You can't beat a good Saturday morning with a New Years Honours List to browse over and make the steam come out of your ears. This is especially useful if you can bottle the steam up and use it to heat up the milk for your double espresso latte. Then you're able to get slightly more agitated due to the caffeine and the cycle can start again. But wait, I digress, I was getting angry and then I thought about coffee.Today's New Years Honours list has, quite possibly, some of the most absurd people receiving honours. OK, the actors and TV stars are too be expected. I mean come on, you didn't really believe that Gordon Brown rejected celebrity culture did you? A man with the charm, wit and sophistication of a shriveled up orange peel reject the opportunity to make some fake friends? Never!
Just take a look at that list for a second though. First up we have Tom Kelly, Blair's former spokesman. The man who actively smeared a Government scientist who later went on to commit suicide?** A blatant pay-off in the hope that Kelly won't write or start briefing about the days Brown was in Number 11? Also receiving a gong is the CEO of the UK Debt Management Office at the Treasury. So what's that for then? Ensuring the country is hocked to the eyeballs or that the population is, or both?
The Deputy CEO of the Border and Immigration Agency, Ken Sutton, gets an honour along with two other colleagues. Yes that's right. Top men at an department in charge of immigration at a time when illegal immigrants have been employed as security guards at the Home Office have been given honours. I would try to satirise it but like so many things the Government does these days it is impossible because it is so absurd.
Not only that, the Director of the Child Benefit and Tax Credit Office at HMRC has received an honour. I know, I know, you're screaming with laughter at the sheer bloody insanity that a man in charge of an office that has been a complete failure in tax credits, whilst also losing the bank details of 25 million people is given a prize for doing a good job. Like I said, beyond satire.
No doubt over the next few days more details about some of the awards will emerge as bloggers and journalists pour over the list looking for possible "Cash for Honours" stories. The most amazing thing for me is that the judgement of Gordon Brown is so poor that he's put people on the list from departments that have been involved in massive scandals in the past few months.
When you put it against the decision to airbrush out the worst bits of the past few months on the Downing Street website you really do get a picture of a man that is totally flawed.
* Apologies to oranges everywhere for comparing their skin to the Prime Minister, it was uncalled for.
** Note that I am accepting the official verdict in the face of know actual evidence to the contrary. 9/11 Truthers beware. Do not start commenting you will be slapped.
17 comments:
What do you expect from a man who thinks baby cows are foals? its in his biog trust me.
In a "total fury" he snapped a pencil!! wow eh?
the more I read the more bean like he becomes.
Dizzy
Having been involved in the pantomime of nominating people for honours, I know that the civil service forms are circulated 18 months in advance of when the honours are officially announced.
There should of course be an opportunity to withdraw a nomination, but the honours system
resembles the Schlieffen Plan and cannot be stopped once it has started.
Errr there have been cases of honours being withdrawn though.
They were so devalued by bliar&bruuns shenanigans I am surprised anybody would want one.
Judgement?
You should be so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky!
I cannot believe how much more of a joke Brown can be, but every week he proves me wrong.
Seriously, this moron is damaging people's perception of government maybe to the extent that it would be expected of those in power. Any one of the shenanigans that New Labour has been involved in, should result in resignations full stop, but with this bunch, they think they can just slot into new jobs a few weeks later, or else just refuse to resign hoping people will forget.
I despair, I really do.
when I look at the list of complete tossers I think of LCpl Ben Parkinson who fought for his Country and suffered horrendous injuries. Nothing for that wonderful and courageous young man. But a wanker who fought Rod Hulls feather coated arm gets a Knighthood. You couldn't make it up.
After curly15's comment I'm just spinning around.
But tell me, who's missing? Doesn't an ex-Prime Minister usually get honoured after giving up office?
Ah, Brown's revenge, me thinks.
"Not only that, the Director of the Child Benefit and Tax Credit Office at HMRC has received an honour."
Even if nominated 18 months ago this one is surely beyond a joke. The tax credits scam has been a scandal since it started. One of Gordon the Vogon Browns bright ideas to reduce the amount that was shown as social security benefits by deducting it instead from tax receipts. Millions being overpaid to some and others being so baffled by the forms they were denied the money that they desperately needed..........
My blood boils, huh!
Weren't Kylie and Gordon at one of the dinner's Kathy "do you want to see my dagger, Admiral West" Lette held for her PR mate Sarah Brown?
I'd agree with your views. Brown has, like his predecessor, entirely devalued the currency.
As to slapping - if there is any about can I be included? I do like having a bit of a whip-round, too.
David
At the risk again of just sounding like a mad conspiracy nut case.
Could it be that the whole point of this and most other socialist government actions is precisely to cause a general sense of DESPAIR within the entire nations population?
Radical policies can only be enacted by a process of deliberately created chaos requiring otherwise highly unpopular and rather nasty solutions.
'Honours' are now meaningless.
If you happened to watch the recent BBC documentary on the Monarchy - then you might remember the poor man who is in charge of looking after the thousands of cheap plated 'gongs'? He basically admitted it was a 'factory' - and apparently the palace even send you an invoice for a photograph of 'the day'. A cottage industry.
Cheap and nasty. :)
But Atlas, the solution would be a Tory government.
Now that WOULD be a cool conspiracy: The joke that is Labour is a Tory plant to soften the populace for a radical right-of-centre-right solution.
I do not understand why Jules Pipe is going to get an OBE. I personally think that he has done a dreadful job.
Didn't Kyle have tea with Gordon?
@ anthonynorth:
Former PMs who don't go to the Lords join the queue for admission to the Order of the Garter: so the next time a Garter Knight kicks it, Blair will be in.
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