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

I can't disagree with that comment, which would in the main eliminate any sporting awards, or political ones for that.

Which would be good.

Problem is that most of the sporting recipients will have been nominated by their own paymasters and whilst they can always say "no thank you" to a nomination it would take a brave professional sportsperson to tell their sporting association that they don't want the MBE or Knighthood or for it to be even mentioend in public again when their sporting association need the honour bestowing because to them its legitimacy to their public funding and their own salaries - its hard for a 25 year old professional sports person earning money beyond their wildest dreams for doing the only thing they were good at at school to bite the hand that is feeding them for the sake of a medal, which bizarely is the focus of all their attentions in their professional job.

I've said it before but if Kevin Sinfield ever accepts an honour outside of one which is awarded by his peers within his sport then he will drop like a stone out of my esteem for the man.

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 most honours declined.

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.

Stuart Hall got an award too. Does that mean he's been cleared following his recent arrest?

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.