It's been reported that HMRC routinely blocks the award of honours to people whom it considers avoid paying enough tax. Apparently other government departments and agencies also have an input to the system, providing views on the 'suitability' of potential recipients.
A government spokesman has reportedly said that it is a "longstanding policy ….. to protect the integrity of the system". Really ? People taking perfectly legal steps to reduce the burden of tax upon them are routinely being denied recognition to protect the 'reputation' of the honours list; how can this possibly be right ?
For ever and a day, honours have been bestowed on individuals of dubious character but who have performed some supposedly valuable service. Honours have been handed out like sweeties to political appointees and apparatchiks, they are granted to pop singers and other third rate 'celebrities' for no reason other than that the recipients are in the public eye. These days, winning a gold medal seems to be an automatic route to an MBE, OBE or, if multiple medals, even a knighthood or damehood. How ridiculous !
To equate wholly legal tax avoidance, in which we should all engage if we can, with the illegal tax evasion, is simply wrong. To claim that the honours' system has a reputation which needs protecting is risible; its reputation was shot to pieces the day that the Beatles were given their MBEs by Harold Wilson's populist government in 1965 and it's been downhill ever since. What we have now is an utterly discredited system which is being abused in an attempt to appear fashionably moralistic. Are we really to believe that the modern day, high profile recipients of awards, many of whom are very wealthy, pay their taxes without considering perfectly legal ways to reduce the burden ?
There was a time when honours were awarded for services rendered over and above the call of duty. Now they're simply a way for government to court popularity and to pretend to moralistic values which they do not possess.
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