I think this is dreadful news. I work in software, I'm interested in cryptography and WW2, I have dozens of books on my shelves that make references to Turing and his work. He certainly was a pioneer and although his role in ww2 is I think inflated - he did not work alone - he made a massive contribution. BUT I also believe in truth, and the truth is that he did break the law of the land as it was in those days, a law that was legitimate - more so than most we have today as it actually came from our parliament and was backed with our votes. You can deplore the law, just as you might deplore slavery, but you can't go rewriting history, and nor should we impose our values, or rather the values of Islington and the BBC, on our forefathers. I find that profoundly insulting.
Maybe we should remember that the men who went off to war were, by today's standards, racist, homophobic, misogynists. Seems to me if we undo Turing's conviction, and condemn those who brought it about, we probably should condemn everyone of that time - and I'm certainly not prepared to do that. I think of my great uncle, a man who peppered every conversation with casual racist terms, who the 'right-on' brigade here would probably have despised, but who fought through North Africa up to Italy and saved this country - I can imagine his thoughts on Turing. Should we condemn men like him, men of his time? I will not.
The Turing pardon is plain wrong. It's just one more pitiful attempt by that pathetic sham of a 'conservative' in number ten to try to replace the millions of votes he's thrown away in the gay marriage disaster, and it'll win him nothing.
Turing was a great man - flawed by the standards of that day and I also think todays, but a great man nonetheless. The people puffing themselves up about his pardon today are posturing pygmies.
