Well that's it for another year. April 1 has come and gone not with a bang but a whimper.

Okay, can we come to a consensus on this? Is April Fools Day not now officially redundant?

The merry spirit of pranksterism and mirth-filled mischief that pervaded for so long has been replaced with sneeringly patronising pap.

A bit of artistry used to go into April Fools - the BBC's much-revisited spaghetti tree footage immediately springs to mind. By comparison, this year's crop were hackneyed half-arsed attempts, mainly revolving round Scottish independence, that not even the most mentally stunted Daily Mail reader would give much credence to.

Part of the problem is that the tradition has been totally eclipsed to the point where any given day could be April Fools. Every time a member of the coalition, and for that matter the opposition, opens their mouths, I feel an urge to check the calendar.

This week alone has seen two gurning gimps debating precisely nothing in front of a TV audience, like a rigged boxing match where both fighters have been told to lose and so fail to land any decent punches on their foot-dragging opponent.

Yes, the Clegg versus Farage debacle was not so much televisual spectacle as a justification for the scrapping of the licence fee.

Watching these chuntering numpties attempt to engage each other was akin to viewing two chimps hurling excrement in a wind tunnel, but without the wit.

The fact that neither non-entity has any say in what happens regarding Europe and the EU was lost on nobody except themselves.

Farage is enioying his newfound ability to make the Tories jump everytime he says "boo" or "oh look, is that a Bulgarian?" but he's a one-trick pony and a beaten docket.

This was the second, and we pray, last debate between the two titans of twaddle and, in a doomed attempt to inject some life into the proceedings, Clegg announced that he would go on the offensive.

When you lead a junior partner in the worst government in living memory you don't have to try very hard to be offensive, merely existing is qualification enough.

He also pledged to be "emotional," which tells you everything you need to know about Clegg right there.

What kind of politician is he if he can't spontaneously fake an emotion?

But as previously mentioned, picking almost any story over the last few weeks one could have been forgiven for assuming it was a wind-up.

First up we had the bizarre ban on prisoners receiving books from outside, imposed by Injustice Secretary Chris Grayling.

In line with all Tory policy this ignores a few blatantly obvious points in favour of knee-jerk stupidity.

First, it has long been known that reading and access to literature is the best way for prisoners to improve themselves and thus move along the path to rehabilitation.

Second, a great many of the finest works in literature were actually written in, or about, prison.

Don Quixote was partially written in a debtors' jail, Daniel Defoe wrote about his years in Newgate, John Bunyan penned A Pilgrim's Progress behind bars, as was pretty much anything by Genet and of course Oscar Wilde's the Ballad of Reading Gaol. Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn famously tackled the subject and both spent years in the labour camps.

On the other hand, there has been some absolute crap too - Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken spring to mind, so there are pros and cons.

Elsewhere the announcement that we should all pay £10 per month to use the NHS and £20 if we actually have to stay in hospital had all the hallmarks of an April Fool. But it wasn't.

The report was cobbled together by former Blairite lackey Lord Warner in conjunction with "think tank" Reform.

It's funny how organisations who give themselves grandiose monikers like Reform never mean it in a positive way. Like the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, which this week appeared to be waging war on an ocean. Well, if it's good enough for Caligula...

But to return to Reform and its plans to dismantle, er I mean "save" the NHS.

"What's wrong with paying a monthly fee to avail of healthcare?'' the report's authors suggested innocently.

Well, for a start, because then it wouldn't be the NHS, it'd be Bupa.

But by far the most widely reported April Fool was George Osborne's claim that he aimed to get Britain back to full employment.

That's just taking the piss.