Gongs Away
Here's a report from the BBC highlighting ten 'great' Britons who have declined the offer of an honour from Her Majesty the Queen.
A decent bunch if you ask me and it's good to know that there are still plenty of people out there who are prepared to reject the establishment, class-based values on which the honours system is still based.
Where 'Lollipop Ladies' get the relatively lowly British Empire Medal while the former boos of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Ten Great Britons Who Declined The Honours List
By Fraser McAlpine - BBC
The MBE medal
Thanks to the biannual honours list, the British have a unique way to celebrate achievement in all walks of life. Anyone can be nominated, providing there’s enough support, and they get to meet the Queen and have a nice day out at Buckingham Palace and take home a medal, or possibly a Dukedom. It’s all very nice.
However, there are people who feel that accepting such an honor is in some way being pinned and mounted by the establishment, like a prized butterfly. Or that taking the award (which it’s perfectly possible to turn down) would in some way acknowledge that their best years are behind them.
Naturally, the whole acceptance/refusal process is fairly closely guarded, so here are ten notable Brits who have reportedly decided that a pat on the head from the Queen is not for them:
1: John Cleese has the unique distinction of having turned down both a life peerage (barony) and a CBE, saying he felt the honor was “silly,” and to prove it, jokily adding that he “did not wish to spend winters in England.”
2: Smash Hits magazine always used to jokingly refer to David Bowie as ‘Dame David,’ which may have, in some indirect way, lead to his nomination first for a CBE, and then a knighthood. He turned them both down, presumably on the grounds that it was a reinvention too far for his chameleonic career.
3: The painter LS Lowry deserves a special mention on this list. His distinctive paintings of working class Manchester factory workers may sell for millions now, but he never wanted to be seen to rise above his station, declining first the OBE, then the CBE, then a knighthood, then the Companion of Honor (twice). He holds the record for turning down the most nominations.
4: The playwright and author Alan Bennett also turned down a knighthood and a CBE. I guess, once you’ve turned one down, it must feel like you have to keep saying no, or risk looking flighty.
5: Kenneth Branagh, fresh from Academy Award nominations and acclaimed as the Great British Actor of the moment, turned down the offer of a CBE in 1994. Quite right too. He was just getting started at the time.
6: More recently, Paul Weller turned down the same honour in 2007, although for someone as obsessed with the twin forward engines of youth and modernism (the youth cult, not the art movement), it’s not really that much of a surprise than he knocked it back.
7: A slightly more surprising rejection came from the always-agreeable Jim Broadbent, who turned down an OBE in 2002. I can’t imagine what it could have done for him that being astonishing in all of those films could not, but you can’t deny he’s earned it.
8: Meanwhile, back in 1986, Roald Dahl turned down the same honor, despite being one of the best children’s authors Britain has ever produced, and a fighter pilot in the war. Another deserving winner, if ever there was one.
9: Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders were both offered OBEs in 2001, and decided against taking them. Maybe Jennifer felt Edina wouldn’t approve.
10: John Lydon, who as Johnny Rotten outraged the British establishment with the Sex Pistols song “God Save The Queen,” released in the Queen’s silver jubilee year, has reportedly turned down the offer of an MBE. Which makes you wonder why anyone thought it would’ve been a good idea to offer it to him in the first place? Assimilation, perhaps?
Special mention must also go to Keith Richards, who has bitterly complained about the knighthood given to Mick Jagger, as being precisely the kind of thing you don’t do when you’re in the Rolling Stones. One can only assume he’s had his chances and turned them all down too.
The MBE medal
Thanks to the biannual honours list, the British have a unique way to celebrate achievement in all walks of life. Anyone can be nominated, providing there’s enough support, and they get to meet the Queen and have a nice day out at Buckingham Palace and take home a medal, or possibly a Dukedom. It’s all very nice.
However, there are people who feel that accepting such an honor is in some way being pinned and mounted by the establishment, like a prized butterfly. Or that taking the award (which it’s perfectly possible to turn down) would in some way acknowledge that their best years are behind them.
Naturally, the whole acceptance/refusal process is fairly closely guarded, so here are ten notable Brits who have reportedly decided that a pat on the head from the Queen is not for them:
1: John Cleese has the unique distinction of having turned down both a life peerage (barony) and a CBE, saying he felt the honor was “silly,” and to prove it, jokily adding that he “did not wish to spend winters in England.”
