As expected, many awards for this years Olympians and Paralympians although some of the decisions are frankly baffling. RL manages its token MBE in a well-deserved award for Paul Sculthorpe.

But the ones that amaze me more than any other are:

1) Hector Sants, previous head of the Financial Services Authority gets a knighthood. Yes that's correct, the bloke that oversaw the near-meltdown of the British banking industry is rewarded fro being such a spectacular tool.

2) Margaret Beckett MP becomes a Dame. This despite being a noted fiddler of expenses.

The whole system is a rank display of cronyism and thanks for patronage. Evan Davies summed up what should happen: "honours would go to people whose material compensation vastly under-rewards them for their achievements".

No MP, either sitting or former, should ever be awarded an honour. Anyone found to be contributing materially, either directly or indirectly, to political party funds should also be barred from the list.

Either that, or just dispense with it altogether, especially those awards that still have "British Empire" in their title

Big reps to Danny Boyle too for refusing the offer of a knighthood. Shame some other so-called left-wingers (John Prescott, Beckett, Alex Ferguson etc) didn't have the same sense of conscience

The same reason Benjamin Zephaniah rejected an OBE.

L.S.Lowry holds the record for [imost honours declined.[/i

I love the story of how he declined both flavours of government five times in thirteen years, each offer being increased until he finally declined a knighthood in 1968 stating that he wished "to remain unchanged", Harold Wilson must have thought "WTF can we offer this bloke now ?"

I've never knowingly spoken to a "Sir" but if I did then I wouldn't address him as such, nor would I if I were ever to write to one other than the normal "Dear Sir" that everyone gets.

I once stood next to Lord Harewood in a queue for a cash machine if that counts ?

Didn't talk to him though.

Wilson using a Lowry for his official Xmas cards couldn't even convince him to accept.

I've talked to Albert Finney who refused a CBE.

It must have been them Mancunian fumes.

Not all "professional" sportspeople get rewarded with riches beyond their wildest dreams.

The likes of shooters, archers, judo players, rowers etc don't make anything like the kind of money that footballers, rugby players, athletes etc do.

Any kind of blanket ban on honours for sportspeople would affect them equally.

At the risk of advertising my blog, the treatment of Paralympians in this honours list has been massively inconsistent with those of Olympians.

He got his gong on 31st Dec 2011.
He got charged on 5th Dec 2012.

HTH

Disappointed too that David Weir won 4 golds at the Paralympics and only got a CBE. Some of those with a gold medal got lumped in with the others at M level, and I haven't seen gold medal winner Nick Skelton on the list at all. All very inconsistent and mysterious, whatever your view of the system.

Missed your post while typing mine, but totally agree

Forgot too about the guy from Bletchley who broke codes in WW2, who's waited 67 years to finally scrape an MBE. Perhaps they were hoping he'd snuff it then they wouldn't need to give him anything.

I wish I could remember who or where I heard or read the interview, but about ten years ago a prominent figure in TV entertainment was asked why "xxx" had never received an honour from The Queen for services to entertainment and the answer was that if you were as prominent as they were on TV and did not have letters after your name or a title before your name it was only because you had turned down the invitation.

Of course this was in the day when "celebrity" didn't apply to everyone who was prepared to flash their knickers to a camera.