The Queen’s Birthday Honours List has been released. Here are some of the highlights:

• Ruprecht von Fokk, head of the Institute of Business, was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to destroying the New Zealand economy. Under any just system the people responsible for the damage done to our economy since the 1980s would have long ago been driven out of our towns and villages by angry mobs wielding pitchforks and clubs. Continuing to spout discredited right-wing economic theory in these circumstances is truly courageous, so the award is well deserved.
• John Frobisher was made a Knight Companion to the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the Old Boys Network. His efforts to ensure success to those who went to the right school, played in the right sports teams, and had the right sort of upbringing, have been unceasing.
• Businessman Neville Hounslow has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to the Establishment, while making a tonne of cash and spending most of it on himself.
• Lady Augusta Smeers, the wife of richlister and philanthropist Sir Edmond Smeers, of Smeers Everlasting Batteries and Lubricants, has been made a Dame Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to society dinners, and for throwing an occasional crumb to the hoi polloi.
• Rockster Damian Jervill of hit band Hallelujah Bananas has been made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, for services to inoffensive middle of the road radio-friendly music. His band’s big break came when their song Neverending was used on a tampon ad, and after Prime Minister John Key bought their CD.

Many other people have received awards for simply doing what they were paid to do and were handsomely rewarded to do.

And some hard working community folk finally got recognition for the thankless service they put in every day. However, most of these will never become knights or dames, because a proper knight or dame doesn’t wipe shit from the arse of a sick or dying person, or live a life of penury while struggling to help the needy.

Meanwhile, disgruntled and embittered bloggers with an axe to grind, and who really should desist from posting petty and spiteful commentary about the honours system, have missed out again. They are reportedly hopeful that their sterling efforts to keep the politicians honest, while providing blistering and thought-provoking analysis of our political system, will be noticed in time for the New Years List.

Those blogger/s spoken to have confirmed that, while the Honours System ought to be abolished forthwith when we finally become a republic, and when we send the entire Royal Family and their assorted hangers-on to the scaffold, one might be tempted to think better of the institution that is the monarchy were one “on the inside”, so to speak.