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| | Guardian Unlimited Politics Whitehall Doing the honours the French way |
 | | Similarly to the orders of the British Empire, there are four ascending ranks: légionnaire, officier, commandeur, and grand officier, with a minimum service of 20 years needed to qualify even for the entry-level honour, thereby at least insitutionalising a concrete criterion the British system lacks. |
 | | The French system, meanwhile, dates from the Napoleonic era, when Bonaparte inaugurated the Legion d'Honneur to celebrate services to the French state, either through military endeavour or civil service. |
 | | Today's report recommends phasing out of the knighthoods over five years, and rationalising the existing 16 types of honour into simple Commander/Officer/Member for British Excellence, rather than Empire, since the concept of Empire is now "insensitive". |
| politics.guardian.co.uk /whitehall/comment/0,9236,1260502,00.html (6964 words) |
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