Did you get caught out by any? 2025 has been a bumper year for April Fools. Must be something about the insanity of the times that means half the stories the rest of the year seem like they should have appeared on April 1st.
At the Daily Sceptic we’ve compiled a round-up of the best we’ve spotted – and thrown in a few real stories that in a sane world should also be pranks. See if you can spot the difference. (If you see any we’ve missed email us here.)
- “TTE Recommendations for Future Pandemics” – On Trust the Evidence, Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson bring out recommendations for future public health scares, including: researching how best to keep a mask in place whilst eating and drinking; recruiting a police force to patrol the borders between nations to stop respiratory viruses from crossing without authorisation; and a new law that compels the public to practice meeting with a specific number of people according to the day of the month.
- “Police must tell suspects that arrest is not an April Fool’s joke” – Police officers have been told they must make clear to suspects that they are not playing an April Fool’s Day joke on them on Tuesday, as policing bodies are concerned suspects will assume they are being pranked if they are questioned for offences such as upsetting people on Twitter, according to the Telegraph.
- “Pheasant Awareness Training for Dog Owners” – From January 2026, all dog walkers venturing within three miles of a hedgerow will be required to complete the Pheasant Recognition and Deference Course (PRDC) — a rigorous programme designed to address what Whitehall sources describe as “an alarming deficit of canine respect towards Phasianus colchicus”, reports Country Squire Magazine.
- “British Empire taught Muslims homophobia, claims historian” – Islam was totes relaxed about sodomy until the wicked Christian British Empire came along and inserted homophobia into the Koran (or something like that), according to Diarmaid MacCulloch, Emeritus Professor at Oxford University, reports the Telegraph.
- “Spiked is delighted to announce our new podcast” – The Circle Jerk will feature three voices from across the political spectrum, chewing over the week’s news. Featuring Femi, the one with the mullet from Politics Joe and Rory Stewart’s wife. Available on all major platforms.
- “My mum in India was willing to lose everything to support my trans identity” – A touching story from the BBC, in which nothing says love like bankrupting your poor mother in India to live out out your fantasy of cutting off your bits.
- “Netflix’s Adolescence will be aired for free in secondary schools across Britain – as Director celebrates ‘we did it’” – Netflix’s compelling new documentary about how adolescent knife crime in Britain is being fuelled by ordinary working class white boys from stable families reading the internet is to be shown in school to all white boys in order to further demoralise them, the Government has confirmed, reports the Mail.
- “Senescence” – Following the controversial series Adolescence which divided critics, undeterred, Netflix has released a new mini-series Senescence which, as the name suggests, portrays the issue of toxic masculinity at the other end of the age spectrum. “What sets Senescence apart is its daring exploration of themes rarely touched in modern television — pension envy, late-onset bingo addiction and the psychological impact of daytime TV reruns,” says Dr Roger Watson in the New Conservative.
- “This is absolutely insane” – On X, Dan Wootton reacts to Sadiq Khan’s plan to permanently change the name of London’s Whitechapel station simply to Chapel after a council-funded report claimed “the existing designation reinforces racial stereotypes and gives in to a narrative of colonialism”.
- The Free Speech Union has an announcement to make:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (1st April 2025)
PRESS STATEMENT: The Free Speech Union is Leaving X (Formerly Twitter)
After long and careful deliberation, the Free Speech Union (FSU) has decided to leave X. This decision has not been taken lightly and follows a consultation with the Centre for Decolonising Knowledge at Sussex University, as part of wider efforts to refocus our operational priorities on social justice outcomes and deliver on our five-year plan to become the UK’s first truly ‘anti-racist’ trade union.
Recent developments on the platform make it clear that X no longer aligns with our values. For several months, we have been deeply troubled by the miasma of ‘whiteness’ that has enveloped the platform, dramatically increasing the volume of unfettered commentary, unauthorised satire, and – most distressingly – people disagreeing with us.
This trend towards so-called ‘viewpoint diversity’ has been tolerated – even encouraged – by the platform’s leadership, who appear to believe that ‘free speech’ includes views our General Secretary, Lord Young, finds personally irritating.
The FSU joined Twitter back in 2020 in the belief that it would be a safe space to publicise our successes, criticise government legislation and defend the speech rights of our members. But it has become something else entirely: a chaotic, unpredictable arena in which users engage in counter-speech, commit microaggressions and perpetuate hateful narratives that many of our staff find triggering.
While X’s relatively recent embrace of ‘free speech absolutism’ may appeal to some, we favour social media platforms with a more nuanced approach – ones that interpret Article 10 of the ECHR in the correct way: namely, by going above and beyond the Online Safety Act to silently de-amplify anyone whose politics we don’t share.
At the FSU, we may not agree with what you say about us, but we will defend to the death the right of Big Tech to ban you for saying it.
Effective from midnight on April Fools’ Day, we will be relocating to a platform more in keeping with our core principle of only posting in a progressive echo chamber, alongside other cloistered members of the metropolitan professional classes who regard ‘constant repetition of dogma’ as a synonym for ‘public dialogue’. You will therefore soon be able to find us on BlueSky.
Click here for further details about the FSU and our social media transformation strategy:
Cc: @elonmusk, @X, @GlobalAffairs
- “Vehicle fuel tanks to be limited to 20 litres by 2026, then 10 litres by 2030” – Did you see the new Ed Miliband press release that’s been doing the rounds?
- “Plans to Rename Quality Street ‘Equality Street’ to Mark Five Years Since George Floyd’s Death This Easter Send the Chocolate World into Pure Meltdown” – And of course, Steven Tucker’s hilarious piece for DS this morning.
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