I DON’T always agree with Fly in the Ointment, but I did last week with his tirade about the honours system.

I would just add that, although many ‘ordinary people’ do indeed get honoured, all the top honours (eg knighthoods) go to the people that Fly mentioned, such as sportsmen, actors etc, who are just doing their chosen and very wellpaid day jobs (unless they’re political cronies or donors, of course).

All the bottom-end honours go to people who give up huge amounts of time to do amazing voluntary/ charity/social/educational work etc or endure very low pay in the same sort of areas.

I think it should be the other way round.

I also frankly cringe at our honours still being named after a now totally obsolete (not to say embarrassing) concept of Empire.

Geoff Holman Cheshire