Slashdot Mirror
Bletchley Park's Bitter Dispute Over Its Future
An anonymous reader writes "Tensions are high at Bletchley Park between the new management who want a 21st century installment and the volunteers who want to show the whole story (and get dismissed for doing so). This report [Note: video, with sound] is from the BBC: 'The groundbreaking intelligence work carried out at Bletchley Park during the second world war was credited with bringing forward the end of the conflict. In 2011 the site was awarded a £4.6m grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF). But Bletchley is currently in the throes of a bitter dispute, between owners who want to create a brand new visitors centre, and volunteers who have been working on the site for years.'"
Do not modernize it. What I hear is greed and desire for attention from the new owners. Nothing even remotely appropriate for the site.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Another example of the fucking suits disneyfying and monetizing a thing that is perfect as is.
fuck fuck fuck!
Oh that explains why all the memorabilia has gone since we visited 5 years ago and last year.
Very sad that this of the park has gone, it really helps the younger ones to see things in context with the work that went on there, seeing real life artifacts such as toys and the scenes from the time.
Also explains why we cant buy 1 ticket at the entrance for both the Park and the Computing museum with Colossus etc inside it.
Again all very sad that they cant get this joined up to work together, moss other places are putting on living history stuff and BP is pulling it all out.
I was there in summer 2010. What exactly have the bloody management idiots removed since then ?
the vultures come swooping in.
I had the chance to visit the park a while ago, along with the computer science museum right next to it and I have to say that I have fond memories of it. It's really interesting and tours are hosted by really passionate people. It's not hip and modern but it goes in depth with every aspect of the life there during the war. They should totally ask for fan support, we should do something to preserve it and help the volunteers make it better without taking it away from the people who always did their best to preserve it, even without any form of recognition.
One of my most favorite museums in the world used to be the Science Museum in London, then I visited it and discovered the steam engine in the entrance doesn't run, the ship model gallery has been sent to storage never to be seen again to be replaced with a gift shop, I couldn't find the working Babbage engine section, in fact basically every display I wanted to see was gone and replaced by junk.
These so called "modernized" displays are nothing better than what you could read online, I want to go to a museum to see *actual* history, not to see a cartoon representation of a simplified version of history that assumes I am a moron.
I think the curators of science/technology museums need to view themselves in the same way as curators of art museums do, their purpose is to display the "art" not to tell me about the art with pretty cartoons after they ship the art to the storage warehouse.
-jon
The original story was here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25886961 It has since been removed without any explanation given.
Knowing a lot of the story behind... I consider this an assault on free-speech.
Also, for those who are interested, might give an explanation on why the BBC chickened out: www.bletchleypark.org.uk/content/about/bptrust.rhtm
Before we emigrated, I gave a volunteer from Bletchley quite a large amount of older computers and software which were supposedly of interest. This included documentation for one of the world's first tablet computers and other prototype hardware and software. Sadly, I think it all vanished soon after I donated it. I should have kept all that stuff myself...
The historical site is owned by a charity, whose trustees are unpaid, and will be making nothing from the changes. The grant and associated fundraising were for a specific modernisation plan that's been available to interested parties for years: the trustees wouldn't be allowed to do anything substantially different with the money. The computer museum is run by a different charity, which rents space from the historical charity: lost donations have nothing to do with the Bletchley charity.
This being news for nerds is really far fetched, IMO.
I know they added "intelligence work" to make it about computers and such, but still.
This seems more like a story for a general news website to me.
That it seems to be the case. Those that want it to stay as authentic as possible, I am in that camp, as opposed to those who want to install things like the"U-Boat Water Ride". Yes it is a dump. It was a dump in WWII and so should stay that way.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Send it to Arizona, so it can be with the London Bridge.
Please don't make it like Stonehenge where you can't even get to it without going through the giftshop, and then you can't actually get anywhere near it.
I expect they'll Disney-fy it and rename it Bletchley Theme Park, jees do the Nation Trust just play Angry Birds all day?
#include <sig.h>
I smell a rat. The original BBC report is no longer on their website - it went out on Friday's 6pm news but they've pulled it from their website, so there is clearly something very wrong with it.
The linked report is to a youtube user who is impersonating the BBC, it's not a real BBC account.
Alarm bells are going off here.
Museums may have life cycles of their own, and this type of conflict may be part of it.
The Boston Computer Museum shipped off all it's cool historical artifacts to become a kids educational playhouse.
Then the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley updated its exhibits to make them more accessible and aesthetically pleasing to the general public, perhaps driving away several of its earliest volunteers in the process, especially the ones who loved the historical artifacts more than the vetted "show".
Hopefully Bletchley can stick to its roots, and keep the people who care more about its history than about running generic museums.
The Academy had to move into a new location, and took that opportunity to modernize their exhibits.
