Ellee Seymour

Heather Yaxley has beaten me to it and published some of today’s April Fool’s Day stunts which have hit the headlines.

The Daily Mirror claims that ITV has come up with Dancing On Ice using greyhounds to try and top the Strictly Come Dancing ratings. A Greyhound Racing Association spokesman is quoted as saying: "It is great to see the dogs enjoying it. Some are better suited to the surface…probably more so than Greg Rusedski."

BMW is a regular joker and has announced its new Canine Repellent Alloy Protection system which is designed to stop dogs fouling against the sparkling alloys of new BMW cars. I’m sure it could make a fortune if it could produce such an ingenious item.

I remember once playing a good stunt with some fellow hacks -including Alan Rusbridger - and it wasn’t April 1 either. We called a local weekly paper and said that Skylab had landed in a field nearby, that we had seen it. This was a bit cruel as it was their press day and they literally would have dropped everything to race out and look for this fictitious object.

Here are a few classic April Fool’s Day stunts:

The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest

In 1957 the respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in. Many called the BBC wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti tree. To this the BBC diplomatically replied that they should "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best."

Instant Color TV

In 1962 there was only one tv channel in Sweden, and it broadcast in black and white. The station’s technical expert, Kjell Stensson, appeared on the news to announce that, thanks to a new technology, viewers could convert their existing sets to display color reception. All they had to do was pull a nylon stocking over their tv screen. Stensson proceeded to demonstrate the process. Thousands of people were taken in. Regular color broadcasts only commenced in Sweden on April 1, 1970.

The Taco Liberty Bell

In 1996 the Taco Bell Corporation announced that it had bought the Liberty Bell and was renaming it the Taco Liberty Bell. Hundreds of outraged citizens called the National Historic Park in Philadelphia where the bell was housed to express their anger. Their nerves were only calmed when Taco Bell revealed, a few hours later, that it was all a practical joke. The best line of the day came when White House press secretary Mike McCurry was asked about the sale. Thinking on his feet, he responded that the Lincoln Memorial had also been sold. It would now be known as the Ford Lincoln Mercury Memorial.

San Serriffe

In 1977 the British newspaper The Guardian published a special seven-page supplement devoted to San Serriffe, a small republic located in the Indian Ocean consisting of several semi-colon-shaped islands. A series of articles affectionately described the geography and culture of this obscure nation. Its two main islands were named Upper Caisse and Lower Caisse. Its capital was Bodoni, and its leader was General Pica. The Guardian’s phones rang all day as readers sought more information about the idyllic holiday spot. Few noticed that everything about the island was named after printer’s terminology. The success of this hoax is widely credited with launching the enthusiasm for April Foolery that gripped the British tabloids in subsequent decades.

Alabama Changes the Value of Pi

The April 1998 issue of the New Mexicans for Science and Reason newsletter contained an article claiming that the Alabama state legislature had voted to change the value of the mathematical constant pi from 3.14159 to the ‘Biblical value’ of 3.0. Before long the article had made its way onto the internet, and then it rapidly made its way around the world, forwarded by people in their email. It only became apparent how far the article had spread when the Alabama legislature began receiving hundreds of calls from people protesting the legislation. The original article, which was intended as a parody of legislative attempts to circumscribe the teaching of evolution, was written by a physicist named Mark Boslough.

The Left-Handed Whopper

In 1998 Burger King published a full page advertisement in USA Today announcing the introduction of a new item to their menu: a "Left-Handed Whopper" specially designed for the 32 million left-handed Americans. According to the advertisement, the new whopper included the same ingredients as the original Whopper (lettuce, tomato, hamburger patty, etc.), but all the condiments were rotated 180 degrees for the benefit of their left-handed customers. The following day Burger King issued a follow-up release revealing that although the Left-Handed Whopper was a hoax, thousands of customers had gone into restaurants to request the new sandwich. Simultaneously, according to the press release, "many others requested their own ‘right handed’ version."

