The Ginger Rogers theory of information

I had a friend whose approach to entrepreneurialism was to take two separate things that seemed stupidly popular and somehow find a way to combine them. He thought karaoke was ridiculous; his friend thought 24-hour rolling news channels were daft. The two of them created a 24-hour karaoke channel in Asia – and sold it at a sizeable profit.

The idea of gynogenic climate change holds that the planet is warming up, but that it is women who are to blame

Following this model, I wondered if it might be a useful thought-experiment to contrive political theories which are annoying to people on both the left and the right. The theory behind this is simple: there must be a number of good ideas floating in the ether which will never be adopted simply because they repel everyone with either political affiliation. Ideas of this type, whatever their merits, are hence unlikely to be proposed by anyone with the power to enact them – which is precisely why they merit greater consideration. To qualify, any such idea must lose you friends at every point on the political spectrum.

My first attempt at this was to propose the concept of gynogenic climate change. This is a theory which holds that the planet is warming up, but that it is women who are principally to blame. Not only do they heat homes to an annoyingly high temperature (the gender divide in temperature preference is scientifically proven), but it is women who drive the greater part of all senseless material consumption. The amount spent worldwide on female fashion and beauty products exceeds worldwide expenditure on education. It is also women who are responsible for valuable resources which could be devoted to making ever larger televisions or craft beer being squandered on making Farrow & Ball paint and rosé wine.