What will politicians in 2113 be apologising for?

I don't think Alan Turing needs our compassion.

Perhaps the forgiveness should be doled out to those who made the laws at that time.

What is compassionate about wiping out the 'flaws' of someone who has been dead for over 50 years? It will not affect him one little jot, and why is being a homosexual a 'flaw'. Why only him? why not all the other 'flawed' individuals who were convicted by that law.

Like it or not 'the past is another country, they do things differently there.'

In 2113 politicians, if such a breed still exists, will still be apologising for their total failure to represent the wishes of those who elected them. Successive generations of politicians have continued to look after their own interests while standing by on the sidelines of life, wringing their hands in helplessness, while the super-poweful mega-multinational corporations who rule the world tighten their grip on us all even further. A hopeless situation which will only get worse. In the meantime have a nice day!

And Alan Turing - the genius who saved so many lives in WW2 - is fully entitled to be pardoned for his misdemeanours, even though his conviction was valid at the time. We can at least show some compassion and recognise his greatness by wiping out the memory of his flaws.

Lets try

I suppose what I had in mind was to make us think the unthinkable about things we now think are admirable but in 100 years might be seen differently. Most of the ideas posted so far are subjects that are already contentious and have many critics.

That is why I suggested apologies for the Welfare State and Child centred teaching methods, linking the first with economic decline and the second with educational decline (I am not aware of any connection). These are both topics (welfare state and teaching methods) that command wide support, even though some might argue about the details. But will they in 2114?

100 years from now will it be a crime to upload extreme pornography or violence onto the internet and will the then PM be offering retrospective pardons to all those who in the late 20th and 21st century were convicted of crimes, no matter how horrendous, where an addiction to online extreme porn/violence led them to commit the crime and this would not have been possible had we not put freedom of speech and opinion ahead of protection of those vulnerable to the negative effect of accessing such sites. [hmmm]

Maybe we should ask them to apologise to our children for force feeding them tests and OfSteds and not allowing them to give free rein to their childhood gifts of imagination and curiosity. And also for using education as a political football, and bringing in changes for changes sake without due thought.

Maybe when we look back we will realise that the idea of education like this was a big mistake, even though most people accept that children should be learning to read before they have learned to get on with each other and just pack them off to the nearest school.

We should be asking what it is all for.

Flickety I think the reason I find your question hard is because I find it difficult to imagine how society will move in the next hundred years - will it become more rightwing/authoritarian or more leftwing/libertarian? I guess that what politicians will apologise for will depend on which way society goes.
I'm not a historian and only an amateur observer of politics and economics, but would love to hear from those more knowledgeable than me.
I think and hope it will be many more than a hundred years before we apologise to Germany for defeating them in the World Wars. Yes of course we regret the loss of life on both sides, but to me the defeat of Fascism was a just war and an apology seems to imply that the sacrifice of lives was a waste.

*FlicketyB" Quote Tony Blair during his speech in Cork re the Irish Potato Famine. "…those who governed in London who failed their people." He was not apologising for potato blight but for the way the people of Ireland (then a province of the UK) were mistreated, causing 1 million deaths, 1 million to emigrate, countless evictions and who knows how much other hardship.

It's hard to predict what apologies will come our way in a hundred years but perhaps ..........
pushing 50% of 18yr olds into Universities
Joining the EU
allowing Scotland to leave the Union[if it does]
giving children rubbish to eat in schools
allowing schools to sell off land needed for activities for children
promotion of gaming
mass immigration
total relaxation of pub opening times the [open all hours policy]
that will do for now I think, but sure there are loads more things overdue for an apology!

How about apologising for always saying that 'lessons have been learnt' but never are.

No, the stupidity of these apologies is being discussed in the thread about Alan Turing. I decided the best way to point out the stupidity was to get people thinking about what we may be doing now with the best of good attention and the approval of, all that politicians 100 years hence may be apologising for. So far I have not been very successful as I am the only one making suggestions, six so far and they have elicited no response.

