A SHRED OF HONOUR?

As the nights darken as winter draws in, then we look back to survey the events of the year with more of a sense of detachment. There was perhaps more than a faint whiff of after the fact vindictiveness about it the decision to remove Fred (Fred the Shred) Goodwin's knighthood, perhaps the real question, which will probably remain unanswered, is why did he ever get it in the first place? The ‘Brit’ obsession with the distribution and receipt of gongs, knighthoods, baubles and other gaudy trinkets is decidedly unhealthy and distasteful. Certainly during the recent referendum campaign in Scotland, I could but not help notice that some of the recipients of honours were pretty quick to attempt to present a fairly doomed future for an independent Scotland. Dancing perhaps when the piper calls the tune, almost certainly. Nominally dispatched from the reigning monarch, honours, including peerages are actually the gift of the ruling PM rather than the reigning monarch (although when Tony Blair was in charge it might have been difficult to tell the difference). I suspect that those business leaders and bankers with knighthoods, CBEs, etc will not be having sleepless nights worrying about having their honours stripped from them. Not at least as long as their misdemeanours, party donations and other dubious acts commissioned in the hope of a bauble from on high remain out of sight and public scrutiny.

HONOURS EVEN…

The Donations Award

The questionable relationship between big donations (and donors) to political parties might in some circumstances be considered to be par for the course (to use a golfing term). Significant donors to the larger Westminster village based (and focused) political parties often tend to get rewarded with gongs, baubles and trinkets. Between 2006 to 2012 those donors giving £50,000 or more to Westminster based political parties were around 6,000 times more likely to receive a peerage than the ordinary person on the street. It has been 80 years since Maundy Gregory became the first (and only) individual to be prosecuted for selling honours and the relationship between cash (and kind) donations and honours remains as strong as ever. The House of Lords Appointments Commission which (nominally) oversees the award of honours is in truth pretty powerless and mostly accepts party leaders’ choices in all but the most exceptional of circumstances. Selling honours is illegal yet more than a few years ago a parliamentary committee came to the conclusion that any successful prosecution would be unlikely unless the culprits were caught in the act so to speak, so the law remains unchanged, so basically the Westminster based political parties have a free-for-all. The honours system as long as it remains under the control of Westminster will remain flawed and abused with little prospect of any meaningful reform. What this on-going abuse of the honors system by the Westminster based political parties means in practice is that the award of honors to hardworking individuals who have worked tirelessly for our communities, to society and to the lives of others over the years is continually tarnished and the value of honours is diminished.