2: Smash Hits magazine always used to jokingly refer to David Bowie as ‘Dame David,’ which may have, in some indirect way, lead to his nomination first for a CBE, and then a knighthood. He turned them both down, presumably on the grounds that it was a reinvention too far for his chameleonic career.
3: The painter LS Lowry deserves a special mention on this list. His distinctive paintings of working class Manchester factory workers may sell for millions now, but he never wanted to be seen to rise above his station, declining first the OBE, then the CBE, then a knighthood, then the Companion of Honor (twice). He holds the record for turning down the most nominations.
4: The playwright and author Alan Bennett also turned down a knighthood and a CBE. I guess, once you’ve turned one down, it must feel like you have to keep saying no, or risk looking flighty.
5: Kenneth Branagh, fresh from Academy Award nominations and acclaimed as the Great British Actor of the moment, turned down the offer of a CBE in 1994. Quite right too. He was just getting started at the time.
6: More recently, Paul Weller turned down the same honour in 2007, although for someone as obsessed with the twin forward engines of youth and modernism (the youth cult, not the art movement), it’s not really that much of a surprise than he knocked it back.
7: A slightly more surprising rejection came from the always-agreeable Jim Broadbent, who turned down an OBE in 2002. I can’t imagine what it could have done for him that being astonishing in all of those films could not, but you can’t deny he’s earned it.
8: Meanwhile, back in 1986, Roald Dahl turned down the same honor, despite being one of the best children’s authors Britain has ever produced, and a fighter pilot in the war. Another deserving winner, if ever there was one.
9: Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders were both offered OBEs in 2001, and decided against taking them. Maybe Jennifer felt Edina wouldn’t approve.
10: John Lydon, who as Johnny Rotten outraged the British establishment with the Sex Pistols song “God Save The Queen,” released in the Queen’s silver jubilee year, has reportedly turned down the offer of an MBE. Which makes you wonder why anyone thought it would’ve been a good idea to offer it to him in the first place? Assimilation, perhaps?
Special mention must also go to Keith Richards, who has bitterly complained about the knighthood given to Mick Jagger, as being precisely the kind of thing you don’t do when you’re in the Rolling Stones. One can only assume he’s had his chances and turned them all down too.
Never Trust a Ferret (24 January 2012)
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| A hunting ferret |
Janet Street-Porter is a woman of strong opinions - and one of the few women in the UK ever to have edited a national newspaper.
But what I most like about Janet is her 'spit in your eye' attitude - towards goings and public honours which she wrote about in The Independent on Sunday.
Like me, Janet wouldn't cross the road for an OBE or a knighthood - and ridicules people that do - the kind of people who pee their pants just waiting in the queue.
Like me, Janet has not time for Sir Fred 'the Shred' Goodwin - who 'looks like a ferret' she says and that's a good enough reason for mistrusting him in my book.
But of course Sir Fred wasn't mistrusted - quite the opposite in fact.
Because as everyone knows Sir Fred was actively courted and fawned over by senior figures in the last Labour government - which did 'bugger-all to deal with banking excesses' - according to Janet.
And you know what - she's absolutely right - here's what Janet had to say in her newspaper column at the weekend.
They pile in to damn Sir Fred's gong, but what will it change?
Politicians are jumping over each other to demand that the disgraced former RBS chief Fred "the Shred" Goodwin should be stripped of his knighthood. Why? What difference would it make? I can see that the ritual of public humiliation might turn some people on, but this futile gesture won't help the huge number of folk fruitlessly looking for work or trying to pay bills. It won't build a single affordable home, fund a crèche or keep a library open. Ed Miliband is the latest lemming to demand Fred's head on a platter, telling anyone who'll listen that Gordon Brown should "never" have handed out the accolade in the first place.
Goodwin is an easy person to loathe. He's a bit common, looks like a ferret, and has never publicly graced us with a full apology. He still lives in a posh house with mega-security in a swanky part of Edinburgh. What do Dave, Cleggy and Ed want? That he should walk down Whitehall in sackcloth having custard pies chucked at him by angry voters?
There are plenty of people as loathsome as Sir Fred – our former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, for starters, with their self-important charitable foundations and conspicuous lack of humility about their track records; their huge "expenses"; their trumpeting of their desire to "help" the underprivileged on a global scale; their refusal consistently to accept blame.
Taking away Goodwin's knighthood will not make any difference to the bonus culture or the deeply entrenched mindset in the City. The people who run our country have had more than three years to get cross about his gong, so why are politicians so incandescent with rage now? Almost certainly because they know they are powerless to prevent the steady flow of bad news on all fronts.
