Take this:
Now take this:
Now imagine if this second one smelt nice too. I don't mean in real life - I'm sure she smells lovely. But if you were able to have a cut-out image of your gran hanging from the rear view mirror releasing granny smells - lavender, rosewater, a nice pot of tea and so on - wouldn't that be much nicer than the ubiquitous magic tree? Everyone loves their gran - they induce warm feelings in people and good memories. And if you got into a minicab with one of these hanging from the mirror, you know you'd be able to trust the driver. The same can't be said for drivers with cut-out trees that smell.
The cost of making these things? Well, a bloke I know can do you a thousand for £4,300. Or 10,000 for only 9 grand.
Feasibility rating: 6
Whilst there is an increased awareness of the environmental damage that is caused by getting food on to our shelves all year round, making the move to a localised diet is more difficult as we now expect to be able to eat fresh delicious fruit and veg whenever we want and can justify it to ourselves because we're eating more healthily as a result.
One way which might make people acknowledge the personal responsibility they have for environmental damage that importing this food causes, would be for the government to require all food providers to list the (rough) amount of CO2 that has been released in to the air in order to get that particular item to their shelves. It should be listed on the front of packs of fruit, or stickered on the food itself. Or perhaps it can be graphically demonstrated by illustrating the number of trees that the consumer would have to plant in order to offset their damage.
Feasibility rating: 7
I suspect that one of the most tedious parts of a cocaine dealer's job must be having to divvy up all the drugs into individual wraps that he or she has had to fold meticulously. It must be really time consuming and dull.
Which is why I'm sure they would appreciate pre-folded wraps which they could just buy from their local post office or WH Smith. And this presents a good opportunity for the government to get their anti-drug message across - if each wrap came with an image on the inside of Daniella Westbrook's face as seen above. As the drugs came to an end, her beaming healthy face would be staring back at the user.
Obviously this idea would work better if cocaine was ever legalised and the message could be enforced officially. But I think there might still be a way for the government to sell these wraps if they were positioned as tongue-in-cheek cult items coming from someone else, rather than government approved messaging. And drug dealers would probably appreciate the helping hand given the amount of other stresses they probably have to deal with.
Feasibility rating: 3
Most companies reward employees who demonstrate years of hard work and committed service with a sabbatical.
So why can't the government do the same with income tax?
After 25 full years of paying income tax, a person should be given a year off paying any income tax and NI on all income earned up to the upper level of the 25% band. So about £30k. Higher earners would still have to pay the higher rate on anything above that. It could be financed by an increase in the upper level of tax to 41% or 42% (although obviously there would still be a potentially negative impact on government finances as these two measures would probably have to be introduced at the same time).
A tax sabbatical would give an incentive for people to work and contribute over a long period of time, help challenge the black economy slightly, and also give a welcome boost to the economy each year as additional cash would be pumped into it. This year off would come for most individuals in their mid-to-late 40s, helping pay off mortgages, finance kids going to college etc.
The government could also further incentivise those people who put their money into savings or pensions rather than just blowing it all on yachting holidays.
Feasibility rating: 5
Members of the Diabetics for Jihad splinter group complaining, yesterday
I don't know much about making bombs and blowing up planes, but I know these two things:
1. Liquids and gels are currently seen as a huge threat following the planned Lucozade/iPod attack that was foiled. Any liquid or gel, no matter how small the amount, is banned from being taken on board planes.
2. As a diabetic, I am able to carry on board, with no inspection whatsoever, an awful lot of liquids and gels (insulin and such like), and a lot of electronic 'kit'.
So it seems to me like there might be a relatively straightforward way for terrorists to overcome their current hurdle if they are able to recurit some diabetic fundamentalists. I suspect that adapting the diabetic contents so that they become usable weapons should be pretty easy if they had been able to do it with lucozade and an ipod. And it would far easier for them to get these items on board planes than anything which is more obviously a liquid or gel.
Feasibility rating: 5
For years, the 'remix' has been a regular feature in music. Remixes have even been done on film with things like Jaaam - Chris Morris' extended remixed version of Jam whose 'audiovisual distortions of the original series introduced the musical remix concept to British television'.
As far as I know though the concept hasn't been applied to literature. Now I'm not really sure who this one's for - possibly the nice people at McSweeneys. But I wondered whether it would be be possible to get a group of authors to take an original short story, and remix it using the words of the original, to create new stories. I figure it has to be done on a short-story scale given the potential complexity of the task involved, although seeing someone remix a full novel might be interesting.
Feasibility Rating: 4
What I like(d) about Mastermind is the balance that is struck between the specialist subjects and the general knowledge. It is a perfect test of breadth and depth of knowledge.
Now this one's probably more for a pub with DJs rather than a big club, but I think you could challenge DJs in a similar fashion. I'd like to set up a weekly DJ-ing contest where 4 people have to DJ for 1/2hour each in turn with their own music (their specialist subject if you will). You then get them to DJ for half-an-hour each with a box of records that they haven't seen before (the general knowledge) covering a wide range of different music types. They get 5 minutes before they go on to look through them and then it's over to them.
And obviously they have to DJ whilst sat in a black chair like the one above.
Feasibility rating: 7
I'm off on holiday on Sunday.
So an idea a day is going to grind to a halt for two weeks.
One more idea tomorrow then nothing, nada, blank page for 14 days.
But hopefully on my return there'll be some more kicking round my head. And, who knows, maybe Canada will inspire some wholly different ones. Involving mounties and elks.
Innocent is a great brand, yadda yadda yadda. But I do worry sometimes that they might seem a little, well, pious. (Plus that whole moderating comments on the blog before they go on thing isn't really getting into the spirit of things is it? Anyway..)
Now, this might be a brand extension too far, but I think they have an opportunity for a range of indulgent foods which are fruit based but a little naughtier than their holier-than-thou fruit juices. So ice cream, chocolate etc. All would obviously contain some real fruit, and the other ingredients would be as high quality and natural as their current produce, but it would enable them to bring their good brand values to this guilty pleasure market. An Innocent Guilty range might also make people feel a little better about that lovely dessert or snack they're tucking in to. And make Innocent more money, obviously.
Feasibility rating: 6 (but probably 0 because it doesn't fit with what they really want to do)
Two polluters, yesterday, filling our lungs with their noxious gas
Celebrities are possibly the largest polluters on the planet. They're more likely to travel everywhere in SUVs (even when they spend half their lives harping on about the environment, like the two above), take private jets, work on lavish filmsets, spend time travelling the world to film premieres, give talks abroad (flying to Japan to talk about the environment in David Cameron's case) or just go on lots of fancy holidays.
Thanks to the paparazzi though, and the intrusive world we live in these days, it would be relatively easy to work out the damage they're each doing because they can never go anywhere in private. So it might be fun to have a website which tracks each celebrity's carbon footprint. The site could have a league table, and at the end of each year the most polluting celeb could receive 10 young saplings to plant to try and offset the damage. Or there could be a campaign run through the site to raise money to create a special Celebrity Conscience Forest, with plaques round each tree in honour of the worst-offending celebs.
(By the way, if this idea interests anyone, or if you just want to slag off celebrities, www.celebritypollution.com and its British counterpart, are both available for purchase here. At the time of writing, that is.)
Feasibility rating: 6
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