PLP supporter and pollster Walton Brown has called on the Government to stop colluding with the Queen's Honours list and to set up local awards instead.

Mr. Brown also found it ironic that Dame Lois Browne Evans had accepted a Damehood from the UK.

He told The Royal Gazette : "I don't want to make it personal but her party said for 30 years it was wrong to have those awards and now they are giving them out.

"I accepted that principal for all my adult life -- my view doesn't change just because the PLP is in power.

"I still think the Queen's awards are outmoded. There are some people that will never be recognised by them.

"Those really are our only national awards, the Queen's awards and one of our national heroes -- Roosevelt Brown -- will never be recognised by them.

"The guy who is responsible for everybody getting the right to vote in Bermuda, he would never accept the Queen's award under any circumstances, so he can never be properly recognised by this country.

"What we need to do is to create our own national awards.

"I believed and hoped the PLP were going to stop giving those out when they got elected.

"I find they are ill suited to this day and age. Take the OBE -- an Order of the British Empire -- the empire doesn't even exist.

"It's a meaningless, but it is meant to reflect the people's contributions to Bermuda but the means of recognising is ill-suited to the modern era.

"In fact in Canada they passed a law that you can't even receive those awards, if you receive them you can't use the title because they were so much against having those awards -- because it's so outmoded.

"We are in an age where colonialism has effectively ended except in 13 very small colonies.'' Mr. Brown said it was ironic that the PLP said Queen would be insulted when the UBP boycotted the opening of Parliament.

He said: "We send conflicting messages to young people.

"We tell them go out and get a good education, that education is your path to success.

"We give out all these scholarships and then we have the monarchy who only have their status for life through an accident of birth.

"We heap praise and deference on them simply because of birth, that is contrary to the ethos that we're trying to create in our young people -- that you achieve things through your hard work, not some fluke of birth.

"We should put up symbols that unify rather than divide. When I go into cabinet office and I see the Queen looking down on me I find that very oppressive. It's completely inappropriate.'' Mr. Brown said it was time to change the November Queen's Birthday holiday into something with a Bermudian flavour.

"We could call it national heroes day -- anything else other than the Queens' Birthday. We don't have to lose the holiday - it could be changed tomorrow.

"We changed the May holiday which was also for a Queen's birthday. There's no holiday in England for either of these but we have two holidays for two different Queens here.'' Last night Dame Lois Browne Evans said local awards in the form of national heroes honours were on the cards as soon as Bermuda got independence. "But right now we are still a colony,'' she added.

She said she had accepted the Damehood when the PLP was in power after earlier turning down a CBE after listening to the advice of her children.

"I checked with my children and they said after all the rudeness and abuse in 37 years I should take it.'' Dame Lois also said former PLP leader Freddie Wade had said if she had been offered a Damehood rather than a CBE in Opposition it would have been a different matter.

Race activist and pundit Dr. Eva Hodgson, who herself accepted a Queen's Certificate and Badge of Honour, in 1999, said: "As long as we are a colony it makes sense to accept the Queens' awards -- we are a colony so why shouldn't we take them? "The Queens' honour have an international significance, possibly in any country but certainly within the commonwealth.

"That was my position when the PLP crucified one of its founding fathers Hugh Richardson for taking one.

"I made the same comment when Dame Lois Browne Evans took hers but I was rather shocked a month or so ago when I joined the PLP and saw their constitution and discovered it said members must not take Queen's honours.''