If you have sufficient brass neck, and an extremely healthy bank account, losing an honour need not involve any greater inconvenience than having to order a new set of stationery.
But what I've learned along the way is that a joint honours student needs double the passion, patience and perseverance required to study a single honours degree.
The former shadow cabinet minister challenged other parties to follow his lead, saying the honours system needed to "reward selfless acts, not political and personal patronage".
"It is a shame to see Jim depart, but as we are focused on rebuilding a team capable of consistently competing for domestic honours, we need to have everyone at the club fully committed to bringing success back to the county," he added.
Codes of honour do need to evolve.
Mr Mandelson may have persuaded some of them that honouring it need not involve compromising the rule of law altogether.
"A story is like a magnet dragged through randomness," Yorke writes, but while he elegantly untangles the deepest roots of storytelling, he also honours the human need for truth and sense with some more superficial questions: why do series tend to "jump the shark" round about season three, for example, or why is clunky exposition – particularly in medical dramas – so appallingly comical?
There's no prize money, just a faint hope that these dubious honours won't need to be handed out again.
Jamil suggests those conversations sometimes need to happen during sex, and encouraged women to "act in honour of your needs" (that is, she mentions, as long as one feels safe).
It may have improved, as Michael White has argued, but I cannot agree that Britain in 2016 needs an honours system.
