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11th September 2013: The world's gone mad and I'm the only one who knows
13th August 2013: Black is white. Fact. End of.
11th August 2013: Electric cars, not as green as they're painted?
18th June 2013: Wrinklies unite, you have nothing to lose but your walking frames!
17th May 2013: Some actual FACTS about climate change (for a change) from actual scientists ...
10th May 2013: An article about that poison gas, carbon dioxide, and other scientific facts (not) ...
10th May 2013: We need to see past the sex and look at the crimes: is justice being served?
8th May 2013: So, who would you trust to treat your haemorrhoids, Theresa May?
8th May 2013: Why should citizens in the 21st Century fear the law so much?
30th April 2013: What the GOS says today, the rest of the world realises tomorrow ...
30th April 2013: You couldn't make it up, could you? Luckily you don't need to ...
29th April 2013: a vote for NONE OF THE ABOVE, because THE ABOVE are crap ...
28th April 2013: what goes around, comes around?
19th April 2013: everyone's a victim these days ...
10th April 2013: Thatcher is dead; long live Thatcher!
8th April 2013: Poor people are such a nuisance. Just give them loads of money and they'll go away ...
26th March 2013: Censorship is alive and well and coming for you ...
25th March 2013: Just do your job properly, is that too much to ask?
25th March 2013: So, what do you think caused your heterosexuality?
20th March 2013: Feminists - puritans, hypocrites or just plain stupid?
18th March 2013: How Nazi Germany paved the way for modern governance?
13th March 2013: Time we all grew up and lived in the real world ...
12th March 2013: Hindenburg crash mystery solved? - don't you believe it!
6th March 2013: Is this the real GOS?
5th March 2013: All that's wrong with taxes
25th February 2013: The self-seeking MP who is trying to bring Britain down ...
24th February 2013: Why can't newspapers just tell the truth?
22nd February 2013: Trial by jury - a radical proposal
13th February 2013: A little verse for two very old people ...
6th February 2013: It's not us after all, it's worms
6th February 2013: Now here's a powerful argument FOR gay marriage ...
4th February 2013: There's no such thing as equality because we're not all the same ...
28th January 2013: Global Warming isn't over - IT'S HIDING!
25th January 2013: Global Warmers: mad, bad and dangerous to know ...
25th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
19th January 2013: We STILL haven't got our heads straight about gays ...
16th January 2013: Bullying ego-trippers, not animal lovers ...
11th January 2013: What it's like being English ...
7th January 2013: Bleat, bleat, if it saves the life of just one child ...
7th January 2013: How best to put it? 'Up yours, Argentina'?
7th January 2013: Chucking even more of other people's money around ...
6th January 2013: Chucking other people's money around ...
30th December 2012: The BBC is just crap, basically ...
30th December 2012: We mourn the passing of a genuine Grumpy Old Sod ...
30th December 2012: How an official body sets out to ruin Christmas ...
16th December 2012: Why should we pardon Alan Turing when he did nothing wrong?
15th December 2012: When will social workers face up to their REAL responsibility?
15th December 2012: Unfair trading by a firm in Bognor Regis ...
14th December 2012: Now the company that sells your data is pretending to act as watchdog ...
7th December 2012: There's a war between cars and bikes, apparently, and  most of us never noticed!
26th November 2012: The bottom line - social workers are just plain stupid ...
20th November 2012: So, David Eyke was right all along, then?
15th November 2012: MPs don't mind dishing it out, but when it's them in the firing line ...
14th November 2012: The BBC has a policy, it seems, about which truths it wants to tell ...
12th November 2012: Big Brother, coming to a school near you ...
9th November 2012: Yet another celebrity who thinks, like Jimmy Saville, that he can behave just as he likes because he's famous ...
5th November 2012: Whose roads are they, anyway? After all, we paid for them ...
7th May 2012: How politicians could end droughts at a stroke if they chose ...
6th May 2012: The BBC, still determined to keep us in a fog of ignorance ...
2nd May 2012: A sense of proportion lacking?
24th April 2012: Told you so, told you so, told you so ...
15th April 2012: Aah, sweet ickle polar bears in danger, aah ...
15th April 2012: An open letter to Anglian Water ...
30th March 2012: Now they want to cure us if we don't believe their lies ...
28th February 2012: Just how useful is a degree? Not very.
27th February 2012: ... so many ways to die ...
15th February 2012: DO go to Jamaica because you definitely WON'T get murdered with a machete. Ms Fox says so ...
31st January 2012: We don't make anything any more
27th January 2012: There's always a word for it, they say, and if there isn't we'll invent one
26th January 2012: Literary criticism on GOS? How posh!
12th December 2011: Plain speaking by a scientist about the global warming fraud
9th December 2011: Who trusts scientists? Apart from the BBC, of course?
7th December 2011: All in all, not a good week for British justice ...
9th November 2011: Well what d'you know, the law really IS a bit of an ass ...

