Queen’s “Oscars” [ Hollow Metal or Heavy Metal ?]
OBE* MBE** CBE*** ….etcetera. For services to stage, screen, sport , sponsorship and self-enrichment.
GC**** VC****** … For services to Queen and Country, valour, self-sacrifice and a fitting obituary.
Once again, dear subjects, Her Royal Majesty, The Queen’s , ” birthday honours”, or as our humble recipients like to call them, “gongs”, have been graciously received by a bunch of mummers and merchandisers. The glittering and hackneyed prizes for star-status, vainglory and evidently unashamed self-satisfaction. A polytheistic worship and cultural surrender to the multitude as they genuflect before the altars of frivolous ambition and naked publicity. Crude rewards make for a coarse people, begging your pardon, Ma’am, horses for courses. It’s hollow metal.
Our Universal Soldier, be forgiven for not being at the party for their pretentious charitable patronage, the philanthropy of guilt or the suasive facade of conscience. Your selfless bravery marked only by an etched name on the cemetery wall of the fallen in battle, far away in some foreign land. Joy and jubilation; whilst our haute couture courtiers of the stage, screen and sport drama-queen academies unite in self-gratification, self-congratulation and stoke the gravy-train of corporate idolatry and insolent fame, another soldier is lost, another family is told. Heavy metal.
Ironic; achievement and advertising, the incestuous bond of heroism and hedonism, paying lip-service to the congregations of sensation-seekers and secular sycophants. God Save the Queen…etcetera, etcetera.
“…but what kind of (culture) is it that confers the reward of eminence on those who use self-advertisement and vulgarity, mere [sensation], as their means to obtain it?” quoted from ” Our Culture, What’s Left of It?” Theodore Dalrymple, 1998
*Order of the British Empire **Member of the British Empire ***Commander of the British Empire ****George Cross *****Victoria Cross
Postscript
Perhaps the closet Mandarins at the Ministry of Medals, Culture and Trivia should be respectfully reminded, there ain’t no “Empire” anymore!
