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Brown's apology to Turing
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.
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.
Comments
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.
<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.
Get on up.
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.