New Year's Honours

A friend of ours has, very deservedly, received a BEM. She has been doing good works for nearly forty years, is a very active trustee of a number of local charities (despite being in her mid 80's) and is chair of another and booking secretary of a further one.

People like her deserve the honour but I don't approve of politicians receiving honours for doing (or not doing) the jobs they are paid for.

 

I can - it is little more than an augmented funny handshake club that to be blunt I think it is more honourable to not be in it. Talk about 'jobs for the boys'... Thornberry, Khan, Grey to name but a few. Johnson and all prior PM's have done similar too.

 

Very much so - it is essentially a huge dose of nepotism with a sprinkling of those that actually deserve it.





Basically, a load of them are MP's that got handed their arses at the election and lost their seat... so good old TwoTier-FreeGear-NeverHere-Keir decided to make them Lords and Ladies to give then £300 a day for turning up to parliament for an kip, cheap food and drink and maybe push through the occasional law.

 

Well I definitely stand by my prior statement that it is more of an honour NOT to be associated with this little club...

Patricia Hewitt awarded with a damehood for her lifetime of service to improving people’s health - Norfolk & Waveney Integrated Care System (ICS

Patricia Hewitt, who backed lowering the age of consent to as low as 10 as long as consent could be proved...

Patricia Hewitt backed NCCL policy of lowering age of consent | Patricia Hewitt | The Guardian

Patricia Hewitt, who was expelled from the Parliamentary Labour Party following a sting operation by Channel 4 Dispatches...



Patricia Hewitt - Wikipedia

Degenerates, deviants and layabouts.

 

There is a young lad and his dad (now his extended family) that I have sort of fallen into watching on YouTube... he is in Essex and owns a business called Flawless Cleaning and has done so much good for the community, including cleaning schools and community centres, clearing waste from roads and helping the elderly and vulnerable - all for free. This is the sort of person that should be being recognised, not some failed MP that effectively got sacked by their constituents.

 

There are quite a few people who have refused honours, more kudos to them.

David Bowie declined a CBE in 2000, and turned down a knighthood in 2003. Bowie later stated "I would never have any intention of accepting anything like that. I seriously don't know what it's for. It's not what I spent my life working for."

John Cleese turned down the 'ridiculous' CBE and 'silly' peerage.

Ken_Livingstone due to be honoured for his services to the 2012 Olympics turned down an honour in the 2013 New Year Honours due to his belief that politicians should not get such awards

 

The system of honours and their names is an anachronism but I do think that there should be a system similar but with different nomenclature (whoops! forgot I wasn't on the "Words" thread ).

I definitely agree that politicians should not get awards simply because of their jobs but if they have given exceptional service they can be given them only when they have retired. The service that they have done must be way above that for which a non politician would be awarded it.

Celebrities, actors, sportspeople etc. should also need to have done something more than just their jobs. So there would need to be some sort of line drawn if it just is for extreme excellence in what they do (haven't the faintest idea how to judge that! ).

Most of the awards should go to 'ordinary' people that have given exceptional service to the community etc.

The people actually having to work out those that are worthy of the awards should also, themselves, have a body that judges whether they have done the choosing well. Above all that and keeping an eye on all of them should be - Me!