IT does not come as a shock or surprise that 30 Tory Party members or supporters have received awards in the New Year Honours List. The Tories have used the honours system yet again to reward “cronies”.
Lynton Crosby is receiving a Knighthood. He was paid £500,000 for being Tory election coordinator during which he successfully directed the party’s General Election strategy, resulting in an unexpected overall majority for David Cameron.
Analysis of the list shows that the future Sir Lynton is just one of many who have been honoured not for what they had done for the country, but for their services to the Conservative Party.
Another Tory to receive a knighthood is Henry Bellingham, an old Etonian who has been an MP for 32 years. Two officials working for the Scottish Conservatives received the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) –they are Mark McInnes, director of the Scottish Conservatives since 2003, and James Stewart, who was a director of a London-based equity firm when he took over as treasurer of the Scottish Tories in 2012.
Lyndon Jones, for years a leading figure in the Welsh Conservative Party, has been awarded an MBE. So has Christopher Fenwick. His award is for “political service”; this refers to his former role as deputy chairman of the secretive United and Cecil Club, which raises hundreds of thousands of pounds a year for the Conservatives.
The latest honours list shows official politics is a rich man’s game, determined solely by the demands of the major corporations, in which working people have no say and are invariably the losers. The rewarding of Tory donors is a product of the demand of capital for an even greater exploitation of labour for the benefit of the financial elite.
Alan Hinnrichs,
2 Gillespie Terrace, Dundee.
YOU can tell a lot about what our country has become when Z-list actress and Kray Twins apologist Barbara Windsor is made a Dame of the British Empire when she's only fit to be a pantomime one (“Windsor ‘proud and humbled’ after receiving her damehood”, The Herald, December 31).
Mark Boyle,
15 Linn Park Gardens,
Johnstone.
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