Bletchley again! Damn sick of this.
Damn sick of hearing about this, and have commented muchly about it already. Everything from the mercury delay line fiasco to the recent access problems and now this just screams out that "we've incompetent loonies in charge".
Unfortunately, there's something odd about many of those who work in museums--specifically those who run them (the techies are generally OK). As I've mentioned previously, these possessive bureaucratic gnomes of little brain seem to think they've a god-given right to hold the country's cultural heritage to ransom.
Bletchley might be the current eipcentre of museum disruption, but it's far from being alone. Recently, I had a similar rant about the Imperial War Museum (and its cousin the AWM) 're-copyrighting' its 'products' by scanning out-of-copyright photos and then charging citizens the earth for access to their own cultural heritage. The IWM problem is essentially the same as Bletchley's just disguised; the museum world is infested with this nasty disease.
We're now at the point where governments need to act. Legislation mandating citizens' rights of access to cultural heritage would be a good start.
With Bletchley, reckon we could do with the SS in for a day or so to restore order. Perhaps they could cart their enigmas etc. back to Berlin and show them there for a while. I'm damn sure if the Germans were to run Bletchley, it'd run like clockwork.