Lynn Faulds Wood, former presenter of BBC’s Watchdog, says she turned down an MBE because she ‘just wouldn’t accept it while we still have party donors donating huge amounts of money and getting an honour’. Any self-respecting political donor will equally have rejected an honour on the grounds that it demeans the system to have them handed out to every Tom, Dick and Harry who appears on radio and television.
Honours have become a debased currency. This time around, 1197 of them have been handed out. There will be another pile in the summer with the Queen’s birthday honours. Carry on like this and there won’t be anyone on the outside of prison who doesn’t have an honour. In fact, we might as well turn the whole thing on its head and make it a dishonours system – hand everyone an MBE at birth but then take it away if they are naughty.
No-one demonstrates the inflation in honours better than Sir Roger Bannister.
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