It’s all about meme: Top 10 Things I would never do…

Grrr. Iain Dale has started one of these meme thingies about 10 Things I Would Never Do, and now Rachel has tagged me. I was tempted to respond ‘take part in blog memes about things I would never do’, but Tim Worstall has beaten me to it.

It’s a bit difficult in that, if I’m honest, there are few limits to what I might be prepared at least to consider if the price were right; ah! That’s one of them:

10) Involve myself any seriously criminal enterprise without first considering the likelihood of being caught and convicted, how securely I could stash away the proceeds in such an eventuality and what this would translate to as an annual rate for going to prison.

Let’s see. Nine to go.

9) Become a Protestant

(‘I said that I had lost the faith, Stephen answered, but not that I had lost self-respect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?’ James Joyce, Portrait of the Artist)

8 ) Support the bans on fox hunting and on smoking in public places, or the introduction of ID cards, or the government’s constant war of attrition against civil liberties and the rule of law.

7) Appear on Reality TV.

6) Break a professional confidence (or a personal confidence unless there’s a crime of which I particularly disappove involved).

5) Be interviewed by a tabloid newspaper, no matter how much money they offered me.

4) Become a member of the ‘decent left’.

3) Bet on the National Lottery.

2) In the improbable event I had the money, give a soft loan to the Labour Party.

1) Put up Christmas decorations before Christmas Eve or leave them up after Twelfth Night.

Right. Whom shall I tag? Chicken Yoghurt, Mr Eugenides, A Big Stick and a Small Carrot, Between the Hammer and the Anvil, Pickled Politics, nourishing obscurity, The Magistrate’s Blog, Europhobia, Jarndyce, Definition Britain