 

 
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Some of Britain's leading scientists have called on the government to grant a posthumous pardon to Bletchley Park codebreaker Alan Turing. He was convicted of gross indecency in 1952 after acknowledging a sexual relationship with a man.
 
Professor Stephen Hawking, Astronomer Royal Lord Rees and the Royal Society's Sir Paul Nurse are among 11 signatories to a letter in the Daily Telegraph. They urge David Cameron to "formally forgive this British hero".
 
Turing was one of the most brilliant mathematicians of the modern era. He led the team of Enigma codebreakers at Bletchley Park, which most historians agree shortened the Second World War. However, at the time of his death - which an inquest recorded as suicide - he was virtually unknown to the public. His work at Bletchley Park was kept secret until 1974.
 
Back in February the government rejected a call to pardon Turing, when it was presented with an online petition with more than 23,000 signatures. We have to say that the government was absolutely right then, and we hope that they'll stick to their guns now. The proposal is ridiculous, and insults the memory and reputation of an important scientist.
 
Turing was cruelly and unjustly treated, there is no doubt. But to pardon him would be to say “You did wrong, but we forgive you.” Our point is that he did nothing wrong, and that to forgive him is therefore inappropriate. What was wrong was not Turing but the law of the day. Rather than pardoning someone who suffered under that law, perhaps we should be condemning those who made it?
 
We have a distressing habit these days of believing that we are both responsible for history, and capable of changing it. It's probably a construct of the media, born of their search for people on whose behalf to take offence. That some 21st Century politician should “apologise” for the slave trade, for instance, is as useless as it is absurd. The politician wasn't responsible for slavery – none of us were. And who benefits or takes comfort from the apology? No one. The only people who give a toss are do-gooders and campaigners who depend on such nonsense to give meaning to their sad, tawdry lives. No doubt those same do-gooders and campaigners will now write in accusing us of being in favour of slavery, logic and intelligence not being among their strong points!
 
It is fruitless and silly to think that we can change history. OK, the law against being a homosexual is seen today as wrong and cruel. But we can't retrospectively alter its affects or wipe out the injustices it caused.
 
What will it be next? What other historical figures can we exonerate in the light of our superior attitudes? How about Jesus? - he was unfairly treated, wasn't he? Perhaps we should call for the Bible to be re-written, with Jesus getting 25 hours of community service instead of crucifixion. And banishing Napoleon to exile on Elba – surely that was against his 'uman rights? A nice little ASBO would have done just as well. Should we apologise to him? And what about the very first sinner of all? When Eve took the apple, surely she was doing something we'd all approve of today. After all, an apple was one of her five a day.
 
And if we can forgive people who are long dead, why not condemn as well? Why aren't we digging up Genghis Khan and putting him on posthumous trial at The Hague?
 
And to return to Alan Turing, how come we're only calling for him to be pardoned, and not all the other homosexuals who were caught by the same law? Did it not matter about them because they weren't famous scientists? Is that what Stephen Hawking and all those other scientific bigwigs are saying, that scientists are so important and so special that they should be above the law – but sod the bloody hoi poloi?
 
Arrogant bastards.
 

 
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