If it please your Honour...?

Today is a celebration of that dissapearing species, a man described in most of the papers this morning as a 'British Boffin'



I've been part of the campaign for 6 years to get Tim Berners-Lee knighted. He's an extraordinary man; who besides inventing the web and making this blog possible, has been odd among the digerati in never seeking to profit from his invention. Tim didn't file patents, incorporate start-ups or license the technology of http and html to the NASDAQ luminaries. Were it not for Tim's philanthropic vision of shared learning the world would be a very different place. It's a tribute to him that he never climbed inside the bubble which would burst so spectacularly 8 years later.



A knighthood for a man such as this, or Martin Evans, the brilliant stem cell pioneer - means so much more to me than the myriad honours doled out to the assorted showbiz has-beens for Services to Entertainment (...and Never Getting Caught Doing Coke in the Service of Panto).



Though I think it's fantastic that the Rugger team got a boot in on the honours...and still no rumours of spit roasting; I can't help feeling it premature, impatient even. They are somehow less formidable on the pitch for all their medals. I imagine Jason Robertson breaking into a fast pelt down the wing and legions of Aussie backs genuflecting and declaring sarcastically: "After you Mi' Lord"



The honours used to inspire us by lifting up the people the Establishment wanted us to become. Lately the emphasis has changed such that it's a way for Tony to show our Monarch that we'll choose our own heroes. Lollipop ladies and Milkmen. People that are demonstrably straight kind of guys. I think this often misses the point of the excercise and does a disservice to those that have bothered to go out and acheive real and inspirational greatness.