IT IS all too easy to be cynical about the Honour's List.
At times it has been company to avoid. For every loyal lollipop lady there has been a dubious plutocrat. For each career in the NHS well rewarded, there has been a gong carrying the whiff of patronage, of an award for party donations or for simply doing a senior Civil Service job for long enough.
Sporting honours are relatively immune from the usual cynicism, while awards for a career on the stage are frequently well regarded. But the New Year Honours this year allow us to celebrate an unalloyed success, the Commonwealth Games.
Normally, a clutch of Labour politicians, or indeed from any other party, would be a cause for suspicion or derision but in the honouring of Council leader Gordon Matheson, his deputy Archie Graham and official Bridget McConnell we see no reason to demur. If Glasgow 2014 had gone wrong there would have been plenty calls for a public flogging, so given that the Games were a triumph we should doff the cap.
Credit also goes to our flag-carrier and judo gold medalist Euan Burton, as well as our Glasgow-born UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy. We celebrate all of these and more.
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