Prime Minister David Cameron says Andy Murray deserves a knighthood after becoming the first Briton to win the Wimbledon men’s singles since 1936.
Fer fuck’s sake. Once again, the Cameroid demonstrates that he is a fatuous twat. Knighthoods should be reserved for doing something momentous, risking life and limb – not winning at sport. Unfortunately we have descended into a celebrity obsessed culture where being good at sport now equates to heroism. Murray may have achieved something that his predecessors have not. It may have taken determination, skill, talent and hard work. But it is not and never will be heroic and awarding a knighthood for it merely cheapens the award even further than it has already been. He has already been rewarded – not to mention the increased sponsorship money that will flow like tap water. The winning was the award. That’s the whole fucking point.
But Murray said: “It’s a nice thing to have or be offered but I don’t know if it merits that.”
You are absolutely right, it doesn’t.
Unfortunately we have descended into a celebrity obsessed culture where being good at sport now equates to heroism.
Very true; much the same principle applies to the much-vaunted BBC ‘Sports Personality of the Year’ award, which is basically a test of who a) is the most famous and b) won something most recently – the voting public having the memory span of a goldfish.
The problem is that the precedent has already been set hasn’t it? Cameron – popularity seeking twat that he is, has already been responsible for handing out strings of gongs to legions of sports “stars” including some who have hardly achieved more than an Olympic medal for little more reason than a feel good headline in the Daily Mail.
Not that the previous bastards in No10 were any better. Blair was the one who started it, handing out gongs like confetti during his period in office to get a good news story for Alistair Campbell or to provide cover for some bad news.
Interestingly Blair himself has refused to accept a place himself in the House of Lords (God forbid!) but that has more to do with Blair’s personal tax arrangements and the need to declare them as a Lord rather than any personal modesty or hubris.
“Blair himself has refused to accept a place himself in the House of Lords (God forbid!) but that has more to do with Blair’s personal tax arrangements and the need to declare them as a Lord…”
It could also be connected with the fact that Blair appears to consider himself equal to THE Lord – an unadvertised second coming…
Dear Mr Longrider
” … awarding a knighthood for it merely cheapens the award even further than it has already been.”
That is the whole point – destroying anything worthwhile which is British, and specifically English, seems to be the order of the day.
Whole swathes of British culture have been and continue to be laid waste by those who have power to do so, not least by the policy of mass invasion and colonisation of large areas of England, leading to the Balkanisation of England of mono-cultural regions inhabited by colonists and their descendants.
It is countrycide.
Makes one wonder “why?”
Perhaps someone will tell us someday.
DP
I agree with you wholeheartedly Andy Murray’s achievement was Epic but it was not Knighthood material. Lets remember though David (Posh Boy) Camoron is a public school boy, a hooray henry and a star f’ucker. He is like the unpopular kid in the playground running after the popular kids and trying to bask in the reflected glory, but ultimately falling on his face in the mud!He is clueless!
Most Knighthoods are handed out in recognition of people doing their cushy Govt-approved office job vaguely competently… so I’d say that, by modern standards, Murray would be more deserving than most. If not for the sporting achievement, perhaps for finally making people shut-the-fuck-up about how long it’s been.
Still.. your obvious ire, and desire to see these things limited to those you think have done something truly heroic, surprises me. I thought that all thinking people had stopped holding the honors system in any kind of regard long ago. It’s 49.5% ‘gongs for yr mates’. 49.5% PR, and about 1% finding a few ordinary people who’ve done remarkable things and trying to make it look like the cunts in charge actually give a fuck.
Well, I’d like the honours system to be something we could respect and is truly honouring courage and self-sacrifice; truly worthy deeds, not batting a ball about or pretending to be someone else for a living. Hence my ire.
“Knighthoods should be reserved for doing something momentous, risking life and limb”
Knighthoods should be abolished along with the parasitical monarch that issues them.
Republics have honours systems as well as monarchies.
I’d go for self-funded rather than abolish.
Well, crooked little cunts like Alfred Sherman were given knighthoods, weren’t they?
Oh, I don’t know. As you say, honours these days are pretty devalued and it’d be nice to see a big overhaul of the whole system to ensure that only people who have been truly heroic got them, but in view of the fact that that doesn’t seem very likely at the moment, I can think of several examples where they’ve been handed out for much less than what Murray has achieved.
After all, politicians a-plenty get handed peerages for bringing the country to its knees and helping to make everyone’s lives more difficult and more miserable than they already are, so surely it’s not such a bad thing for a lesser honour to be offered to someone who, at the end of the day at least hasn’t done any harm and has managed to make quite a lot of people happy at least for a while.
It’s a sad and rather superficial reason, I’ll grant you, but that’s what the Honours system has come to these days. I’m with DP on this one – it’s yet another iconically British “thing” which has been systematically eroded to make us all fit into a happy-clappy, one-size-fits-all European-citizen mould.