Prime Ministerial Musical Chairs and Election Roundabout

Mr David Cameron called us up a few days ago, as he sometimes does, and asked whether we could give some thought to what should happen if a Prime Minister stepped down, or died, whilst in office. Was it fair, he said, that his successor should just carry on without calling an election?

One of our best staff members was detailed to think about this. Elections are so much fun that we can't do without them. And he came up with the idea that a new election would have to be held within six months. This is not a new idea, but one which comes with a proud heritage. It used to be the case that if the monarch died, elections had to be held. The last time this happened was when King William IV died in 1837. And what was good for King William, the nation's fattest ever ruler, must be OK for us now.

Now it seems to us that Mr Cameron considers that the Prime Minister is the new King, or Queen. It is such an important role, particularly if he happens to win, that any change would need new elections for some reason.

Some people in the department wondered about this. They said that surely it was up to Parliament to decide when to call elections, and if such a rule existed, it would mean that we might have a Prime Minister who hung on in office even when terribly ill, just to avoid an election. Or even one who when dead was wheeled into the Commons to answer questions via a ventriloquist.

But most of us felt that the idea was excellent - we briefed Mr Cameron immediately - and he was so delighted that he made a speech about it.

Another victory for our hard-working team.

Volcanic Reaction

You will not be surprised that the Department has been working night and day to find an answer to the crisis caused by Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull erupting suddenly and preventing half a million British citizens returning to their rightful abode.

The reason for this is nothing to do with the fact that most of them are not needed anyway, but that aircraft are unable to fly at a sufficient altitude to avoid the clouds of volcanic ash spewed out by the said volcano.

Well, we have an answer.

Send out ships

At our suggestion, what is left of the Royal Navy is steaming to the aid of our citizens in such far away places as France and Spain. They are being brought back, whether they want it or not, layered below decks, and scourged where appropriate with the cat.

The three ships sent can each manage 600 evacuees, and this means that only around 800 journeys will be needed, so in around three years, the job will be done.

We are terribly proud to have been entrusted with the management of this project. We know that anxiously awaiting wives, children and parents will be waiting for their loved ones. Some will even care about them.

We will bring them back.

We're getting married in the morning....

The Department was asked by the parliamentary opposition to come up with something which would promote the institution of marriage in this land of ours as apparently loads of people just can't be bothered with it.

We asked around and apparently the huge cost of weddings puts a lot of people off.

We were informed that the average cost of a wedding was around £15,000. So why not give married couples an incentive that will pay for it? At £150 a year, by the time that 100 years had passed, the wedding would be wholly subsidised by the taxpayer.

And although that seems quite a long while, no-one would accuse us of short-termism.

We were delighted to hear that our thinking has been adopted by the Conservative Party. There will be an additional tax allowance to help married couples pay for their weddings just as we suggested.

This will be paid for by a levy on banks who will then presumably pass this on to borrowers, including those who borrow to finance their weddings. It's a neat circular solution which once again demonstrates our huge value as a thinktank.

Out of the Red Box thinking

We are delighted to say that some of our ideas have been taken up this year by the Chancellor and incorporated into what will sadly probably be his last Budget speech. We have been working again on the difficult question of Stamp Duty Land Tax (vulgarly known as Stamp Duty) and we've come up with a winner.

As you will know now from the reports of the Budget, as from tomorrow, you won't pay any Stamp Duty if you pay £250,000 or less and are a "first-time buyer". That's defined as someone who:

• is buying his or her first home (which must be used as such), and if they are both buying both of them must be buying their first home;
• and cannot have owned a property anywhere in the world.

That's great news of course. A few people have commented, cruelly in our view, that there is no way of telling whether someone is a first-time buyer or not.

We have an answer to this irritating cavil. We propose that people who are not first-time buyers should also be exempted from Stamp Duty, and then there will be no incentive for them to pretend that they are first-time buyers. Clever, eh?

As an arm of of the Civil Service, we are expected to be, and are, absolutely neutral between the various political parties scrabbling for votes in the months ahead. So it will be no surprise to you that we are doing our bit to shape policy not just for our current Government, but for the clowns due to replace them next year.

And what fun we have been having.

We believe very strongly in education here. Some of us have degrees and things; and when the Conservative Party's Education Spokesperson Mr Gove rang us up and asked us for our cutting edge thinking about schools, we said we had never heard of him. But he was quite persistent and so we asked him to pop in.

The big problem, he said, in our schools, is unruly behaviour. Schoolchildren are really naughty nowadays; always ragging around and not doing their homework. So what they need is discipline. In a brainstorming session one of our staff came up with the idea of sending troops into the classroom, initially to restore order, and then to help establish a framework for the school to manage its own affaits again. It has been tried in Iraq and Afghanistan, and so it should work in Doncaster.

The problem is that we are short of troops right at the moment. And then came a moment of ultimate clarity and inspiration. The Conservatives have recently forged links with a Latvian political party with access to the services of a cadre of experienced, if a little elderly, soldiers used to following orders, and devoted to discipline....

Local Homes for Local People

Now at last we can reveal what we have been working on for so long. The Prime Minister's announcement yesterday of proposals to prioritise local housing for people who have lived in the area for longest is the cumination of months of careful research and consideration.

There are some people who will be unkind about this proposal: who will carp that it will take us back to the days of the Poor Law (Amendment) Act of 1834. They will allege that local authorities will assess need on the basis of residency and will drive the sick and needy across borough boundaries. That will not happen. Times have moved on. We now have a network of public transport which will allow the removal (and I use a technical term) of alien indigents in comparative comfort.

