Blair honours attacked as 'gongs for gaffes'

[emad]

Financial Times
By Christopher Adams, Political Correspondent
Published: December 31 2004 02:48 | Last updated: December 31 2004 02:48

Tony Blair has been accused of bestowing "rewards for failure" on public officials at the centre of controversies including the visa affair that led to David Blunkett's resignation.


As Downing Street published a New Year's honours list that showered praise on workers in health, education and law and order, a political row erupted over three contentious awards.

A knighthood for John Gieve, permanent secretary at the Home Office, a top honour for Doug Smith, the outgoing chief executive of the Child Support Agency, and a CBE for Richard Bowker, former head of the Strategic Rail Authority, prompted an angry response from the Conservative party. Sir John was the senior civil servant at the centre of a row over the fast-tracking of a visa application for the nanny of Mr Blunkett's former lover. The former home secretary quit when an inquiry found that, contrary to his denials, the application had been speeded up.

The Tories have said it "beggars belief" that the permanent secretary and other Home Office officials were unable to remember events surrounding the application.

http://news.ft.com/cms/s/0e7615c4-5aa3-11d9-aa6e-00000e2511c8.html

GIVING a KCMG to UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia Sherrard Cowper Coles beggard belief......Might as well have given Osama Bin Laden the Order of Merit...

[IndianaGreen]

1. The Poodle is doing the same thing Bush did

when Bush bestowed our nation's highest civilian decoration on the architects of the Iraq WMD fiasco: George Tenet, Paul Bremer, and Tommy Franks.

Rewarding failure on both sides of the Atlantic!

[Benhurst]

2. Time for them all to go. The honours list is a royalist farce.

But then Tony "The Bridge" Blair is probably lusting after a title upon leaving Number Ten. The sad thing is that he already has one: The Butcher of Baghdad.

[daleo]

7. I prefer "The Butcher's Poodle"

Loyally lapping up the bloody drippings of his lord and master.

[librechik]

3. like Shrub giving medals to Bremer and Myers and Tenet

sad farce.

[TyeDye75]

4. Then honours list is a joke

its always the same

A bunch of crusty old failed beuracrats
some crusty old rocker
some random crusty old football manager

Then the handful of deserving recipients are largely ignored

[quiet.american]

5. Is Blair in love with Bush?

He can't seem to think for himself anymore. What's happened to him?

[xchrom]

6. is rove tongueing blair's ear?

bush does it, so why not blair?