Now that every last semblance of rationality has well and truly left the Brexit building, all I’m left with is a bunch of potential new TRIZ case studies. Every cloud of stupidity has some kind of silver lining I suppose.

Today’s started with an unusual situation while reading the paper this morning. Normally I love what John Crace has to say, and feel somewhat the opposite about Home Secretary, Sajid Javid. Today everything got flipped the other way.

Crace was having a go at Javid’s comment that the UK needs a policy that would ‘simultaneously ban and welcome immigration’. Crace, like most people, appears not to be able to comprehend the idea of a contradiction. So much so in this case that he used the apparent illogicality of Javid’s statement to highlight how ridiculous our politicians are these days. Still, I suppose it gave him an opportunity to repeat his witty Shrödinger’s Brexit label. Which I now – blinding flash of the obvious – understand to be a pretty good label for political contradictions in general.

Solving contradictions is the very core of breakthrough and innovation. In a political context it is exactly what I’ve been talking about when I rant on about ‘Third Way’ perspectives on society. Stop being bound by the tyranny of the ‘or’ and start actually thinking.

Crace is so far away from understanding this concept I think I have to re-calibrate just how far away TRIZ is from most people’s consciousness. Perhaps to the point that I sy to myself, if Crace doesn’t get it we really are doomed.

Javid expressed the contradiction, but then, as far as I can tell, he gets stuck. Yes, British society needs more and less immigration. But unless you can construct a model like this…

…you will end up with the usual half-arsed compromise non-solutions politicians always end up inflicting on us all.

I think we need another pair of new rules. One: no-one is able to enter politics until they’ve successfully completed TRIZ 101. Two: no-one is allowed to write about politics, Mr Crace, until they too have completed the same course. Then they might stop looking for cheap opportunities to regurgitate cute clickbait phrases and start actually helping to solve the contradiction so we can all move on to better things.

The John Crace column is here: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/11/brexit-debate-day-six-if-no-one-else-was-trying-why-should-the-saj