What was left was completely devoid of educational value and science. Everything is hip, tech-savvy snippets of information, quick bites of facts with nothing to really learn from. The entire thing is bent towards commercialism and sales in their gift shop. It was retooled to appeal to people with no attention span, who can't read more than a paragraph without losing interest. Also factor in that the new location is incredibly small compared to the old one, all the exhibits are smaller, and admission costs much more.
As somebody who visited the Academy regularly as a child well into adulthood, I had always looked forward to taking my kids there. Now there's no point. Sounds like the same kind of thinking is going into Bletchley Park.
sounds like a good community investment, smarten things up a bit, make somewhere for people to sit outside and take it in, drink a spot of tea, you know make a fucking day of it with the kids and a learn a bit of historical culture while iam there, maybe even EMPLOY people to show us round.
fuck
Am presently solely a U.S. national ( though that will change ) , so it's not my affair to mind what the Brits do with their Historical Landmarks. Still, as Democracy traveled from Greece to Rome to England before emigrating to the USA..,I've always been fascinated by English History. It's a shame, even deplorable, the Govt. of the U.K. is so diffident to it's own History they'd not protect such an important Historical landmark allowing it to instead fall into private ownership. Being a detective, the 1st impression I got was that this stinks of the same rigged game the Banksters plied on Greece.( Am not saying it actualy is; only an apparent parallel may exist.) [Wall St investment Banksters bribed Greek public officials to get them in their pocket, have them advocate unrepayable loans funded by worthless unbacked fiat script so the indebted would default. The Banksters didn't want their worthless Monopoly parlor game script back.. They wanted to deed private ownership of Greek public treasures like the Acropolis used as collateral for the intentionaly bad loans to Billionaire investors. We have the same problem here in the USA. A Colorado mining town so Historicly important it was used as a stage set for a John Wayne movie was sold to one of the Koch Bros, closing it off to the public. Am not casting aspersions on Mr.Koch, Brittish way of doing things, rather it's the system that stinks.] Did you know the code breakers at Bletchley park changed the entire course of World History ? The English are very bright people. (Takes one to know one.) They cracked the Japanese cypher, knew of the imminent attack on Pearl Harbor looong before the U.S.military did. U.K. was fighting the Germans, Italians, Japanese throughout their Empire years before the USA entered the war, was in dire straights. Food convoys were sunk so often the entire populace was in imminent danger of starving to death. Can you immage being regulated to take a bath in 4 rationed inches of water ??? Hitler's terror weapons. Stuka's, V1 buzz bomb mass murdered so many civilians, created such devastating Arson that firefighters worked in round the clock shifts after each concerted attack. Churchill was forced to allow a Brittish city to be annihilated to protect the secret that Bletchley Park had already cracked the German enigma code. That's how desperate they were to survive. We here in the USA have always been the conquerers. Like the Gary Cooper movie ending with the quote by William Penn, we've never known what it is to be defeated unlike Island nations that are always invaded. Until the USA entered the war, both Allies captured German enigma cypher machines, Navaho Wind talkers made unbreakable code, the tide was turning in favor of Fascism. At least 1 movie set was produced around Bletchley Park. Pity people don't understand the maxim that those who fail to learn the lessons of History will always be doomed to repeat it's mistakes. The Greeks do though. They have a legend as part of their lore that fits the human condition. Sysiphus offended the Gods, went to Tartarus, Hades cursed him to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity. The Gods calculated he'd have only enough energy to roll the boulder near the top, never up to and over to the other side., That he'd eventualy slip, and fall back to his starting point always wasting his time & energy. If you're sharp enough to read between the lines, there's an important lesson to be learned from that legend: History is the collective memory of humankind. Memory is mind. Without conscious, collective mind to avoid repeating past mistakes, human existence will never break the chains of the Slavery it's imposed upon itself. That's how I see it. As they say on the History channel. History..., we make it every day.
I love the way the beeb report (and so many of my esteemed fellow slashdotters) want to simplify the sitution down to idiot level, and draw highly emotional conclusions from it. Soundbite Society.
The situation at Bletchley is horrifically complex, as several other posters have alluded to. The site itself is owned by one party, operated by another, who sub-let part of it to another (the museum of computing). There are also contracts with companies Science and Innovation, who are responsible for letting unused areas to companies as office space or production rooms: this is an important source of revenue for the park itself, and requires some of the site to be modernised to allow better access, power supply, security etc etc. This has generally been done in a sensitive way, keeping a lot of the modernisation hidden from the general public.
