Tag Archives: april fool

Paul Walter

Lib Dem April fools sail closer to the truth?

By Paul Walter | Tue 2nd April 2024 - 11:15 am

Well done to Lib Dem Voice editorial team member Mary Reid, who once again excelled at the subtle April Fools post on this website. “Another bank holiday?” stimulated about 30 comments debating the whys and wherefores of Bank Holidays and Saint Days, down to a spat about the pronunciation of “Æthelthryth”. We did think that proposing a variable bank holiday for the Prime Minister’s Birthday and one for Flora Poil, the “Victorian social reformer” might give the game away.

Party President Mark Pack had me going with his news that the party has a new phone app for leaflet delivery. The article was typically Mark Packish in its attention to detail. It was when I got to the paragraph about leaflet orientation that I checked the date of the article:

But the very best part of the app is the set of icons that appear as you approach each letterbox on your delivery round. Behind the scenes, Connect data (supplemented by data from Wintringham 1) and demographic information from public sources such as the census is used to tell you which way round to orient the leaflet: is the person likely to be at home, and so the leaflet should land on the doormat headline towards the door so that they can easily read it when they come to the door, or is the person likely to be away, and so the leaflet should land headline away from the door, so it’s facing the right way when they come home?

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Posted in Party policy and internal matters | 5 Comments
Caron Lindsay

Happy April 1st!

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 1st April 2023 - 12:00 pm

We hope you enjoyed our traditional offering as much as we enjoyed putting it together.

The star of the piece, our party President Mark Pack, had his own news splash on Ed Davey’s battlebus with a difference.

And so the party’s cheese-merchants-in-chief have been bashing around ideas to replace a traditional battlebus with something more eye-catching.

Which is why that local election launch featured Ed Davey in a tractor.

If you watched very closely, you’ll have seen that he wasn’t driving it, but rather had a driver beside him, a press officer squeezed in behind them both next to a compact coffee machine, with a trailer pulled along behind loaded up with a group of mannequins.

For the choice of a tractor wasn’t a subtle jibe at the previous Conservative MP for Tiverton and Honiton. Rather, it was a test for doing a leader’s election tour by tractor.

Neil Fawcett, who also featured briefly in our piece, made his own announcement on Facebook, presumably to detract attention:

Two recent events have triggered a decision I have been mulling over for some time:
1 The refusal by Party President Mark Pack to allow an emergency meeting of the FCEC to discuss my proposal that we should use an electric tractor, rather than a diesel one, for the recent ‘blue wall’ stunt;
2 The release of the frankly excellent album, I Saw, A Star Behind Your Eyes, Don’t Let It Fade Away, by my talented Green councillor colleague Robin Bennett. (Fans of the Byrds, CSNY etc. will love it.)
As a result, I will be switching to join the Greens with immediate effect.

Given that Neil is genuinely indispensable, I’m very glad this is an April Fool.

One of my personal favourites was the Scotsman’s scoop of a new statue of Nicola Sturgeon to be erected in the Scottish Parliament. One of the big real news stories in Scotland at the moment is the absolute horlicks the SNP Government has made of building ferries but every cloud appears to have a silver lining:

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Posted in Op-eds | 8 Comments
John King

The lighter side of Brexit – why we staged our April 1st satire

By John King | Sun 1st April 2018 - 12:01 pm

“The town that wants its own Brexit” was of course a spoof story, but the people are real enough. For Dick Vos read Richard Vos, Liberal Democrat party organiser for Stratford- upon-Avon. Jack Prince, in case you didn’t guess, is myself. We are members of Stratford4Europe, one of the more active and dynamic of the regional pro-European groups.

What we were aiming to do was to inject a bit of humour into the Brexit debate, which has got somewhat bogged down in sterile circular arguments. Humour can cut through the ice where intellectual arguments fail. It can also be therapeutic. Laughter is the best medicine, as they say. So in healing the wounds of a deeply divided nation, it should have some value.

