Doing the Honours

Now we have the UK New Year's Honours List for 2010 as well. A pretty unremarkable list, without many ornaments of public life getting a gong. Hence the gags on Twitter about Sir Patrick Stewart's knighthood: "the Queen makes it so", etc.

A couple of observations about the contemporary state of UK honours:

1. Virtually no KBEs are created anymore it seems. The allocation at the K/DBE level seems to be almost entirely allocated to women these days, as there is no female equivalent to Knights Bachelor.

2. The CBE is with the very rare exceptions of knights and dames, essentially the top honour for which 98%+ of Britons are eligible. Reading this list (in conjunction with other years), the Bath and St Michael & St George are truly niche public service honours, not unlike Canada's order for police.

3. The Commonwealth list continues, albeit much smaller. Judging by the frequency with which statelets like St Kitts and Nevis appear, every second citizen must have an MBE by now!

4. Sadly, no Imperial Service Order awards are listed under Papua New Guinea's name. Since the UK ceased making recommendations for the ISO in 1993, the only country that has continued to award the ISO has been PNG. It is possible that with the passage of time the ISO will consist of purely the Sovereign and citizens of Papua New Guinea - a country that was never a British colony and petitioned the Queen to become Sovereign upon gaining independence in 1975. Irony of ironies....