We preen and stand tall, do we not, when another report arrives about corruption in emerging Eastern European democracies or in Latin-America. No west end dinner party is complete without an anecdote from the resident foreign affairs expert about unclean business practices in those countries we consider to be of a lesser moral timbre than steadfast and true United Kingdom.

My favourite is that one about not being able to get anything done in Italy unless you’re prepared to bribe the local mayor (who’s usually a Communist). This is closely followed by the observation that poverty and inequality is so endemic in Africa, parts of Asia and South America in its entirety (obviously) because everyone is "on the take". Of course, all that deprivation has nothing whatsoever to do with those crippling debt repayments to rich, white, European countries for questionable loans to previous regimes for the purposes of building presidential palaces and obtaining sub-machine guns for the neighbourhood private death squad.

And then we shiver and draw our children close and thank the good Lord we live in a civilised country which, for all its faults, tries to do things the right and proper way. Britain is still a meritocracy and, just to prove it, we have regulatory bodies all over the shop like Ofgem, Ofsted, Sepa and the Law Society to ensure everything is ship-shape and Bristol fashion in the way that our big public bodies go about their business and spend our money. It’s all a mirage of course; an elaborately-woven façade to cover the truth of the matter.

As 2015 drew to a close there was another flurry of reminders of the greed, avarice and cronyism which are stitched into the fabric of public life in the UK. The honours system always had been a key part of the establishment’s Big Bribe to keep the hoi-polloi diverted even as their quality of life was being chiselled from underneath them. Along with the London Olympics, royal births and marriages and military triumphalism, it plays a crucial role in ensuring that, no matter how many factory closures, foodbanks and child poverty there exists in the UK, we swallow the fiction that we are all one big happy family pulling in the same direction.

The 2016 list though, takes this to a new level. The Times newspaper had already revealed the Honours system is dominated by privately-educated people to the same extent that it did 60 years ago. Less than seven per cent of the British population attends these schools yet they account for almost half of those rewarded in 2015. This year’s list, though, sees so many Conservative Party panderers being rewarded that any honour by self-sacrifice and courage is besmirched by association. And don’t be deluded into believing that, ultimately, these baubles are worthless in material terms. In those parts of British public life and industry where a chap’s school and family background still matter the letters his name are the key to wealth and influence.

The wiles of the elites whom we still allow to bend this country’s destiny to their own interests have long been known. Further down the social scale though, in those communities and spheres of influence in which the rest of us operate daily you do not require to look far to find similar models of inequality and tawdry transactions.

Last week it was revealed more than 1,000 executives employed by almost 400 charities are paid in excess of £100k per annum. Several are on salaries of around £250k. The well-worn defence of salaries on this scale in the third sector is that they pay for themselves in revenue raised. Ask yourself one question, though. Would you be happy donating money to an organisation that pays several of its staff up to ten times more than the wage of its average employee?

It is 16 years since Alex Salmond pledged to cut the number of quangos operating in Scotland, the bodies which are supposed to scrutinise the management of our public sector. Often, a position on one of these bodies is a golden ticket to free nights at the opera or the Edinburgh tattoo, hospitality in a boutique hotel and a tidy wee cheque to tide you over until the next monthly board meeting. There are now almost 100 of them including the Office for the Queen’s Printer in Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon.

Related to these are special public sector boards such as an outfit called NES (NHS Education for Scotland). This body is concerned solely with the training of doctors and dentists and ensures money, already allocated, is ring-fenced and disbursed for that purpose.

I’d estimate very few people in Scotland are aware of its existence, probably believing doctor training is handled first by universities followed by on-the-job coaching in hospitals. Good lord, no. NES has 46 executive board members and senior managers, each with their own "administrative assistant" and all earning an average of more than 100k a year. There are several other special boards like this attached solely to the NHS.

Along with all the other "special" boards, the quangos, local health and education boards and council executive suites, they provide a well-stocked gravy train for a grey army of faceless men and women, many with questionable track records. Their pay, bonuses and pension packages are often hundreds of times that of the average worker under their command. They are each immune from the sort of professional assessment the rest of us accept as routine in our places of work and, when they fail (as many of them do) they are awarded severance packages worth hundreds of thousands of pounds.

We are still waiting to be told why John Doyle, the principal of Coatbridge College, received a £304k pay-off when he retired two years ago, part of a £1.7 million pension pot to cover severance payments at the college. Mr Doyle’s retirement package is £175k more than official guidelines recommend. That noise heard last week in the principals’ offices at Harvard, Yale and Princeton was the special delivery of a thick brochure landing on their walnut desks: the guide to desirable properties in Airdrie and Coatbridge.

In 2013 a UK-wide rich list of the highest-paid public servants had five Glasgow City Council employees in the top 10 with pay and pension packages that would allow them to buy Bermuda let alone a Bermudan holiday home.

Conservatives are fond of telling us how bloated the public sector is and why employee numbers must be culled. Perhaps so, but let’s start with the rich, low-hanging fruit in the boardrooms and executive suites before approaching the machine room.

Yet why is anyone surprised at such behaviour when most of us believe that, even in times of economic distress, it is morally acceptable to pay a family of dubious royal vintage millions of pounds a year to live a rock star existence? Patterns of unearned privilege and entitlement are present in the DNA of this country and we all acquiesce in it.