New Year Dishonour

Each year in the UK the tedium of half empty newsrooms is relived by the tiresome ritual of the “New Year’s Honours List.” Heading it up are a list of celebs - Actors, public figures, community representatives and so forth who have received an “Honour from her Majesty the Queen” for some outstanding “service” or other. As always this year's list includes the great, the good, the deserving and the frankly baffling. The ”Honours” list is always something of a dog's dinner, a mixture of Buggin's turn and the cheapest populism, and you don’t even see the lists of people who have quietly declined honours which might help you make sense of it all.

Well if only Her Maj actually drew up the list for what you have behind the showbiz froth and the pre-packaged spin at the top of this highly patronising and selective Imperial Awards system from the days of the King / Queen Emperors which in reality is drawn up by a secretive and opaque committee of Whitehall timeservers based on “Buggins Turn” nominations from “approved organisations.” So most of it is a roll call of time servers, Nabobs, Apparatchiks, Panjandrums and assorted flunkeys who are being “honoured” for actually just doing their jobs. Indeed many of them have been paid for every day they have worked and no doubt for many days they haven’t!

Personally I crack up just reading the bumptious detail of the New Year's Honours list! For instance reporter Sandy Gall gets an OBE for "Services to the People of Afghanistan"! Do they know about his services? Did the People of Afghanistan even notice? Other luminaries on the list include Mrs Carolyn Tracy Edwards. Grade C1, Ministry of Defence. (Chorleywood, Hertfordshire) - Hold me back! Mrs Elizabeth Barton. Grade B1, Ministry of Defence. (London, SW9) We can only imagine the great service she has given! How about David Kelly, Chief Constable, Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. Now there is a man sacrificing himself in the Sun for the Empire, a Chief Constable (with the salary and all the perks) for two British Army bases with a population of 15,000 people and a base prison on Cyprus! Indeed this man is so self sacrificing in the cause of Empire that he is double jobbing, already getting a full pension from his previous UK post before moving into his villa on Cyprus.


No Brucie Bonus? Bad Game! Bad Game!

But look at who has been left out of these “New Year Honours.” Commiserations once again to Bruce Forysyth, our much loved veteran TV entertainer, who has not been rewarded with a knighthood, despite a campaign launched earlier this year. It’s ruffled Piers’ Morgan’s feathers who said on Twitter: “Utterly ridiculous that Bruce Forsyth still hasn’t been knighted. What more must he do than be a multi-talented star for SEVEN decades?” Well maybe at 84 Bruce is expecting too much too soon?


Don't arise Sir Ringo?

Who else has been overlooked? He is the man who has touched the lives of three generations of music fans with his genius, the man who was one quarter of the greatest band ever to walk the Earth? And, last but not least, the man who provided the voice for Thomas The Tank Engine. And if dodgy singles are the criteria for a knighthood? Well, then he has certainly had a few of those in his solo career. That man is, of course, Ringo Starr, who will not arise as “Sir Ringo.”

http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2008/01/arise-sir-ringo.html

But the thresholds for these knighthoods are high which is why they were awarded to “Sir Gas Bill” and the man who has presided over British Airways most disastrous period. Roger Carr, the tycoon who saw through the sale of the 200-year-old British company Cadbury to the US multinational Kraft in February, has been knighted for services to industry in the New Year Honours list. Sir Roger was praised by the City for getting a good deal for shareholders when the Cadbury sale went through in February. Since then Kraft has announced that it is moving the firm's headquarters to Switzerland to avoid UK tax, at a probable cost of thousands of UK jobs.


Arise Sir Gas Bill and destroyer of British Jobs! Roger Carr

The award is doubly controversial because Sir Roger also chairs Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, which recently announced a 7 per cent price hike. Soon after that announcement, Centrica raised its full year profit forecast to more than £2.2bn. The regulator, Ofgem, is holding an inquiry into whether major energy companies are "lining their pockets".

The other flying Knight Martin Broughton as chairman of British Airways has been at the centre of a bitter dispute with the airline's cabin crew, the disastrous opening of Terminal 5 and the wholesale abandoning of customers during the volcanic ash incident during the summer, not to mention various prosecutions for flouting Competition Law. This is probably why he is being knighted for “Services to Aviation” and not to Customer Services. It does beg the question, what does the Chairman of British Airways have to do not to get a knighthood?

Their appearance on the New Year Honours list runs counter to the Downing Street spin that the 2011 list principally recognises those who have contributed to David Cameron's idea of the Big Society. Fewer than three-quarters of the 997 people on the New Year’s list are said to be "local heroes who have undertaken outstanding work in their communities". Officials conceded that today's list contains the same proportion of local philanthropists as ever.



The list includes Kathleen White, who has worked at a Post Office in Claverley in the Black Country for 68 years and is awarded an MBE and there is the usual quota of School Dinner Ladies and Lollipop ladies. Some years ago the then Prime Minister, John Major, decided that the process should be made more open and the class bias in the honours list should be tackled. Previously upper class personages and Government flunkeys received an MBE (Member of the British Empire) but those who were of “insufficient station” (i.e. Working Class) received a BEM (British Empire Medal) – essentially the same award for the lower classes. However despite these stated good intentions the BEM is still retained on honours given to Caribbean and British Overseas Territories (What we used to call Colonies). Obviously Carlton of the FO decided equality was a step too far for the tinted folk? Indeed when John Major’s “classless” list was introduced a paper seller who had taken over a family pitch near my office and sold the Evening Standard for 35 years received an MBE for “services to Newspapers.” A fine person who inherited her family pitch and was always chatty to customers I’m sure but what did she do to deserve an MBE? A silly question as most of her customers were Home Office Civil Servants!

Among the OBEs are guitarist and songwriter Richard Thompson, once of Fairport Convention but also a writer of lyrics for Robert Plant and Elvis Costello; veteran lyricist Herbert Kretzmer, whose career encompasses newspaper, television and theatre criticism, songs for That Was the Week That Was, and the lyrics for the long-running musical version of Les Misérables; and Manchester-born actor Burt Kwouk, the long-suffering manservant Cato in the Pink Panther movies, who is honoured for helping to pave the way for other actors from the Chinese community.


Arise Sir Flunkey!

The former Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox receives an OBE, not for her musicianship, but for her services to Oxfam and Aids charities in Africa. She said: "As somewhat of a renegade, it either means I've done something terribly right – or they've done something terribly wrong.”

So there you have the 2011 “New Years Honours List” – a lot of Establishment flotsam with some celeb froth on top and a leavening of token Proles. Now I’m not against Civilian Honours but this Bastard Child of Empire is well past its sell by date in terms of titles, relevance and honesty and badly needs an overhaul – taking the awards for flunkeys (the Royal Victoria awards which are for “personal service” to the Sovereign) and for time serving Police, Civil servants and Military out of it would be a good start. A second good start would be to make the whole process transparent and above board, they should be given in OUR name and not the Queen’s, Gawd Bless ya M’aam! And lastly but not leastly let us abandon the whole Empire Brand. It is surely not relevant now that it is a collection of Rocks and Tax Havens maintained for Great Tory Supporting British Patriots to avoid contributing to the Common Weal. On a personal level it would spare those who have achieved Membership of the British Empire the embarrassment of realising that there is no longer an MBE / CBE/ OBE Clubhouse and they have to buy their celebratory drinks in Wetherspoons instead!

For the full 2011 list see;

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/honours-list/8231975/New-Year-Honours-List-2011-in-full.html


Jenson Button - For Services to Tax Exile