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Bletchley Park Faces Financial Rescue
biscuitfever11 writes "Just two months ago it seemed that Bletchley Park, the home of Station X, Britain's secret code-breaking base during the War, was doomed as the codebreakers' huts rotted and the site fell into disrepair. But today Britain's Lottery Fund is set to step in with a grant to rescue the ailing heritage site. (There was an earlier story on ZDNet.)"
I wish I has to face getting a lot of money from the lottery...
Donate free food here
Britains voluntary tax on the mathematically challenged and the poor
run for profit by a US Company naturally
You have a point. Have a lookie-see at the Google Earth or Microsloth Bird's Eye, most of the buildings around the original Stately Home are dull government boxes. Save the main building, yes. The crap-shacks can go. Google Map
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
This won't solve the one big issue facing Bletchley, that of the site having very low appeal to visitors.
As much as they might wish it to be otherwise, a collection of huts (one of which is now a tea room, ah yes, nice treatment of history there guys...), a house, some vintage cars and a few cluttered rooms of junk that pass for 'exhibits' just doesn't appeal to people these days.
And yes, they really do look like rooms full of junk for the most part, sad to say, the presentation of their exhibits is not good at all.
Oh, and the reconstructed Collossus? It's just there, in the middle of a room, with barely any information top help kids or the otherwise uninformed relate to it.
Not that the site isn't ok to visit. If you're into WW2 stuff then its probably worth a look, but if you've got kids they will be bored out of their tiny minds all day.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
It ain't a free market out there.
I am glad these historic buildings have been saved - the disrespect they had been shown drew uncomfortable parallels with what happened to Alan Turing after the war (a war which almost certainly wouldn't have been won without him)
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Most Slashdotters probably don't need to be told this, but anyone interested in historical fiction about Bletchley Park shouldn't miss Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It's entertaining and rich in technical detail.
I took a class of learning disabled children to Bletchley Park a few years back - we had a great time trying on gas masks and stuff. Not a lot of money in that though, and it's not something they could easily let millions of people do. Having said that we also went to the Imperial War Museum in London - and it wasn't a patch on the Bletchley experience, and they seem to make it work.
The wooden huts surrounding a stately home are very much part of the deal - you can't really get rid of them : They really are historic. As for why it was left to rack and ruin - well that's because they just looked like old huts - no one realised they were historic. Also the work was so secret that hardly anyone had a clue what went on there until relatively recently.
Much as I'm glad it's survived though, I have to say my own kids prefer the indoor ski slope with real snow at the Sno Dome about 2 miles away. Which gives you some idea of what they're up against
I'm sorry, but if the nest we can do is Rockstar (not knocking them, just being realistic) then will the last systems designer in the UK please turn off the server before emigrating? Fortunately, I expect to retire in a couple of years. Hopefully to somewhere where Government and other systems work.
Slightly off topic, today we discovered that the UK Government new release of the on-line tax system shows the accountant name, not the actual person for whom the form is being filled in. The guy on the help desk, when asked when it would be fixed, replied "I am not at liberty to disclose that". Not only is UK Government IT incompetent, it is secretive about it. (The Editor of Computer Weekly said that on the box last week.) So
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
It's too bad something like this has to be paid for with a regressive tax like the lottery. There's no reason why the poor should pay a disproportionate amount of the upkeep of this place.
There's certainly an irony in using lottery income to fund culture.
But there's a bigger issue here: whether culture has intrinsic value, and whether it is worth raising people up. If we fund education for its effect in raising the consciousness of the population, we should also fund culture out of general taxation. All the same, given that the lottery fund is used for cultural promotion, Bletchley Park has a pretty good claim on a slice of that funding.
One almost wonders whether lottery funding is part of a deliberate attempt to degrade ("democratise") culture.
Raising the consciousness of the population cannot easily be argued either from a democratic position, nor a capitalist one, and justifications for it in terms of appreciation after the fact are too easily misused in other contexts, except for one thing: culture has a long track record. Additionally, culture works by extending people, unlike more political 'fixes' of limiting people in a manner that politicians deem to be good.
The antigony of culture with political ideas, together with the degrading effects of democratic "philsophical" relativism is hostile not only to the recognition of culture, but also to its very existence.
Without such things as culture and the abstract search for truth, our purpose on this earth is no more than the propagation of our genes (for an atheist), or else is a waste of the talents that have been entrusted to us (for a theist).
Wikileaks, no DNS
I guess the statement "We haven't put in an application yet" was missed by the OP. Bletchley isn't being rescued yet. They are in discussions preceding an application for the grant.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
Most Slashdotters probably don't need to be told this, but anyone interested in historical fact about Bletchley Park shouldn't miss Alan Turing: The Enigma by Andrew Hodges. It's entertaining, rich in technical detail and, wait for it, true.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
I read the comments to this article just to get a joke along the lines of:
Oh the irony! A tax on those who are bad at math funding the history of the greatest mathematicians of WWII.