There’s loads more April 1 stunts you can read about here. Do share any others that you come across today, or tell us about your pranks.

I was sorry last night to have missed the Reform/Bloomberg party to celebrate the new media politics revolution.

I missed Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, speak on how new media should transform politics and government.

Bloggers and social media users like myself are very well aware of this - and the challenges it brings for politicians. In fact, progress is being made slowly, even 10 Downing Street has started to Twitter. (Hat Tip Stuart Bruce).

I thought you might like to catch up with this article I wrote for Behind the Spin, a magazine for PR students and young practitioners, about political blogging following a request from its excellent editor Richard Bailey. It was written a while ago before the MPs expenses row hit the headlines.

With trust in politicians at an all-time low – and their reputation and future career entirely dependent on public scrutiny and support - what better way is there for them to communicate with publics than to write a blog?

One thing is certain, while most politicians are still wary of engaging in this form of transparent two-way communication, their voters are not. They are making their views known virally and these views are instantly accessible on the web, thanks to Google and other search engines. The blogosphere is a graveyard that is never empty and holds a bottomless pit of revelations which can continue to haunt. It hosts a conversation that cannot be ignored.

The appeal of political blogs is that they are free of rhetoric, propaganda and party political spin, while providing an opportunity for genuine opinions and a lively and interactive debate. Although some are personal ramblings which fail to captivate readers, a few of them are very high profile and have been influential in bringing about change.

Former Conservative parliamentary candidate and author Iain Dale is regarded as one of the UK’s top political bloggers and is a popular political pundit; his sharp, witty and informative blog has also proved to be a valuable asset and self-promotion tool and has broken major news stories ahead of the mainstream media. The appointment of Andy Coulson as the Conservative Party Director of Communications is just one example of a story broken by Iain Dale.

Dale publishes an annual guide of top political bloggers in the UK. His latest “Guide to Political Blogging in the UK 2007-8� is a directory of 1,200 political blogs, including the best 500 nominated by readers. He also generously promotes lesser known bloggers on his regular “Daley Dozen� post and links to his favourite political sites.

Dale shares the blogging limelight with a satirical site written pseudonymously by right-wing libertarian Paul Staines called the “Guido Fawkes’ blog of parliamentary plots, rumours & conspiracy”. His revelations must make many politicians squirm uncomfortably. Many of his posts are based on the private lives of politicians – John Prescott has been one favourite - and it makes irresistible reading.

Both Dale and Staines provide compulsive reading for political anoraks who want to keep abreast of the latest political news. Both men are aware that political journalists will be avidly trawling their sites regularly throughout the day for leads they can follow up.

Dale has impressively described his readership as reaching 404,000 in 2007, double the circulation of the The Independent! Staines’s viewing figures are similarly impressive as both men rival each other for the top readership spot. This demonstrates their massive appeal.

Having seen the impact of political blogging, mainstream political journalists are becoming bloggers too, having to establish their popularity and credibility in the blogosphere like any other blogger. The Spectator’s Coffeehouse blog and the BBC’s political editor Nick Robinson’s blog are among my regular reads, and there are many more excellent sites too, if only time permitted! Be warned, trawling blogs can become addictive!

As I write this, Staines and Dizzy, a fellow right-wing blogger, are questioning whether donations for Gordon Brown’s leadership campaign were legally declared. Dale links to this story and promotes it further. This increases pressure on government to be transparent and to respond, knowing that the national media will report on it too.

It demonstrates how right-wing bloggers can very publicly criticise government in a way which left-wing bloggers have not managed to equal against Conservatives. As a result, Conservative activists have shown that they are far from being anything like their former “blue-rinse� image. They are sharp, internet savvy campaigners out to score political points in a bid to knock Labour off its perch. For them, blogging is the perfect domain. It is much easier to criticise a government when in opposition, to poke fun at any failings, real or perceived. The real test for UK Tory bloggers will be whether they can survive if the Conservatives win the next election. The boot will be on the other foot, and it is obviously not known how they will they respond and maintain their appeal.

