IT FILLED 16 crowded column inches. And if we wished to present our monarchy as a Ruritanian pantomime worthy of Walt Disney, nothing better could be devised.

To Charles Stewart, footman Royal Lodge, Leslie Chappell, Page of the Presence (the Queen Mother's), Mrs Jacqueline Meakin (senior dresser, ditto), and numerous others - the Royal Victorian Medal.

To Robert Williams, staging for the Queen's concerts, Deborah Taylor, project manager ditto, Commander Michael Messenger, policing jubilee weekend, and numerous others - Lieutenant of the Royal Victorian Order. To Bruno Peak, beacons, Wilfred Scott, fireworks, Peter Maniura, Producer Prom at the Palace, and numerous others - Member of the Royal Victorian Order.

These are a just a selection of the honours handed out by the Queen to people who worked for the Queen Mother or Princess Margaret, or contributed to the QM's funeral or the Queen's jubilee weekend. Every member of the QM's gun carriage party, and every bearer of her coffin either received the Royal Victorian medal or was apppointed a member of the Royal Victorian Order. Michael Brown, in charge of London Transport over the jubilee weekend, and Richard Charlesworth, who laid on Rolls Royces and Bentleys, also became members of the RVO.

What a farce. Wouldn't (warm) letters of thanks have sufficed? Organising a chain of beacons and an outdoor concert might be huge achievements, but many "ordinary" people, juggling commitments of family and work, perhaps with sick relations also to care for, manage greater feats every day.

But here's the crunch. Two days after this ridiculous list was published, it emerged that Britain has vetoed the award of a medal for bravery to the surviving Royal and Merchant Navy seamen who protected vital convoys in the Arctic during the Second World War.

Though sailors who performed a similar role in the Atlantic received a medal, their Arctic counterparts were overlooked. Russian seamen, however, received a medal, and in gratitude to their British counterparts, the Russia government now wishes to present their medal to Britain's surviving 1,600 wartime Arctic seamen.

Rejecting this generous offer - a bonus from the ending of the Cold War - strikes me as a shoddy insult to Russia and our war veterans. A quiet word from Her Majesty to Tony Blair at his next Royal audience could ensure that those who faced death to protect convoys that successfully delivered 22,000 aircraft and 13,000 tanks to Eastern Europe, helping significantly to turn the course of the war, are as honoured as latterday servicemen and women who merely carried an old lady's coffin.

FOR the next 18 weekends, all but a few passengers on the West Coast main line will be obliged to use buses for parts of their journey. The only exceptions will be Labour Cabinet Ministers, MPs and delegates travelling to the party conference in Blackpool, for whom Virgin trains will provide a through service. If they are true to their party's supposed egalitarian principles, the Labour worthies will insist on experiencing the disrupted journey faced by all other travellers.