Does "I'm Sorry" matter?

So Alan Turing finally received an apology...

... but does it matter? For those who don't care to read the article, Turing was a mathematician and one of, if not THE, first computer scientists. He developed the concept of the Turing Machine, an abstract machine that could perform computations. Modern computers are, in their most basic form, Turing Machines. He helped develop our understanding of what computation means and what we can compute. This man, along with a handful of others, started my field of work.

But his work goes beyond that, even. You see, in World War II, Alan Turing worked at Bletchley Park, where he and a number of other cryptanalysts worked to break German ciphers. Their most famous success was the cryptanalysis of the Enigma Machine, which allowed Allied forces to read German communications. For all the bravery and sacrifice that the Allied troops displayed, without Alan Turing and his team at Bletchley Park, it's possible (maybe even likely) the war would have gone very differently.

So why does the UK government need to apologize? Well, you see, Alan had TEH GAY! And since faggots are subhuman pedophiles, they must be contained from infecting the rest of us. And so he was convicted of homosexuality and subsequently chemically castrated. Long story short, he committed suicide some time after this (or, if you're of the conspiratorial mindset, was murdered by MI5).

Do I sound a bit bitter over this?

So Gordon Brown came out and apologized. That's nice. I appreciate the sentiment. And really, there's not a whole lot more they could do... he's long dead, after all, and it's certainly not the current government's fault (that I know of).

It just feels... empty.

So... does "I'm sorry" matter?