April Fools Day

It was very difficult reading the daily papers today to decide which of the bizarre adverts or news items were this year's April Fools Day jokes. I particularly enjoyed the photo of Alistair Darling in a newsagents checking his Srcatch Card Lottery ticket - the photo taken by one 'ROLF LOIPA' being a bit of a give away.

The BBC seems to have invested a few minutes making a filem of flying penguins off on their summer holidays to some tropical rain forest.

The one April Fool that did catch me out to begin with was the Today programme on Radio 4 at 7.45 a.m. I was still half asleep (well that's my excuse for being taken in!) - reporting that following the most successful Spring bird count completed by many thousands of RSPB members during the last weekend in January the RSPB are now hoping that their members will assist in trapping all the visiting Siskins so that the RSPB and BA can return them to Scandinavia. I was just lazily thinking the RSPB were more mad than usual when the report started to explain just how the trap would work and that BA would cope with flying the birds back home as they wouldn't need luggage - when the penny dropped. I was tempted to arrange a 'flash blog' to the BBC and inform them that we were so outraged by the idea of forcefully repatriating siskins that we'd cancelled our RSPB membership with immediate effect.