Turing's Law: Vote For Nothing

A posthumous pardon given to Enigma codebreaker Alan Turing will be extended to thousands of Britons if the Tories win office.

The national hero who helped Britain win the Second World Ward but committed suicide after being convicted of gross indecency had his sentence scrapped by Royal Pardon in 2013

The Conservatives have now pledged to introduce a new law helping to “lift the blight of outdated convictions” from other people found guilty of similar offences.

“Thousands of British men still suffer from similar historic charges, even though they would be completely innocent of any crime today,” the Tory manifesto read.

“Many others are dead and cannot correct this injustice themselves through the legal process we have introduced while in government. So we will introduce a new law that will pardon those people, and right these wrong.”

It comes a month after Labour announced it would introduce a ‘Turing’s Law’ to allow the family and friends of deceased men punished for consensual relationships to have the convictions disregarded...

Telegraph.

Oh whoopdefuckingdoo!

Thank you for this meaningless gesture, guv.

Labour's manifesto has some more of them.

The Tories have also promised to scrap the Human Rights Act.

PS Hats off to the Telegraph who manage to run this without using their dread word 'gay'.

PPS Alan Turing's notebook sold for £1m.

Turing's Law: Tokenism

Few reasons to vote Labour at this election could be more tokenistic than their new pledge to introduce "Turing’s Law". This legislation, named after Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing, would allow families to apply for the government to posthumously pardon gay ancestors convicted of “indecency.” It's a touching idea, and not a bad one. But you don’t have to be a genius codebreaker to see that, coming from Labour, this the worst sort of gimmickry, cynically designed to win votes on the cheap.

Elections should be about solid promises to change society today, not historical tinkering. If Labour wanted to offer current victims of injustice anything substantial, it could pledge to repeal this government's cuts to the legal aid budget. But Sadiq Khan ruled that out just this Monday. Unable to think of anything useful to promise to living members of the LBGT community, and beaten to the legalisation of gay marriage by the coalition government, Ed Miliband is – if anything – damaging an otherwise harmless idea, turning it into a precedent of which we ought to be suspicious...

Rupert Myers, Daily Telegraph.

A rare moment where Fagburn colludes with the Daily Telegraph (and someone called Rupert).*

Hurrah for pointless gestures!

* Apart from my near-namesake Rupert Smith, obvs.