Dishonourable honours

I am far from alone in thinking this years’ honours list a disgrace but let’s start with a quiz. Look at the following honours available and work out what they letters stand for. Having done that, place the honours in order of merit, starting at the bottom. Before you start it is worth noting that the actual lowest form of honour is an invitation to the Queen’s garden party. There you would get a cup of tea, some sort of cake and sandwiches and you are unlikely to meet the Queen herself, though you will have a chat with one of her servants. Sadly you pay your own fare to London. A relative of mine has received this honour this year. She is a Work and Pensions civil servant in Leeds and for over thirty years she has been a major organiser (voluntarily – no pay) to the sporting and recreational life of the offices up there. This involves her in many hours of selfless work week after week so how delighted she must be to be offered a cup of tea and a sandwich and a possible distant glimpse of the Queen in recognition. Now for the honours. See how many you can get : CH, OM, Kt,DCB,KCB,CB,DBE,CBE,OBE,MBE,BEM. A clue is that if you take the official order then turn it upside down you will probably have an accurate rank order of how much the recipients deserve their honours. As a tiebreaker question, what does the E stand for and can you explain where the E is? If there is still a tie explain why bubbly Carry On actress Barbara Windsor has been made a dame for services to acting (sic.) and charity (she does a bit), whereas Benedict Cumberbatch, who works tirelessly for charities and is arguably Britain’s greatest current actor in a strong field, is not granted a knighthood. The eye watering absurdity of it all is plain to see even without thinking about Lynton Crosby and the head of HMRC and serial failure, Lin Margaret. And we haven’t yet considered peerages. Their waters are even murkier. So what can we put in place of the honours system? There are two answers. One is do away with them all. The other is to introduce a single honour like France’s Legion d’Honneur which is reserved only for services to the community outside of a persons’ normal occupation. Sorry A.P McCoy, Denis Law (Denis Law????) and the lady who does Taekwondo but they are your normal occupations so you’d be out. Fortunately there is no money in it (apart from peerages) so anyone who has ‘bought’ their honour, more fool them. By definition, if your vanity is so highly inflated that you want to spend money on it then you don’t deserve it anyway, the honour is hollow and you know it, a bit like playing golf alone and cheating. Does it matter? Probably not but it is REALLY annoying isn’t it? And I am not saying that because I didn’t get one yet again. Go on honours committee – give me one just to prove me wrong. I’ll take an OBE.