New Year Honours list : Sat Dec 29, 2012 11:01 am
As expected, many awards for this years Olympians and Paralympians although some of the decisions are frankly baffling. RL manages its token MBE in a well-deserved award for Paul Sculthorpe.But the ones that amaze me more than any other are:
1) Hector Sants, previous head of the Financial Services Authority gets a knighthood. Yes that's correct, the bloke that oversaw the near-meltdown of the British banking industry is rewarded fro being such a spectacular tool.
2) Margaret Beckett MP becomes a Dame. This despite being a noted fiddler of expenses.
The whole system is a rank display of cronyism and thanks for patronage. Evan Davies summed up what should happen: "honours would go to people whose material compensation vastly under-rewards them for their achievements".
No MP, either sitting or former, should ever be awarded an honour. Anyone found to be contributing materially, either directly or indirectly, to political party funds should also be barred from the list.
Either that, or just dispense with it altogether, especially those awards that still have "British Empire" in their title