Dale’s blogging guide of top 500 political blogs showed that 154 were on the right and 153 on the left, so they are equal in numbers. But when it came down to their impact, 14 of the top 20 blogs were on the right, and only two were from the left. Today, there isn’t one single left-wing blogger who has a strong following. Labour bloggers have no iconic and influential Iain Dale figure to support them the same way. Recess Monkey, written by Alex Hilton, is ranked the top Labour blogsite in Dale’s guide, even though it caused a spectacular media frenzy earlier this year by incorrectly stating that Margaret Thatcher had died. He is followed on the list by MP Tom Watson, one of the country’s first blogging politicians who has maintained his regular and loyal readers.

UK bloggers are beginning to make their mark and there are signs that the government is taking the blogosphere seriously. Last year, it was forced to climb down from its policy on the recruitment of junior doctors when a medical blog called Dr Crippen, written by a British NHS doctor, exposed critical security flaws in the system, and then mobilised doctors to take to the streets to protest the perceived fairness of the new system.

The COI, the UK government’s communications agency, announced recently that it was working on a way to monitor what people said about policy on blogs and internet forums for the media briefings it sends to ministers because it didn’t want to be caught unawares by debates spread on the web.

In fact, it is doing more than that, having already responded to a blog post, something which would have been unthinkable a year ago. The Ministry of Defence posted a 600-word response on the EU-Referendum blog after it again challenged the MoD’s equipment and procurement policy. It was posted by Lord Drayson, Minister for Defence Equipment and Support.

Ministerial blogs have been pioneered by Foreign Secretary David Miliband who is now writing his third ministerial blog, having started his first as Minister of State for Communities and Local Government, before becoming Environment Secretary. Topics he has written about recently include the role of diplomats, EU regulations and street children in Tanzania. It was hoped that other ministers would be inspired to follow his lead, but that does not appear to have been the case. Mr Miliband hopes it will bridge the gap between government and publics, providing an opportunity for the ordinary man in the street to have his say on political issues, though he has been criticised for failing to respond to comments, and using it as another political website.

In spite of Mr Miliband’s enthusiasm, too few politicians have embraced this interactive technology, even though it’s free, perhaps through fear of saying the wrong thing, having to respond to abusive comments left by ranters, or simply feeling that they cannot find time to regularly write an online site. Only around 6% of MPs currently write a blog.

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries writes a very witty blog which gives an excellent behind the scene account of parliamentary life and extracts from it are often featured in the national media – as well as raising a few eyebrows among her party whips. Her blog has been described by The Sunday Telegraph as “cult reading for MPs from all political parties�. But she has been forced to close the comment facility on her site because of “vile� comments she was receiving on a controversial matter. This means there is no two-way communication anymore. However, it has not deterred her from continuing to write her frank “shoot from the hip� posts, and her blog has certainly raised her profile.

Another blogging enthusiast MP is Lib Dem Lynne Featherstone, who urges others to start too. She believes this form of two-way communication is the perfect way to keep constituents informed – and dispel the image that politicians do little all day other than eat and drink and are interested only in their own egos. She believes it has been a very effective tool in discussing local issues and for campaigning, and believes she has personally benefited from helpful and informative comments posted by readers.

John Redwood, another Tory MP, was voted as having the best parliamentarian blog in the Dale guide, and his site demonstrates how it can be used successfully for campaigning and discussing topical issues; he also responds to comments.

I believe more politicians will turn to blogging in the run up to the next general election. During Labour’s deputy leadership contest last year, five out of six candidates had a campaign blog, though they are now mostly defunct. More activists will use blogging as a campaigning tool, along with video posts and YouTube made popular by WebCameron, videos posted by Conservative leader David Cameron. They are already actively updating their profiles and “friends� on Facebook and other social networking sites.

But the fact is, the conversation is going on now, and they should be listening and responding. I wonder if Gordon Brown could be truly innovative and be the first Prime Minister to start writing a blog….