A matter of honours

The UK New Year's honours list can sometimes seem to be buggins's turn, but even discounting the promise of a valedictory award, the choice of Queen's Police Medal going to Cressida Dick seems a little insensitive. Ms Dick runs the specialist crime wing at the Met -- so far, so uncontroversial -- but the fatal 2005 shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes at Stockwell tube station happened on her watch. Should this matter?

There does not seem to be much consistency in how public officials are treated: some get rewarded with gongs, others get the boot, often dependent on how the media story plays out.

Perhaps the system of awarding honours is at fault. Would a peerage, say, be appropriate for:

• an intelligence officer overseeing a flawed national security issues;
• a City fat cat nursing a huge annual bonus;
• a civil servant caught up exclusively in party political services?

And would whistleblowers be rewarded so handsomely? One even blew the lid off the award-giving process.

Maybe discrete in-house retirement gifts for controversial recipients would be less likely to attract negative media attention.