Above: the Milton Keynes News announces that Greg Rutherford is now an MBE (Greg Rutherford has appeared on Newsnight in the past).
Tanya Gold in the Guardian today dismisses the honours system as "postcard pomp".
The ruritanian titles have misled her into regarding the process as "an expression of, and a means to uphold, royal power". She is woefully ignorant in this respect - royalty have almost no role in deciding who gets what (except for a few specific honours). What is actually happening is the co-option of new establishment figures into the old establishment, including the silencing or buying-off (relatively) of some anti-establishment figures.
We need to understand how this happens, as these people are going to "pop up" in the future (look at the career of Lord Coe for instance).
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