EVEN THE 2008 NEW YEAR'S HONOURS LIST IS POLITICALLY CORRECT

Looking through the New Year's Honours List web-site (link), it was bemusing to see that when the Cabinet Office listed the percentages of people who received Honours, they published this fact:-

There are 378 successful women candidates in the list, including 6 Dames, 32 Cubes and 4 CBS. This represents 39% of the total, the same as the last List but still higher than the historic norm.

It is surely irrelevant, in this allegedly world of equal opportunities, what the gender breakdown of those Honoured are. It should go to those who deserve an Honour and that should be all that counts.

As the Government is monitoring and publishing a gender breakdown, it means they are likely to have targets and these targets would be based on increasing the number of women who receive Honours. If the Government felt gender was irrelevant, they would not be monitoring it.

In the PC world that this Government inhabits, which is resolutely anti-equality, it is likely that some women may have been given an Honour whilst some men who were more deserving did not. This would have been done to boost the numbers of women receiving an Honour. It is a cynical point of view but the Government's record suggest it is a realistic one.