One of the problems of modern newspaper publishing is the question of how to fill the blank pages of the newspaper every day. After all, even though there’s a lot of news out in the world, journalists only have a finite amount of time each day to turn reality into news, so sometimes they’re glad when the news comes prepackaged for them and it’s even better when it’s not just a press release, but an entire study allowing them to quote a whole host of spurious facts, stick in a couple of pictures and they’ve filled a page with the news that watching four or more DVDs a day can help lower cholesterol.

So, as the demand for news has increased, so the number of studies conducted has risen and the number of people carrying them out has grown to. No longer the sole preserve of the ivory towers of academia, just about anyone can call themselves an Institute or a Foundation and start pushing out their own factoids to an eager and hungry press. Everyone’s a winner – the journalist fills his space and gets to the pub earlier, the Insitute in question gets a mention in the press and a plug for their latest pamphlet and the paper’s readers get a few more vague statistics to quote in ill-informed pub discussions.

It’s not limited to the news sections of the papers either – where would sports pages be without the surveys of which flavour pies are most preferred by football fans, for instance? Even columnists, opinionators and leader writers can have their work eased for them by a well-timed report – I’m certain anyone doing a research project about Sure Start must have a momentary frisson of excitement when they realise that they can guarantee their name appearing in the papers if they send a copy to Polly Toynbee. Indeed, just about any columnist with a point to make can normally find the research from somewhere to back it up.

However, there is one need that isn’t being addressed, especially with the recent development of many newspaper columns into denunciations of things the author doesn’t like. Too often, they’re forced to resort to criticising nebulous figures who believe in the antithesis of the author’s beliefs and aren’t able to bring up someone concrete to make people believe that the threat they’ve identified is real. So, why not have an organisation that specialises in coming up with those arguments that no one else will make? One that will publish the unpublishable and allow it to be torn apart?

Yes, the time has now come for the Straw Man Institute. For far too long, columnists (and bloggers, of course) have been left to generate their own straw men to argue against, with the lack of effort immediately apparent to all expert observers. However, the Straw Man Institute will ensure that everyone has someone to shout against and denounce. Be it calling for an immediate surrender to the terrorists and all their demands while we all convert to Islam or calling for the whole of the government to be privatised with the poor sold into slavery and the profits used to subsidise fox hunts, the SMI will make sure that those arguments are out in the public arena and attributable to someone. For far too long, straw men have been ad hoc creations, summoned only for one article or argument and then dismissed. Now, with the SMI, the straw man will take its rightful place alongside all the other nebulous concepts that drive insitutues, foundations and think tanks. Let a thousand straw men bloom!