By adding a further layer of enquiry to the already complex mass of rules relating to housing need, additional delay will be built into the system, which of course will mean additional housing will become available through the death of some applicants and existing occupiers.

This seems to us to be a win-win situation, although the question of the burial of non-locals at the expense of residents is one we propose to address next. It is complicated by the general refusal of bus and train operators to allow corpses to purchase tickets or occupy luggage racks.

Remembering Ruth Kelly

It would be wrong if those of us who are devoted to the Department's work did not say a few kind words about Ruth Kelly, whose departure from ministerial office and intended stepping down as an MP ends an era during which the Department has risen from an "idea" unconsciously held by a few to a great organ of State.

Her guidance and input over the last few years has been instrumental in our work. Without her backing, projects such as the Home Information Pack, which she developed from its Prescottian beginnings, against the spirited opposition of the entire property industry, to its current iconic status as a White Elephant, would have been forgotten.

She has been tireless in her support of concepts which we adore. Replacing Trident with another prestigious, albeit expensive, deterrent to aggressive moves by Belgian and Andorran regional expansionists; introducing identity cards to ensure that terrorists are encouraged to identify themselves; and the introduction of biofuels, which will ensure that food prices are maintained at a high level (which will benefit farmers and supermarkets) as most arable land will be turned over to growing crops for fuel production. Most recently, she has championed a third runway at Heathrow, which we have always insisted is a necessary pre-requisite for a fourth runway.

She will be sorely missed here, where she was a frequent visitor and a mentor to our staff.

Addressing House Price falls our way

Many readers may be slightly surprised that the press failed to report the work done by the Department in formulating the Government's response to the stagnation in the housing market. The proposal to raise the stamp duty threshold to £175,000, which only costs around £600m per annum, is a cheap way of ensuring anyone whose property is worth between £175,000 and £185,000 will be unable to sell it for its full value. We are delighted that this idea was accepted by the Treasury and the Prime Minister, and we are confident there will be more work for us in this vexed area shortly.

An Interview with the Director

Sir Kevin Grapplewraithe is the senior official in the Department. We are pleased to bring you this interview with the Department's Media Co-ordinator, Tania Hyde.

TH "Sir Kevin, can I start by asking you a little about the Department, and how it came into being?"

KG "Of course. In many ways we are a spin off from the amazingly successful Office for the Deputy Prime Minister. You will recall that under John Prescott it was a hothouse for ideas which were quite wonderfully silly. Well, when it all closed down, we thought that we needed to take the very best of that Office, and concentrate the best practice which we had developed over the preceding few years in one place. We also widened our remit to include aspects of Government, and so the Department was born."

TH "And who do you report to?"

KG "The Department reports directly to the Prime Minister. We feed our ideas into his work at the highest level. And he and his colleagues look to us for inspiration, particularly reactive inspiration. You won't have missed the insignia on our crest: a knee bent, filled with pent up energy to be released in the form of a jerk."

TH "Have you drawn staff from other areas of Government?"

KG "I think I can say that we have managed to recruit a first class team. We have managed to secure a few key staff from the Ministry of Defence who had been involved in arms procurement contracts: they are currently working on ways of expanding our defence capacity so that our armed forces can deal with insurgencies in Surrey and Bedfordshire, which are seen as weak areas. The two new aircraft carries which will be commissioned are partly down to their work. Almost the entire Home Information Pack thinktank came over, which has helped us with our
mental disabilities quota. And we have trawled the Treasury for the very best they have. And we have other key staff, from the DTI, the DOE and the DCSF. "

TH "What has been your greatest triumph so far, Sir Kevin?"

KG "I was wondering when you would ask. Surely it is obvious. The Northern Rock Nationalisation, of course. At a stroke we have successfully invested billions of pounds of taxpayer's funds in a very silly project. The opportunity was too good to miss. Now, the Government has its own mortgage provider who can of course finance other Government initiatives, such as the aircraft carriers. By upsetting the shareholders, the message that improvident investment is to be discouraged is underlined."

TH "But surely this has put taxpayer's funds at risk?"

KG "Yes, that is surely the point. There's no fun without risk. Besides, we are also taking steps to reduce the quantity of taxpayer's funds, which will surely reduce the risks."

TH "I don't quite follow you."

KG "The proposal to defer stamp duty was ours of course. A brilliant master stroke. Hundreds of thousands of people will receive a bill for several thousand pounds a few months after they have purchased their homes. Many won't be able to pay, and this will reduce taxpayer's funds. You might think that idea came from one of our Treasury experts, but no: a former assistant adviser to Ruth Kelly worked all this out. A genius."

TH "Some say that silly ideas are past it. How true is that?"

KG "It's codswallop of course. Silly ideas have played a part in our lives for ever. We even have one of the children of the staff working on the 1950s groundnut scheme working for us to carry forward this proud heritage. I believe her father also advised Eden during the Suez Crisis. Silly is what I call a cultural constant."

TH "What are you working on at the moment?"

KG "I can't give you all the details: Official Secrets Act and all that, but I can say it's something to do with cheese."

TH "Many thanks, Sir Keith. I hope we will able to interview you again some time."

Introduction to the Department

We are terribly proud to be able to publish this, official, Blog from the Department for Silly Ideas. We are at the heart of British Government, informing its every move and ensuring that our proud nation leads the world in creativity of an inane variety. We are the answer to that often phrased question: "who on earth thought of that?"

We hope to use this Blog to showcase our cutting edge work over the years to come.