The British Honours system stinks. It must be about the best honours system that money can buy. Knighthoods and life peerages are doled out to time-serving chancers, place-seeking chanty wrasslers, party hacks being put out to grass, and deep-pocketed donors to party funds. New Labour’s Honours list keeps up this tradition. Substantial donors to New Labour funds were suddenly found to be such estimable citizens that knighthoods and peerages were the least a grateful Government could bestow.’
Jimmy Reid, The Herald, July 1998.
Was it really only two years ago that Gordon Brown announced that he was to ask local newspapers and TV stations to get their readers to nominate ‘kind hearts’ and ‘everyday heroes’ for honours in future, in a major overhaul of the honours system?
What happened to the ‘every day heroes’ idea? Submerged in a sea of patronage! We have Lord Sugar of Apprentice, Lord Digby Jones, Lord West, Lord Carter, Lord Darzi, Lord Myners, Baroness Vadera, Lord Mandelson – to be shortly joined by Baroness Kinnock of Windbag, just as soon as she can settle her pension arrangements with the European Parliament to her economic satisfaction.
More to the point, why this reversal of promised constitutional reform? It would appear that 350 Labour MPs are of such low quality and talentless that they don’t warrant inclusion in Gordon’s ‘government of all talents’.
Labour parliamentary parties control who stands for parliament – why would they nominate candidates who are not considered up to the task of governing? We now have an unelected Prime Minster, choosing to appoint unelected Ministers to control our national life – and to ponder and pontificate on the ‘National Council for Democratic Renewal’. A ’spoof website’ would have been hard pushed to come up with that scenario.
Peter Hain struck an ominous note yesterday on the news. Asked to comment on the new found enthusiasm for Conservatism in Wales, he replied that he didn’t think it existed, ‘what had happened’ he said, ‘was that Labour voters stayed at home’…….it is an excuse worthy of inclusion alongside British Rail’s ‘wrong kind of snow on the line’, highly amusing on the surface, but deeply worrying that this is one of the men who will be contributing to the ‘National Council for Democratic Renewal’. The logic of his comment is that only the ‘right kind’ of voters are worth listening to.
Gordon has manifestly demonstrated that he doesn’t think Labour’s democratically elected members are fit to govern, only he and his close friends are fit to serve the country. He has manipulated the honour system to admit them to cabinet. Hain doesn’t think the ‘right kind’ of voters were represented in the elections in Wales.
Can there be any doubt about the outcome of the ‘National Council for Democratic Renewal’ ? Do we need to wait for its putrid offerings, or can we take an educated guess now?
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
For a party who vowed to overhaul the House of Lords and abolish an outdated system of patronage, there actions of late speak louder, and more hypocritically than words.
Have to correct you on one minor point Anna, it’s Lord Sugar of Demerara, otherwise a fine outline :0)
Following on from Blink’s comment, it is Baroness Kinnockio.
Lord Mandelson of Foisted upon us.
I have a kind heart and I quite fancy being a baron. I expect AR wouldn’t mind leading a French invasion force if we asked nicely.
National Democratic Council? Sounds like something from East Germany which was the Democratic Republic of Germany once upon a time. It was far from democratic and if you tried to leave via the Berlin Wall or the border you got shot dead.
Its a Tragedy waiting to happen.
Henry spot on
I hear that it’s basically made up of cabinet members …. so nice that Gordon is taking the initiative in telling us the type of democracy and accountability he wants!!
A brilliant album by Diana Jones has a song called ‘If I Had A Gun’ on it:
“If I had a gun, you’d be dead
One to the heart, one to the head”
sums up what should happen to this most authoritarian, anti-democratic bunch of thieves.
“…if you tried to leave via the Berlin Wall or the border you got shot dead.”
The old news story…”the East German Pole Vault champion, is now the West German champion”
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with the honours list – as long as none of them ever get near to the upper house! That way no government can stack the deck and so get away with murder.
‘Labour voters stayed at home’ . . . that old chestnut !
Gordon and his band of brothers are becoming more and more like
a bloody dictatorship, i sometimes think we’ll never get shot of him
and if we do there’s just another group of lying, coniving, theives waiting in the wings to take over and award their peerages to another bunch of charlatans.
The ‘wrong snow’ excuse was also a valid reason. It was genuinely freaky at it destroyed the train motors. Look it up.
As for Peter Hain. His statement is correct. There is no big or rather new enthusiasm for Conservatism in Wales. Labour went down massively. If you wish to convince me that Cameron goes down well westside you would need some props and hallucinogens. Me likes neither Hain nor our Rail companies but methinks you unfair.
Plus useless actors, sports people, media luvvies, & those who have just done a well paid job which brings them into the spotlight!