Given recent grim weather warnings, what a delight it was to read about the recipients of the new year honours (New year honours 2024: awards for Shirley Bassey, Mary Earps and Michael Eavis, 29 December).
Those higher up the ladder on Liz Truss’s resignation honours (Liz Truss gives peerages to Brexit architect and Tory donor, 29 December), in what has increasingly become a Ruritanian farce, are in a category that appears to have nothing to do with public service. Quite the reverse, in fact: services to shareholders.
A number of those on the new year honours list also appear to have made donations to the Royal Opera House – a deserving cultural institution, perhaps, but not when people are literally freezing or hungry in what is meant to be an advanced economy.
The choice is between laughter at this delusional practice in our ever more unequal society or anger at the smug and out-of-touch behaviour of our purported leaders.
I choose to laugh, as I myself have been in quick succession Lady Marjorie (changed when Michelle Mone’s yacht was revealed to be called the Lady M), the Countess of Camberwell when I lived in south London, and latterly in my apotheosis Regina of Royal Terrace, Edinburgh. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Marjorie Ellis Thompson
Edinburgh
• I read that John Griffin, the founder of the Addison Lee taxi firm, is to be awarded a knighthood “for services to industry and charity” (Cronyism claims as at least seven Tory donors included in honours list, 29 December). Griffin felt he deserved “some recognition” as, during his stewardship of the firm “no driver was found guilty of any serious offence”.
If this is now recognised as a qualification for awards, I also feel that I deserve some recognition as, in about 25 years of owning chainsaws, I have never been involved in either a massacre nor the felling of a significant sycamore. To whom should I apply?
Nick Broadhead
Liverpool
• Justin Welby is rewarded with a knighthood for his “work on the coronation of King Charles III”. Conducting coronations is in the job description of archbishops of Canterbury. It is a task they are likely to be required to undertake once, in careers lasting many years.
Dressing, feeding and toileting residents with dementia and double incontinence are in the job descriptions of the care staff in residential homes. Those are tasks they are required to undertake every day. They are rewarded with low pay and, now, restrictions on their ability to bring family members to this country to join them while they continue serving some of our most deprived fellow citizens. O tempora! O mores!
John Weeks
Weston Lullingfields, Shropshire
• Should we have a system in place where a prime minister is limited in the number of names they can have on their resignation honours list? Should they be restricted to one for every month in office?
Forty-nine days would allow two names, 63 would have allowed three. Add an overall limit of perhaps 20 or 30, and we could avoid the farce of giving a free hand to someone who held office for less than one school term.
Andy Bebington
Croydon, London
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