If you remove tiny factors such as affordability, legality, practicality, equality or realism, some of Steve Hilton's "blue sky thinking" ideas might sound reasonable.
The prime minister's strategy director has devised a number of radical solutions (most often to problems that do not exist) to help Cameron cut red tape and make further cost-savings.
According to the Financial Times, Hilton's wackiest ideas included abolishing maternity rights as well as all consumer rights legislation to help kickstart the economy into life.
He allegedly suggested that Cameron should ignore European labour rules on temporary workers – a decision that, if implemented, could have seen the prime minister breaking the law. A solution to long-term unemployment was to close all jobcentres and fund community groups instead.
Consumer rights legislation could be suspended for nine months, just to see what would happen. Presumably, suspending Cameron's and Hilton's pay for nine months (just to see what would happen) did not make the list.
Perhaps the best suggestion was for the government to purchase cloudbursting technology to up the hours of sunshine across the UK. Resulting headlines about Cameron even controlling the weather were perhaps too much for the PM to stomach.
Twitter has been quick to mock Hilton's ideas, the hashtag #blueskyhilton prompting a flurry of sarcastic tweets containing crazy, Hiltonesque suggestions for the government to consider. One user wrote: "Everybody on (any) benefit gets put in a Big Brother house, if they don't complete task no food for the week." Another suggested: "Team up with mobile operator to boost vit C intake in poor, hand out citrus fruit one day per week, call it Orange Wednesdays."
"Scrap benefits and open a megaworkhouse managed by Securicor," was suggested by another Twitterer, while my personal favourite was: "Corridors are the least productive part of a building, let's ban corridors, growth in no time".
So what do you think of Hilton's ideas? If the sky's the limit, what ideas would you suggest could revive our stuttering economy?