Every decision at bletchley involves a number of differing or opposing parties with equal or close weighting. PositIve decision making is almost impossible, and getting stuff done has involved winning favours, political negotiation and luck. All the while the place falls down around everyones ears. The new management seem to be in a position to be a 'new broom' sweeping aside a lot of the nonsense: there are parties at BP that would watch it fall into ruin as they stubbornly insist on changing nothing. Equally the lottery plan is aggressive, and does indeed take away some of the fantastic bits of bletchley: the tour guides are an exceptional feature, and replacing them with the electronic tours is a real loss. However, the place needs money to stay open, to be self sustaining. The best way to achieve that is to become more 'family friendly'. It's a great experience for grown ups, but a horrific ordeal for anyone under the age of 16: some of it is just too stuffy. I wish they had been able to find some way of keeping the Model railway, and the Churchill Exhibit - I think they could both have been accomodated in outlying buildings. The Churchill Exhibit drew a surprising number of people (despite being a little dry) and really isn't so far removed from the core WWII message. Justifying the railway is somewhat harder. Creating more accessible exhibits is key to a younger audience, though, as is modernising some of the buildings. Generally the refurb seems inline with previous works, which were done intelligently and sensitively. The visitors centre is the 'all new store front' that the place deserately needs: having to be shown where the front door is by a man in a high vis is just ridiculous.
As always, it's a case of getting the balance right: the old-guard resist change and the new broom wants to change too much. Hopefully the result of the battle falls somewhere in the midground - I don't think too much needs to be trimmed away to bring things up to date. Let's hope the new vision/message isn't overly simplified.
I visited Bletchley Park in 2002, when it was an all-volunteer operation with limited funding. It was great seeing the bombe rebuild, the unfinished Colossus rebuild, a Lorenz crypto machine, and a working Enigma. But I knew about all those machines and what Bletchley Park had done. For people who hadn't done the reading, it wasn't much of an experience. The guide was more into the architecture of the manor house than the crypto anyway. There were maybe 20 visitors on the grounds when I was there.
The Science Museum in London has been dumbed down. I saw it in 1985 and 2002. The big thing in 2002 was the Aston-Martin from an early James Bond movie. Some of the railroad equipment had been moved out. But they still had Maudsley's lathe, which looks amazingly like a modern lathe, but complely different than any lathe before it.
They have a contact page available at http://www.bletchleypark.org.u... - tell them what you think yourself
The ABC have a contact page at http://www.abc.net.au/tv/abctv... where you can ask them why there is no mention of this story on their site - despite the BBC article being shown on national TV in Australia
I visited part of Bletchley Park in the late 2000s and it was a ruin. The guard at the gate house said they are very much in need of money. The buildings were falling down.
Sure, it is a site of historical importance, but even the Enigma-cracking computers like the esteemed Alan Turing's bombe were dismantled and scrapped decades ago, and the hundreds of subsequent generations which won the war of the Atlantic are all over the world in both their original form, as replicas, and as computer emulations.
Kriston
You have to have the place be self sustaining and provide something for everyone.
The very brief BBC broadcast on the 6 Oâ(TM)Clock News on the 24th January created an impression of disharmony within Bletchley Park.
The piece drew attention to three very different and separate issues;
The alleged treatment of volunteer guides
Private Collections being asked to leave the site
The access arrangements to The National Museum of Computing
In order to manage increasing numbers of visitors, and to make it more accessible and family friendly, the guided tour was reduced from 90 minutes plus to an hour. This revised tour was developed and implemented by a working group of staff and volunteers, and the great majority of our volunteers have embraced and supported the revised tours for nearly a year. Sadly, there was one exception where a tour guide who was unwilling to conduct tours in the agreed format has been asked to stand down from this role.
Some of the non-core private collections which have in recent years operated from the Bletchley Park site have been asked to relocate, as the parts of the site they occupy are to be restored to their wartime appearance and made available to help tell the remarkable story of WW2 Codebreaking. These buildings of high historic value, are artefacts in their own right and deserve to be interpreted accordingly, to reflect their importance and the profound impact of the work that took place inside them.
The National Museum of Computing was formed in 2006 and is run by a separate charitable trust. It willingly entered into a lease agreement with the Bletchley Park Trust to rent Block H on the Bletchley Park site to house its museum. This museum remains on-site and accessible, by way of a separate admission charge, to anyone visiting Bletchley Park. It is the Bletchley Park Trust's policy to have a solid working relationship with The National Museum of Computing and we intend that its exhibition should be enjoyed by visitors to Bletchley Park>p>Bletchley Park. The site is in the middle of a major, and much needed, £8 million Heritage Lottery Funded restoration project to bring the many historic buildings on the site back to a state of good repair and create an inspiring experience for its ever-increasing numbers of visitors. This will create a world class museum and heritage site which is a fitting memorial to the heroic codebreakers of Bletchley Park making the site much more sustainable and accessible to growing numbers of visitors.
Progress in Perspective
WHY did the BBC "pull" the news story immediately, could they have be "persuaded" to pull the story by MI5 ?
The twists in this story are like a Cold War thriller. Why was it taken down and why now reinstated?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-25916048
Proves it was a real story....the journalist just happened to be there same day a volunteer guide was summarily dismissed. Bletchley Park management have tried hard to contain this story but there are some really big issues at stake: why use getting National Heritage Lottery money and considerable private sector support to justify building gates between different and connected parts of this site's history? It is disingenuous to use terms of the grant to win a turf war...this situation calls for diplomacy and honesty.....