It's April Fool's Day again

DO YOU ever get the feeling that you’ve woken up in a parallel universe where it’s April Fool’s Day every day? It certainly seemed like that on Wednesday, St George’s Day, when I opened my super soaraway Sun to read that those irritating Europeans had snuck up on us overnight and unilaterally split the country into three Euro territories.

Actually, ‘unilaterally’ isn’t quite fair, because Wee Gordy Broon has long since sold our sovereignty down the river and we’re inexorably now part of a federal European super state. Why do you think he wouldn’t let us vote on it?

Still, it’s a bit of a shock to wake up in Huddersfield and find out that you’ve been forcibly twinned with Helsinki. (“Herring for breakfast again, Father?”) But that’s what’s happened, however extraordinary it may seem.

The entire eastern side of Britain has been annexed to parts of the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden in an arbitrary grouping called the North Sea Region. Similarly, a chunk of southern England has been linked to northern France and Belgium (the TransManche Region) while the west of Britain, from the tip of Scotland down to Land’s End, has been lumped in with Ireland and coastal areas of France, Spain and Portugal to form the Atlantic Region. It’s all quite barking.

The “stated strategic objectives” of this underhand integration are to “support the emergence of a common space of citizenship, a sense of belonging to a cross border area with a unique identity”. Well I’m sorry, but I don’t share a “common space of citizenship” with a fisherman in a Portugese village. I don’t even share a “common space of citizenship” with a Glaswegian Mars Bar-fryer, a Welsh benefits fiddler or a tarmac-laying tinker, and I have no wish to, thank you very much.

Of course, there’s a hefty element of bribery at work here. Each region has millions of Euros to spend on indoctrination, and grants will be available to organisations willing to stage a pro-EU publicity campaign and promise to fly the EU flag for at least a week.

Didn’t they used to call people who sold out their country for 30 pieces of silver “Quislings”?

WE THEN adjourned to Holyhead magistrates’ court where, presented before district judge Andrew Shaw, was a man who posed as Darth Vader to attack a Star Wars fan who had founded his own Jedi church. No, really.

Arwel Wynne Hughes, 27, from Holyhead, admitted assaulting Barney Jones and cousin Michael with a metal crutch. They suffered minor injuries. Hughes, who was drunk and dressed in a black bin bag, shouted “Darth Vader!”, jumped over a wall and attacked the cousins, who were filming themselves playing with light sabres in the garden, with a metal crutch. (I wondered how long it would be before the Magical Tin Leg of Money made an appearance in this story.)

Mr Hughes apparently has a chronic alcohol problem and had drunk the best part of a 10-litre box of wine. Further to that, the court was told, he could not remember the incident and only realised what had happened when he read about it in local newspapers. The judge warned Hughes that jail remained a possibility before adjourning for reports until 13 May.

So it’s alright to bandy light sabres about in public and to worship craven idols, but not alright for a man who’s had a swig of pop or two to remonstrate with the non-believers? The mind boggles.

WEDNESDAY didn’t get any better, with another daft story dropping out of the internet ether claiming that a toy manufacturer in the Ukraine has announced that it is to sell dolls of the former German dictator Adolf Hitler. The 16in figurine - complete with moveable arms to reproduce Hitler’s infamous salute - will first go on sale in the capital Kiev.

So again, we check the calendar, convinced that this is another hoax, only for a seemingly-convincing video report to turn up on the BBC website by mid-afternoon. So it must be true, surely?

It seems lucky owners will be able to choose to dress their mini-Fuhrer from a selection of outfits including ‘early days Adolf’ (brown shirts and jodhpurs) and ‘wartime Adolf’ (a grey double-breasted tunic, black trousers and simple Iron Cross medal).

The doll will also come with accessories like a miniature Blondi, Hitler's faithful Alsatian, whose loyalty was repaid with a cyanide capsule in the Berlin bunker.

The appearance of a plastic Adolph in the playroom raises some interesting issues. Barbie should be OK, being the sort of Aryan superdoll of which he approved, but those mixed race Bratz will be heading to the dungeons of the toy fort before you can say ‘ethnic cleansing’.

Fireman Sam will come in handy in case of another pesky blaze at the Reichstag and it will be interesting to see which side the Airfix air force comes down on. Anyhow, don’t be surprised if the Dolls’ Dictator annexes Legoland and then invades Balamory.

AND THE madness continues. Which is the next story of the day that’s too stupid to be true? The priest who floated off into the skies over Brazil attached to a thousand helium balloons? The trainers that can grow a full size at the turn of a button? The Bruce Oldfield designer uniforms for McDonald’s staff? Or the drought in Turkey that is causing a nationwide shortage of that tea break essential, the fig roll?

I just head back to bed, hoping that Thursday will be a better – and more sensible - day.