I am sorely disappointed, slashdotters. Was it too easy? Surely I'm not the only one that laughed at the though?
Well there must be some interest about Bletchley in the UK; BBC Radio 4 has run two seasons of "Hut 33" a comedy about Bletchley. It's a typical WWII BBC comedy; Polish jokes, German spies, class warfare, and smutty jokes.
I visited Bletchley Park a couple of years ago while on a trip to England. it was an easy day trip from London. The site is a very short walk from the train station, so no driving or bus is necessary to get there. It was a beautiful spring day when we were there and the grounds are quite lovely. They had the Colossus replica running which was very cool. The museum is quite nice as well. Later that night I met up for beers with some guys from my company's London office. They were shocked that we had made a day trip to Milton Keynes until we told them why we went. Apparently Londoners think of the area as a bit of a suburban wasteland.
I also got some cool semi-psychedelic pictures caused by a malfunctioning sensor in my digital camera.
I definitely recommend it as a place to visit if you have an afternoon in the greater London area.
There's no money from the government (aka taxpayers) to pay to keep this historic place open, but somehow there is £18,000,000,000 of taxpayer cash for an Olympic games nobody wanted (except freeloaders, crooked politicians and builders).
Take Nobody's Word For It.
http://tinyurl.com/5lsa2x
I took these in March of 2007.
The "Crap-shacks" are where the Historic and important stuff happened.
The main House is very nice (I used it for a seminar a few years back - I'd recommend it as a location for anyone doing something similar) but we are not particularly short of nice old house. Its the complex which is significant and thehastily thrown up wartime buildings are worth preserving, even if they don't look pretty
The summary is way off-beam. The Heritage Lottery Fund is nowhere near stepping in.
I quote: '"We are in serious discussions with the Heritage Lottery Fund. This is prime Lottery territory," said Greenish. "We haven't put in an application yet, but the rules have changed a bit which is helpful."'
Here's how HLF works. You put the application in. This is serious, serious hard work. It's not just "fill in a form and post it to PO Box Lottery". Expect to have a full-time team working on it for three months at least: and even then, really deserving projects have done exactly that and found themselves rejected.
Ok, so your application is good (and, just as important, there aren't any better ones at the time - HLF only has a finite pot of money, and in fact it's getting smaller, as the UK Government takes from it to fund the Olympics). You then get a "Stage One Pass".
This doesn't mean you have the money. This means they'll give you a small grant to help you with the cost of preparing the real application. At this point, they want to know everything: your projected finances, how it's going to benefit public access to an important bit of heritage, how you'll make it sustainable to avoid coming back for another hand-out in three years' time, the works. Remember that the Lottery funds were seriously burned in their early days by the fiasco of the Millennium Dome. They don't give it out lightly.
If you're really good, you might get through this and get the Stage Two Pass. This means you've got the money. (Where, incidentally, "the money" is probably much less than you wanted in the first place, because there's so much competition that the HLF advisors have warned you your only chance is if you lodge a lower bid.)
Oh... one more thing. HLF doesn't generally fund the entirety of a project. They give "match funding". In other words, "we'll pay 50% of the costs if you can find 50% from someone else".
So, with that in mind, allow me to rephrase the summary. "Britain's Lottery Fund has changed some rules to potentially allow these guys to apply for a grant which entitles them to prepare a proper application for a grant which might, if they're very lucky, pay for half the cost of a reduced-cost version of your total project." Sorry, not quite as catchy.
As another Slashdotter pointed out, the main problem with the site, which one grant won't permanently fix, is that its inherent appeal is not as great as a big modern attraction such as a theme park or similar. Yet the site has great historical and emotional, and even personal value to anyone whose parents or grandparents fought in the war. It is a really crucial site, and as such many people would be interested in keeping it running.
So is it possible to keep the site running on a more long-term basis by volunteer efforts and donations? I realise this grant is something like a donation, but a grant is not really a donation. The site means a lot to many people in the UK (and other places as well); there should be a simple system to donate, or if you live nearby or have a spare weekend, a way of donating your time or even services to keeping the site running and in repair.
Most Slashdotters probably don't need to be told this, but anyone interested in historical fiction about Bletchley Park shouldn't miss Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It's entertaining and rich in technical detail.
I also recently (re)read "Station X" by Michael Smith, which gives first hand accounts of some of the many thousands of people who worked there. There's not a lot on the actual code breaking techniques, but it is, none the less, an interesting read (IMHO).
BTW: I visited Bletchley Park some years ago and found it quite interesting and this was before they had finished building a Bombe and Collosus.
BTW2: After the Station X TV series aired, I was amazed to find out that neighbour had actually worked there as a WREN.
The main house is not very nice. It's an architectural mish mash and is about as ugly as a stately home could be. Were it not for its historical significance, it would have been levelled years ago and nobody would miss it.
All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe