LITTLE HONOUR IN HONOURS
By David Vance On December 31st, 2011The UK media is full of details concerning those who have been honoured in the New Year Honours.
As you know, I oppose the Honours system on principle and find the idea of conferring Honours on Media celebrities particularly nauseating. When I was on the BBC Radio last night I did point out that I am not a fan of the Honours and that I blame the media for hyping the whole thing up. Looking through the list of Honours, I see some millionaire sportsmen have been rewarded along with well paid actors and actresses have got their trinkets. And then, to balance, a few cleaner ladies and other specimens from the other end of the social ladder. This is also a bit odd insofar as how good a dinner lady or cleaner do you have to be to get an Honour and on what basis, exactly.
I WAS pleased that Ronnie Corbett got a reward for all the years of good humoured laughter he gave us although I think a Knighthood would have been better (Good Knight for him!) I was also pleased to see Steve Lillywhite rewarded. He was married to Kirsty MacColl and produced some of her stuff. I note that in the LOCAL New Year Honours. the usual list of establishment ciphers get their rewards. Utterly sickening.
The New Years honours are a relatively harmless way of channeling corruption and cronyism. If we didn’t have them all these donors & ye men would end up being rewarded with something that actually matters.
I agree with Ross. At least this form of reward doesn’t cost any taxpayers money.
Ross
Dunno about that. I just feel they are wrong although the logic of your position is heard to refute.
I would agree though that the awards are tainted by being awarded by politicians. If we had a respected independent system like the Nobel commitees the awards would have more respect.
Yes we could have awards for Jimmy Carter and Paul Krugman!
I knew someone would mention the Peace awards which will of course always be contentious, but generally speaking all the other Nobel awards, science literature etc are widely respected as being genuinely meritorious.
I think we should have a way of recognising those who contribute to society over and above their day job. How to do this without the wrong people getting gongs is the problem. Our present system does not match up but I do like the idea of over and above a persons day job.