical reaction). If it was your job to respond to the petition, would it really be very different?

sotwell

GB '97th sexiest man in THE WORLD' (New Woman magazine 2007)...it's offical. I feel queasy.

Philistine'sMonster

It's the way he does that thing with his tongue. That's what does it for me. Gets me proper going, that does. It's nice that. He can keep doing that, he can. It's well lovely.

sotwell

I feel even queasier now I've read that! Someone get me a sick bag...

Ali

Give the guy a break ! Can you just imagine Prime Minister Dave Cameron ?

sotwell

...what in a little skimpy number? I thought I was the only one...we should meet!

tosscat

I dislike DC for the sole reason that he was papped in Woolies during its final few weeks and will consequently never vote for him.

graeme

I see what you're saying ShaunG.

Out of the top 50 petitions, he has chosen to respond to only this 1 (as far as I can tell, though may be wrong).

Maybe it's just I don't feel Brown can speak for anyone but himself and the institution of the British Government.

But his assumption that every free person in the UK wants Brown to apologise on their behalf looks like 'I know best '. Akin to his constant use of the phrase 'it is right' in many of his addresses. His opinion is unquestionable.

Not a fan, obviously.

ShaunG

Oh, and I see now that No.10 did press release it. I'll meet you half way.

sotwell

I agree tosscat...Woolies was no Harrods or F&M. What was he thinking?

Ali

If you google "it is right" and Gordon Brown you get 12,600,000 hits. Seems like there are variations like “Doing the right thing” I do wonder what his PR team are doing as it just seems impossible to get much positive press for him everything is his “Fault” but I guess papers like the Standard around it must be quite difficult. Bet you Murdoch and the Sun will be with Dave. Probably because Dave has said he will dismember OfCom. That will let Sky of the hook on around dominance in pay TV content and the likely ruling that they will have to wholesale TV and Films etc.

poxy

<i>Can you just imagine Prime Minister Dave Cameron ?</i>

<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/6157955/How-cool-are-David-Camerons-Conservatives.html" target="moon-faced">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/6157955/How-cool-are-David-Camerons-Conservatives.html</a>;

I fucking hate weaselly moon-faced David Cameron and everything he stands for.

sotwell

...yet you read the Torygraph? hmmmm....

poxy

I don't buy it.

Ali

Strange really a lot of my friends who were Comies at University now seem to read the Torygraph ! Awful article

andy

I'm not sure of the point of this, but it looks like the threshold for a Prime Ministerial apology has been lowered from global, systemic big things that we Should Think Hard About (war crimes, holocaust, slavery) to pretty much anything. If we're making a list of things we should be feeling communal guilt about, being mean to Alan Turing isn't going to make my top 1000. Have we ever apologised for the hamfisted way we divvied up colonial borders in Africa? The Opium War? Trench warfare? The Palestinian mandate? Have the Spanish ever apologised to South America for introducing Smallpox? And if we're apologising like this, then I want props from the Indian government for building a railway (or at least drawing it on paper and making them build it themselves). I would also like an apology from the Scandinavian nations for our payment of Danegeld. We deserved so much better.

graeme

Yeah but none of them can vote for Labour, unlike the LGBTs twice specifcally cited in the apology...

David

Gordon sometimes misjudges which things need a Prime Ministerial statement/apology/denial but at least he found time to praise the determination of Jade Goody. I'm sure he'll do the same for the 2nd person to ever die from cancer too. It is right, afterall.

Pete

TRUFAX: Gordon Brown's real name is James

Get on up.

sotwell

Yet he chose to be called Gordon...that explains a lot.

David

Jimmy G in da (parliament) house.

markpack

What struck me most about Gordon Brown's apology was just how clunky the wording was.

I hesitated before signing the petition because of similar doubts about the principle of apology similar to those mentioned above. I signed it in the end because, to me, there is something striking and moving about Alan Turing's case: the majesty of his intellectual achievements, the scale of the horror against which he was working and the awful hatred towards him from people who did far with their lives than he did.

But pretty much none of that sense of scale, drama, emotion and history is there in Brown's apology. Given this overall style, I guess that means the apology is likely to have been actually written by him! But I'd have rather read something that rose to the occasion and moved the emotions.

Haroose

I suspect the same people would have complained if he hadn't made the apology on the basis that he'd 'refused' to honour one of our country's heroes/leading thinkers who had been unfairly victimised and driven to suicide.

graeme

[edit: self-removed, dragging topic into political nonsense]