IT'S THAT TIME OF THE YEAR AGAIN...

...where we all get to laugh at the New Year's Honours list.

That annual self congratulatory, class ridden farce where people are awarded honours for doing their job (or sometimes not doing it), creeping, stumping up money for political parties, and after a absence  of a few years, being bought by the prime minister.

Cameron promised us before the Olympics (presumably hoping to distance himself from Brown's statement that Olympians were like troops in Afghanistan and should be rewarded with gongs), that Olympians wouldn't automatically receive honours unless they had "put something back" (in Big Society style)... [Ha ha, remember the Big Society?]. Incidentally, at this point it is interesting to note that 'worst injured but still living' member of the armed forces from Afghanistan was indeed awarded a gong yesterday. Ben Parkinson, who lost his legs and suffered brain damage, was awarded an MBE, the lowest possible British Empire medal.

Of course every year we wonder why on earth this one or that one was awarded whatever they got, but this year takes the biscuit.

Cameron, desperate to buy the services of some of his less adoring MPs, and because he didn't actually win the election, being unable to find them the non-jobs of government, has handed out knighthoods to nonentity backbenchers.

Richard Shepherd, Tory MP for Aldridge Brownhill, was made a knight for "public service" after three decades in the House of Commons.

He is best known for having the whip suspended after voting against Sir John Major's new laws on the European Union in 1994. He has twice unsuccessfully stood to be Speaker of the House of Commons.

Angela Watkinson, Tory MP for Upminster since 2001, was made a dame for "public and political service" after losing her role as a Government whip in the latest re-shuffle.

She has campaigned to change the law on abortion and launched a failed attempt to introduce compulsory counselling and a week-long "cooling off" period before women are granted a termination in 2007.

There were knighthoods for Tories Gerald Howarth, Jim Paice and Edward Garnier, MPs who left the government at the last reshuffle. Amazing, really, because losing your job is a sign of failure to those of us who live in a normal world.

Additionally Cameron breached the gong code by handing out the bulk of his political honours to Conservatives, instead of sharing them around the two main English-based parties and the Liberals.

The already ennobled and be-knighted Sebastian Coe was not, as I had predicted he would be, married off to princess Goofie, and made an honorary prince. Maybe his wife objected. He was, instead, made a Companion of Honour, whatever that is. They'll soon need two Wikipedia pages for this man, one for his name and all the letters after it; the other for his career details.

Tory donors did well too. Despite the outcry at last year's handouts to Cameron's friends in the City (Eton boys don't hear what plebs are saying...it's an inbuilt upper class hearing defect), the Tory paymasters are there again. Michael Heller, is the most prominent. He forked out £100,000 for his knighthood. Some paid a good deal less.

Lord Oakshott said that it was "Arise, Sir Donor" as usual, and the Deputy Chairman of the Labour party (somewhat ironically) pointed out that this showed that Cameron was out of touch and that he always stood up for the wrong people. How fortunate we are that the Labour party is in touch and stands up for the right people.

Among other notable personages (Labour ones as it happens) to achieve what passes for greatness in London society, Cherie Blair, her of the large mouth and insatiable appetite for more and then yet more money, became a Commander of the British Empire for 'services to women'...what?.... and Maggie Beckett of Hanging Baskets became a dame commander of the same place for..erm...being an MP forever because she had a safe seat and never really succeeding at anything. 

We cannot pretend that this corruption and nepotism is anything new. Tony Benn wrote in his diary that the honours system has always been corrupt. First it was the king who sold honours to increase his power, influence and finances, and with time that responsibility, like so many others passed to his government.It's just that with every year it becomes tackier and tackier. 

If I had one I'd seriously think of handing it back.

TORY CUTS MEAN ELDERLY WOMAN OBLIGED TO SELL GIFTS TO MAKE ENDS MEET

A few weeks ago I wrote a story about Blair taking from Downing Street (quite legally, but greedily) gifts that he was given as head of government, and therefore gifts to the country, rather than to him personally.

Now it appears that Mrs Blair has been selling stuff on Ebay, including a watch given to her husband/the state by the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, for well under a third of its value.

Blair is said to earn around £6000 a minute as an after dinner speaker (in addition to having heaven knows how many other jobs to occupy his 24 hours a day). It seems that people desperately want to hear about how he agreed with everything that President Bush said, and nothing that Gordon Brown said... Oh well, folk are funny. They like The X Factor too!

Mrs Blair has also been selling her husband’s signature on Ebay. According to the Daily Telegraph: Mrs Blair claimed she had not intended to profit from the autograph, saying she had advertised it to "undermine the market" in Blair signatures, because she was upset that people were selling them for up to £35. She claimed to have refunded the £10 as soon as she had sold the signature.

Why would a QC, with a millionaire husband and the ability to earn between a quarter and half a million a year (despite being, of course, a good socialist) be interested in whether her husband’s signature sold for a tenner or 35 quid?

I think she’s flipped!

Afterthought: With all her money, you'd think Cherie could afford a better looking wig, wouldn't you?

After Afterthought: Hat tip to my mum for alerting me to this story.

CHERIE BLAIR WORRIES ABOUT BEING POOR... OH DEAR

Cherie Blair has given an interview to Tatler magazine in which she says that she worries all the time about not having enough money. The wife of the ex-prime minister, herself a high earning barrister, and a multi-millionaire, says that she is conditioned by her upbringing, which was poor working class. Her grandmother apparently was obsessed about not having a pauper’s funeral. It was all about being “respectable poor”.

Mrs Blair has always been a hate figure, perhaps because she was the first prime minister’s wife to really have a working career, and, quite a high profile and confrontational one, which she continued to pursue whilst they lived in Downing Street. Her work as a barrister, specialising in human rights often involved her working on cases against the government. I must admit I was ready to dislike her intensely as much as I disked her husband, but, on the few occasions I heard her talk, she came over as reasonably sensible.

But without any doubt she has always had a reputation, and I can’t see that it could be unfounded, so entrenched is it, for being a money grabber. If she is, then short of marrying Tiger Woods or David Beckham, she chose the right guy. Tony Blair is estimated to have earned around £12 million since he left Downing Street two and a half years ago, with another £4.5 million on the way for advance on his soon to be published memoirs.

Blair seems to have a collection of jobs, in a world of unemployment, none of which he seems to spend very much time at, nor, for that matter, is any good at. But it is public speaking which earns him the bulk of his money. It is reckoned that he may be the most highly paid public speaker in the world, so I guess he must be good at that.

Amazing!

Despite what is being revealed in the inquiry into the Iraq war, it astonishes me that people can still bear to be in the same room with this man, let alone listen to his voice.

Amazing!

Getting back to Mrs Blair, one of the most astounding things that she says in the interview is that she thinks that MPs have been pilloried over their expenses. She says “They saw it as an allowance, which is not the same thing”. Oh well, that’s alright then. If they saw it as an allowance that is total justification for telling the Commons authorities that they lived at one address in order to extract maximum expenses, whilst telling the tax authorities that they lived at another address in order to maximise tax avoidance. Perfectly alright. A totally different thing. Right! Bampot!

She's certainly wasn't conditioned by her childhood to that particular piece of thinking. I suspect her granny wouldn't be too proud of it.

It goes down as a “let them eat cake” moment from my point of view.