Karl Marx was such a middle-class snob that he
made his wife print cards with the words, "Jennie Marx, nee Baronesse
Westphalen". Clement Attlee, Herbert Morrison arid George Brown were
such good Marxists that they seized the coronet with both fists. Churchill
and MacMillan refused it, being representatives of a class society.
Someone after looking at the Queen’s Birthday Honours List remarked,
"English is the only language in which the plural of a word means
exactly the opposite of the singular".
Sir Bill Rylands appeared on television to accept full responsibility
for the 9,000,000 letters and cards riot delivered on Christmas Day. When
we asked our undercover man at Buckingham Palace why he had received a
knighthood after being responsible for such a mess. The reply was:
"The mess was not on a sufficiently large scale to justify a
peerage".
The corrupting element in politics is not money but vanity. The "Honours
list is a fearful weapon in the hands of the English. All that can be said
in favour of James Ramsay MacDonald’s tragic end is that he did not fall
to the lowest possible level - to the House of Lords.
