April Fool’s Day and as usual I’m struggling to separate fact from fiction.
It’s bad enough in a normal year, when I have been known to quote Fools as real months after the event, but this year I’m struggling more than usual.
It started off with the Colossus of Stratford. Surely this has to be a Fool, I told myself, but apparently not.
But by the time I’d listened to the radio and waded through the nationals - Labour’s new Gordon ‘hard man’ Brown ads, a suspcious-looking story about ferrets delivering broadband, AA men with jetpacks and Shakespeare is French - I was beginning to wonder if everything else is an April Fool today. And devoutly hoping that one story in particular is not true.
So when I turned to my Inside Housing - online, of course since post before lunchtime is another April Fool these days - I was at my most sceptical.
Welwyn Hatfield, constiunency of Grant Shapps, is one of the five councils that will have to take on an extra £1.6bn of housing revenue account debt? Pull the other one.
Tenants in Bristol putting their heating and hot water meters in the fridge to slow them down? You don’t get me that easily.
So I turned with relief to the Tenant Services Authority. Surely I must be on firm ground with an organisation that launches its new regulatory framework on 1 April?
Because this new hot-desking project that will see the TSA workforce move in with the Homes and Communities Agency sounds like a great idea. Certainly a lot better than the permanent hot-desking that the Conservatives have in mind after the election.
But then I realised my mistake. TSA and HCA staff working together in one office? Maybe even in a joint organisation? That’s so ridiculous it has to be an April Fool.
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