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Good to hear!

I'd been following the story since I heard it on the BBC some weeks ago.



IMO, public apologies do make a difference. It's not that anyone thinks that the individuals presently in charge of the government (or corporation) had anything to do with past bad acts, but the entity lives on, and those who have inherited the mantle of leadership also inherit the glory and the shame of past acts, albeit symbolically. The apology is an acknowledgment the pain that the entity (gov't or org) has caused.
 
I've just received the following e-mail from Number 10

Thank you for signing this petition. The Prime Minister has written a
response. Please read below.

Prime Minister: 2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for
Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who
came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred
in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British
experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to
honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches
of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which
have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take
up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am
both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists,
historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and
celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of
dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on
breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that,
without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could
well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can
point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt
of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that
he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross
indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he
was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison - was chemical
castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own
life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing
and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt
with under the law of the time and we can't put the clock back, his
treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance
to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and
the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted
under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more
lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this
government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT
community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most
famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long
overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to
humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united,
democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once
the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in
living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by
anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices
– that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European
landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls
which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is
thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism,
people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war
are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely
thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved
so much better.

Gordon Brown
This is actually far more than I was hoping for. Although it is primarily apologising for the shameful treatment of Alan Turing, it is also apologising for similar past treatment and prejudice dished out to LGBT people.

Thank you Gordon Brown.
 
It's a shame that despite the eloquent apology from the Prime Minster's office, the government is doing nothing to contribute to the upkeep of Bletchley Park which is fast running into a state of disrepair from lack of funding.

What better memorial could there be of Turing's (and Tommy Flowers') achievements could there be than showcasing what they did to shorten the war and save countless lives (on both sides of the conflict)?
 
That's a wonderful statement.

I heard this Friday night on NPR driving to Chicago after work and I was really touched. I like too that it was directly the result of the petition and that Brown called The mathemetician who started the petition also to let him know it was coming directly. It was definitely a happy blip on the evening news.
 
It's a shame that despite the eloquent apology from the Prime Minster's office, the government is doing nothing to contribute to the upkeep of Bletchley Park which is fast running into a state of disrepair from lack of funding.

This is exactly why MY way of celebrating Turing was the other half an I visiting Bletchley on Sat. £23 including parking - and truthfully - there's two days+ of stuff to see. We'll be going back. Got to see Turing's old office and said my own little thankyou, watched a working Colossus (you think a Macbook chucks out some heat - oh BOY!), and some very cool 80's computing hardware.

Anyone within a couple of hours should get there PRONTO. It's amazing.
 
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