Apparently internet petitions can do some good after all:
The full text is online as well.
He’s… pleased? That just doesn’t scan for me. I understand what he’s probably trying to say (he’s pleased the state of morality has advanced to a point where this apology is politically possible) but it just doesn’t seem entirely like something a live human would say.
In short, he just failed the Turing Test.
I always suspected Brown was not human. Glad to see it confirmed. 
Poor Mr. Turing. They didn’t deserve him.
While I’m happy (proud?) that this has happened, I’ve got to ask – did the online petitions lead to this, or could Dawkins have done without them? Not to hijacks, but I’d honestly like to know if online petitions have forced anyone to cave. They just seem so easy to fudge. (As do print ones, I suppose, if you don’t leave contact info.)
I have to admit, I don’t really see the point of the apology. Although Turing was obviously treated badly, he’s been dead for 50 years, and so I doubt he’s getting any satisfaction out of it.
Gordon Brown’s very good at apologising for stuff other people did decades ago.
When people start questioning stuff he’s done, then “McCavity’s not there”
You don’t see any benefit in a government or institution opening acknowledging times when they were wrong?
Not when the people concerned are long since dust.
So you think that governments should always maintain that their past actions were correct?
I’m against governments retroactively altering the historical verdict in accordance with our current prejudices, especially where no one can be practically compensated thereby. At the time the verdict in Turing’s case would have met with general approval. Should we pardon the men Wellington hanged and flogged in his Peninsula campaigns? No, because their bones are long since dust, even if their offences would not merit the same sanctions today.
What a lot of soppy old populist bollocks.
He’s too late anyway, I apologised two weeks ago.
So you think that his living family doesn’t get any vindication out of this? And that there aren’t many LGBTetc. people living in the U.K. who don’t appreciate the government acknowledging that its harassment and mutilation of a brilliant man for his sexual orientation was wrong? I’m fairly sure there’s a petition somewhere out there that shows that thousands of people disagree.
It’s an easy win for number 10 - I expect the petition catalysed it, but it’s more like the petition pointed out something that GB could do that would be easy and reasonably popular.
For the record, I signed the petition and was glad to see the response, but like Derleth, I found the ‘pleased’ thing a bit jarringly-worded.
Exactly. And the fact that the man was a war hero who was treated hideously by the country he had just helped save makes it all the more poignant. It’s a clear statement that this was wrong and shouldn’t have happened, which is very relevant to the way queer people are treated and the ‘debate’ on our lives is framed today.