Friday 11 September 2009

I'm Sorry

Dr. Alan Turing has long been a person I admired. Not surprising really given that he became an eminent person in the two disciplines I enjoy, namely mathematics and computing. I read Andrew Hodges biography many years ago, in fact my first cat was called Enigma after the title of that book, Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence*. I have visited Bletchley Park on numerous occasions. In short I am fairly familiar with Dr. Turing's life.
Today I wake up to hear that the Prime Minister has written an article for the Daily Telegraph in which he apologises for the way Dr. Turing was treated. What nonsense is this?
I fail to see how one can say sorry for something that one has not actually had any part in. In fact Mr. Brown makes it worse by saying "we're sorry" as if he is speaking for me. He is not. I might regret the way that this country treated Dr. Turing but how can I possibly apologise for it?
This politically correct diatribe includes the phrase "his treatment was of course utterly unfair". What definition of unfair is Mr. Brown using? Not one that I can make any sense of. He was tried and found guilty of a crime. The fact that we no longer consider his actions to be criminal doesn't mean that he was treated unfairly.
Mr. Brown's apology is misguided and pointless. It is a waste of time to apologise to a man that is dead, where there are no surviving members of the family and the speaker has had no involvement in the act being apologised for. The words that sum up this folly are vacuous, illogical, misguided and a complete and utter load of bollocks waste of time.


* The version available today appears to have a shorter title, Alan Turing: The Enigma.

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