We have certainly found that is true in the case of the Brexit café, a local initiative pioneered by Sophie West which has brought together Remainers and Leavers for friendly discussions. Whilst not comedy, this relies on good humour. At the national level there are initiatives such as the ‘Number 10 Vigil’ – live songs and entertainment featuring a lookalike Boris Johnson, which is no longer confined to Downing Street but has been travelling around the country on the Brexit Truth Bus.

Satire is often the best way to make serious points. For example, the folly of the First World War was poignantly highlighted by the film “Oh! What a Lovely War”, and with no loss of respect for the great fallen. Similarly “The town that wants its own Brexit” highlights the constraints of parochial thinking, with no loss of respect for Leavers.

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 3 Comments
Caron Lindsay

The best of today’s fake news

By Caron Lindsay | Sat 1st April 2017 - 12:00 pm

We hope you enjoyed our little bit of April 1 fun – although from the comments it seems that some took it seriously. Anyone want to have a guess as to which member of the team came up with this? I got it wrong when I read it for the first time. I then asked the rest of the team and got a variety of answers – but with two main suspects. The author has, since I first wrote this,  revealed themselves on Facebook – so if you’ve seen that, don’t spoil it.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem that the Government’s Brexit strategy was a slow-burning April Fool after all.

Here are some delights of the day that I’ve found. Feel free to add any others that tickled your fancy in the comments.

First up, I always knew that Neil Fawcett was a rascal, but how dare he seek to deprive us of the gently soothing rhythm of the risograph producing our leaflets.

Secondly,  Mark Pack is very good at challenging our core assumptions. He suggests here that we may be about to campaign FOR potholes. 

Iceland Foods are now doing frozen flowers, apparently:

And Aldi Scotland has health and safety in mind.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged | 13 Comments

Lib Dem declared winner of April Fool’s Day

By Raif Pollo | Wed 1st April 2015 - 8:09 pm

Will & Tim friends againAn intern working in Catherine Bearder MEP’s office has been declared the ‘winner’ of April Fools’ Day by the Huffington Post website.

Intern Tim Reynard cooked up the prank over breakfast, and texted Oxford West & Abingdon Organiser Will Griffiths the following message:

Will, really sorry to do this, I’ve been working for Nicola (Blackwood, the Conservative MP) since leaving Odeon, and the opportunity of an internship with the Lib Dems to compare parties was too good not to apply for.  Wish u all the best but I’m a Tory at heart and am due back in Nicola’s office today.  Sorry for such short notice, Tim.

Will’s instincts kicked in and, fearing that the Lib Dem campaign had been compromised, Will set to deleting all Tim’s access to databases, email etc.

He then rang Campaign Manager Neil Fawcett to tell him the news.  Neil, who had just said good morning to Tim in the office, took the news calmly, and asked Will to get himself straight in to the office.

By the time Will arrived, the rest of the office were in on the joke, and were busy pretending to be checking that nothing had been taken, and that emails had not been forwarded to the Tories.

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Posted in News | Also tagged , and | 15 Comments
The Voice

Well, it is April 1st

By The Voice | Wed 1st April 2015 - 12:00 pm

We’re pleased many of you enjoyed our little prank today.  To maintain the joke we kept all most of the comments in moderation, but have now released them, so you can go back and see who fell for it.

For some readers the penny only dropped when they read our new comments policy for today.

Here is a round-up of some other April Fools that we liked across the media:

The Guardian tried to get us to believe that Jeremy Clarkson had turned environmental campaigner.

Pink News told us that Nick Clegg had joined Grindr for the duration of the election.

And scientists at Cern say May The Force be with EU.

Mark Pack had a beautifully crafted piece about how the party was using automated technology. The first part was almost plausible. we rumbled it at the robo-calling and the end is hilarious.

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Posted in Selection news | Also tagged | 6 Comments
Helen Duffett

LDVideo: April (paywall) Fool

By Helen Duffett | Thu 1st April 2010 - 5:32 pm

In case you missed Lib Dem Voice’s April 1st joke:

Also available on YouTube here.

We told readers this morning:

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Posted in Humour | Also tagged and | 2 Comments
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