The New Year's honours list is out, and in addition to the expected and well-deserved ONZ for former Prime Minister Helen Clark, there's also a nasty surprise: a knighthood for Doug Myers. For those who have been asleep for the last two decades, Meyers was a driving force behind the neo-liberal revolution in this country, and along with his Business Roundtable mates was responsible for driving the place into the ground (while laughing all the way to the bank, of course). His business behaviour meanwhile typifies the sort of corrupt, self-serving practices we have come to expect from New Zealand's business "leaders". Giving him an award smacks of National (and ACT - they demanded a position on the Honours and Appointments Committee as part of their Confidence and Supply Agreement [PDF]) rewarding their donors. Unfortunately, due to vehicles like the Waitemata Trust, which laundered National's donations and kept the identity of their wealthy backers from public scrutiny, we will never know how much he paid for it.
Still, there is one positive side: National is showing us all why we shouldn't have knighthoods. As if "Sir" Roger Douglas and "Sir" Michael Fay weren't enough...