Unemployment is at a record high. The high street is in crisis, with liquidations every week. More young people than ever have been sitting around doing nothing for more than a year. There's the ever-present danger of a double-dip recession. The euro teeters on the brink of collapse. We seem to be blundering through a maze of misery, so (they seem to have decided) why not pick on an easily identifiable bloke and make him the scapegoat for all the current woes? Why not try and distract voters with a fall guy?
The truth is, Fred G was just one of many. The Labour government did bugger-all to deal with banking excesses. And when the crunch came, they still treated bankers as a special case. Ann Godbehere, the woman brought in by Labour to sort out Northern Rock's financial mess, was allowed to base her tax affairs outside the UK. And they appointed a new chairman, Ron Sandler, a non-dom whose £8m London house was owned by an overseas trust.
Labour chose these two key people to be in charge of billions of pound's worth of public money when we bailed out the bank – people who enjoyed tax breaks that were denied to ordinary people. So forgive my cynicism. I can't see that any politicians are committed to changing the way that bankers and tax avoiders operate. If they did, we would have signed up for the Robin Hood Tax, a levy on all financial transactions, a simple decision that would change charitable giving overnight and really help the needy.
Another thing about knighthoods is that they're worthless, a snobbish relic that reinforces our class-ridden, socially stagnant society. Terry Leahy, Philip Green, Stuart Rose and Richard Branson were all knighted for services to retail and various types of enterprise. In reality, they were already lavishly rewarded financially for their job. So why garnish their CVs with a gong? In the US, knighthoods don't exist, you are valued by your peers according to how well your business is doing. The US is a true meritocracy. We still believe titles carry clout.
When Simon Schama trashed Downton Abbey as "a steaming, silvered tureen of snobbery", he hit the nail right on the head. There's a nasty little corner buried in the British psyche that secretly aches for a gong, that can't help itself genuflecting to a title. Sir Mick Jagger sold out when he accepted one. Ditto Sir Bob Geldof. Sir Fred's title is an irrelevance, not worthy of a moment's concern.
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| A hunting Sir Fred Goodwin |
Arise, Sir Bonkers! (1 January 2012)
Of course nowadays there's the odd school dinner lady - or occasional scout leader - thrown in to cover up what's really going on.
Me - I wouldn't cross the road to become a knight, dame, commander or member of the British Empire - courtesy of Her Madge.
But lots of people would - for reasons I don't fully understand - though I do wish I knew the difference between an MBE, OBE and a CBE.
I suppose I could find out if I was really that bothered - maybe it allows you to walk a gaggle of geese across Westminster Bridge - or something equally useful.
If I had my way I'd only offer an 'honour' to the kind of person who would turn one down - because that's the kind of person I truly admire.
So I had to laugh at the Labour party getting its knickers into a right old twist about - the honour conferred on Paul Ruddock - who was knighted in the New Year's honours list.
Sir Paul is apparently a merchant banker who made a mint out of various things - including the collapse of the Northern Rock Bank.
Now I don't approve of that - just as I don't approve of Sir Paul making big donations to the Conservative party.
But please - is this really serious?
Because Labour is the party that gave Sir Fred (the Shred) Goodwin his knighthood - after the personal intervention of Gordon Brown who went on of course to become Prime Minister - while Sir Fred went on to bring our biggest bank to its knees and helped wreck the UK economy.
So spare me the histrionics and mock outrage - not least because another big financial cheese was knighted this year - Sir Rod Aldridge - the former Capita chief which has made a fortune out of privatising public services.
But before Ron became Sir Ron - he donated £1million to Labour - without the party losing any sleep as far as I know anyway.
So it does make you laugh - even 'political', supposedly progressive people - my old chums from Unison Scotland - Matt Smith and Anne Middleton (regional secretary and deputy regional secretary respectively) - accepted some bauble or other - and OBE and MBE if I remember correctly.
A senior figure in the TGWU Scotland - Yvonne Strachan - did the same thing - before the once mighty and proud transport union turned itself into Unite.
Even Joan Ruddock - no relation to Sir Paul Ruddock apparently - has got in on the act - with the former labour MP and leader of CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) becoming a Dame - would you believe?
Me, I'm just happy the way I am.
Thankfully I don't need a gong or a bauble from the monarch - to make my life complete - or turn me into an even more rounded human being.
But if I get a letter from the Queen next year inviting me to become Sir Mark Irvine - 'for services to the fight for equal pay' - you'll be the first to know.
