April Fool? Any more?

[stevensfo]

I know very little about football but I think I've spotted the first one:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/germany-invok ... 00672.html

The giveaway for me was simply:

The Telegraph has learnt that back-channel negotiations have already taken place between the DFB and the FA, but talks broke down when Germany said it would only drop the little-known rule if England admitted the disputed extra-time goal in the 1966 World Cup final never crossed the goal line and agreed to a replay.

Steve

[Bminusrob]

New Scotland hate drime law.

[DrFfybes]

Germany decriminalising Cannabis?

Chuck Norris died?

[stevensfo]

This one is just plain silly:

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/unbe-leaf-abl ... 00242.html

Steve

[88V8]

Our next PM, perhaps.

V8

[stevensfo]

Please someone, tell me that this is an April fool.

In this day and age, nothing surprises me any more.

An Exmouth resident has become the first person to be fined for urinating in the sea under new legislation to protect rivers and seas from pollution.
Penny Spender, an avid sea swimmer, was issued a fine of £80 when she went for her usual early morning swim at the RNLI station in Exmouth.
...... A local resident, Frank Truman, an active environmentalist, said South West Water had ‘spilled’ sewage into Exmouth seas 97 times this year so far and has pumped sewage continuously for over 2,500 hours in the last 4 months. “You’d have to do a lot of wees in the sea to match that!”

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/exmouth-swimm ... 18692.html

Steve

[kempiejon]

Isn't the clue in the name?

[stevensfo]

Isn't the clue in the name?

Doh! Penny Spender.

Steve

[stevensfo]

Another one?

Worried officers have proposed setting up food banks for police recruits, The Independent can reveal, as one in 10 admit to relying on handouts.
Figures show that record numbers of police are struggling with food poverty and turned to food banks last year as wages stagnated.

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/living-hand-m ... 25576.html


Steve

PS They could have done a similar story about 'an apple for the teacher' and how teachers are encouraging it and opening greengrocer stalls to make ends meet.

[UncleEbenezer]

Isn't the clue in the name?

Doh! Penny Spender.

Steve

I'm sure I heard about that story some months back, and on an entirely different date. Not Ms Spender herself, but the idea that widdling in the sea was to be outlawed. The story works so much better on this auspicious date.

[bungeejumper]

Just for old times' sake: The BBC's penguin spoof from 2008. Terry Jones as David Attenborough...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4

Simply brilliant.

BJ

[brightncheerful]

I was brought up to think it was wrong to play April Fool's jokes because my father's birthday (strictly the anniversary of his birth) was 1 April. The first time my sister and I played a joke on him, we experienced his displeasure, which was enough to deter us never again.

[bungeejumper]

April 1st is also Iran's national day. I don't think they'll have seen the joke in that one either.

BJ

[stevensfo]

Just for old times' sake: The BBC's penguin spoof from 2008. Terry Jones as David Attenborough...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dfWzp7rYR4

Simply brilliant.

BJ

Terry Jones was also a well-known Historian and wrote a few books about Chaucer times.

I seem to remember a very old April Fool's joke about the spaghetti harvest in Italy. It was in B/W so a bit old. They showed spaghetti growing on trees and the Italians trying to harvest the spaghetti.

Steve

PS My late father told us about a joke they played on their mother in the 40 or 50s. Telephones could cause an electric shock, so you had to wear rubber boots and rubber gloves to answer the phone!

[bungeejumper]

I seem to remember a very old April Fool's joke about the spaghetti harvest in Italy. It was in B/W so a bit old. They showed spaghetti growing on trees and the Italians trying to harvest the spaghetti.

You mean this one? It's still out there. Swiss, but what the hell. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU

Aaah, 1957. When Britons were first venturing abroad in coach trips, and Italian wine always came in straw or raffia bottles which would soon be bedecked with romantic candles. And my primary school insisted that we should all write exclusively in so-called "italic script". (Ever so stylish, it was, but so slow and angular that we all had to abandon it when we got to big school and needed to take notes at speed. My illegible handwriting still bears witness to the panicky transition that ensued.)

Love the joke about needing wellies to talk on the phone. Speaking of Switzerland, I used to have to read the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (a bastion of stodgy right-wing cynicism) every day in the course of my job. And on one occasion the NZZ broke the mould by attempting an April Fool's Day gag. Shock horror!

Great news, the paper said. All those awkward hippy-trippy opponents of nuclear power could now choose to have 100% nuke-free electricity in their homes! Scientists had discovered that nuclear power produced electrical particles that rotated in an anti-clockwise direction, whereas good old-fashioned power went clockwise. So all that the anti-nuclear types needed to do was to buy a power socket that could filter out the offending particles, leaving only the clockwise power that any right-thinking person might want for his family.

It was the first time the NZZ had ever attempted a joke, and for all I know it might well have been the last. Nobody understood it, and thousands of people wrote in to try and order the adapters.

BJ