Over the past few days we have been regaled with a mass of 'pardons' doled out by Vladimir Putin. Today Queen Elizabeth II issued a Royal Pardon, just one, but one that has been long overdue. The recipient's name was Alan Turing, and his claim to fame was that he was the scientist who cracked Germany’s Enigma code and is considered 'the father of modern computing', His success was immense as it probably shortened the war by 2 years. Working at the top-secret Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, in Buckinghamshire - the forerunner of Britain’s spy centre GCHQ - Turing devised groundbreaking techniques to crack the wartime communications codes used by German military chiefs. Ten years or so later, he stood in the dock accused of 'gross indecency with another male' and forced to accept chemical castration. He died in 1954, aged 41 of either accidental poisoning or suicide. It is obvious that Putin's 'pardons' are a publicity stunt over the Sochi Winter Games. Quite a few world-class athletes have been threatening to boycott the Games because of the Russian attitude to gays, and their harsh new laws. I see in Uganda a gay person can be imprisoned for life for just talking about it and even executed. What will the prejudiced part of the human race decide next is deviant behavior? Even as I write, there are some very nasty types on Google trying to find out details of someone they have decided is a deviant from the norm so they can harass them and their family and friends? And who is competent to decide who is 'different'? Ah, yes, the ones who call themselves the Voice of God or claim to speak for a missing child. We are all made the same way and we all die in various ways. We are not a god, or whatever abstract diety we worship and it is presumptious to try and usurp his powers. But there are those that try to do just that.