Can you really apologise for something that was done by somebody else before you were born? And if you get into an apologise for everything bad or wrong that ever happened frenzy, where do you stop?

jingl I think that has always been true. My mother was a teacher and she used to recount giving her 10 year olds some homework once that needed them to find out something for themselves - and had a parent storm in the next day to saying it was not her son's responsibility to find things out for himself, it was her job as teacher to tell him everything he needed to know. This was late 1950s/early 60s.

Quite liked the new version of my name, perhaps I should change it.

Sorry for the kindle fire version of name!

Flickering - yes! I totally agree with you about present day education. And so would my teacher daughter. Parents today seem to want information practically drip fed into their children. No thinking for themselves is acceptable. God help the kids if and when they get to uni.

Some more suggestions

Apologising for the Welfare State and the way it undermined personal responsibility and marked the start of the decline of the British economy.

Apologising for energy supply problems that continue to dog the British economy even in 2114 that arise from the obsession in the early 21st century with renewable forms of energy like wind and photovoltaics that are unreliable and uncontrollable rather than water based and nuclear power sources that generate 24/7.

Apologising to the Germans for defeating them in two World Wars.

I am not espousing any of these causes, just suggesting ideas of things we hold dear that may be looked at differently in 100 years time.

grummpa It is not possible to ever have a issue on which 100% of the population agree, but the mass of the population at the time Turing was convicted would have accepted the law then current on homosexual practices as reasonable and appropriate. It is suggestions about what issues that we regard as acceptable now that will be apologised for in 100 years time that I am interested in getting suggestions for - and people are very unwilling to suggest any.
jinglbellrocks I put this in because the things that politicians apologise for in 2114 will be things which we think are absolutely the right thing now and we now place enormous importance on child centred education as the best way to educate children - while we slide down all the education league tables - so it made an obvious example of something we support and believe strongly in now that could possibly be considered disastrous and need apologising for 100 years hence, by which time all those affected will have died and it will make a future politician feel good to no purpose.
Absent I understood Tony Blair had apologised for the Famine, not the government response to it. and the Famine was caused by Blight. It illustrates the way politicians apologise for all sorts of things imprecisely and vaguely without fully understanding what they are talking about.

Not a hope jingle. They all like a "good" war and no-one has apologised for any of the ones that have happened in hundreds of years preceding 2013.

FlicketyB The awful disaster of the Irish Potato Famine may have been caused directly by a disease, but politics and greedy and uncaring absentee landlords played a huge part in the devastation. The human – or should that be inhuman – input was immense.

Flickety, I am interested in your point re child centred education. Explain a bit more?

I think they will be apologising for fighting the wrong wars.

I don't think Turing's conviction would have seemed entirely right and appropriate to everyone at the time it happened, even though it was lawful. By the same token, something some of us regard as acceptable now is probably regarded by others as deserving an apology in 2014, not in 100 years' time.

Ah! I have misread your post, FlicketyB2113 not 2014! I shall have to read more carefully in future.
Hmmmn, a tricky question..

Flickety.

That told us then.

Will think on.

Mishap that is cheating. The whole point of the thread is things that we think are entirely right and proper now but someone will be apologising for in 2113. Ditto Pogs. Gransnet is full of threads on political and other items we disapprove of and all your selection can be, and probably have been discussed elsewhere.

We currently have David Cameron apologising and giving pardons for Alan Turing for something that was acceptable when he was convicted. In the case of the potato famine the problem was a disease that could not have been foreseen or prevented. I am sure this fashion will run and run, lets try and think what David Cameron's successors will be apologising for.

Labour and Lib Dems for not allowing the reduction in the number of M.P's.

Conservatives for not reducing the number in the House of Lords.

Any M.P who has shouted and behaved like a child at P.M.Q's or any other debate. There are plenty of them.

Speaker Bercow for behaving so partisan. Unless he has a condition that causes his head to turn to the right when he is b--l--k--g M.P's on his left.

Exactly Mishap it's easy to apologise for some other person's past mistake isn't it? And entirely stupid in my opinion.Perhaps Cameron will apologise for bear baiting in 2014?