5 Fibs You Were Told This Week... Featuring Soy Sauce And Woolworths
For the last few weeks, 5 Fibs has brought you tales of untruths, deceit and misdirection that, for the most part, have centred on the government and its response to the coronavirus.
So it was with a certain joy that while researching the latest edition, HuffPost UK realised we could fill almost an entire article with something completely different.
Then we realised that even without the coronavirus pandemic as a factor, the UK is still totally nuts which is why you’re soon to read about soy sauce and the non-existent return of the masters of pic’n’mix.
As it’s an insanely rare thing these days, let’s start with a fib that’s actually quite jolly.
Woolworths
It was the news we all needed amidst an awful year – the finest purveyor of pick’n’mix the world has ever known was returning to our high streets.
But alas, because it’s 2020 and apparently no one is allowed nice things anymore, it was all a hoax sparked by a dubiously small Twitter account with terrible spelling.
Despite this, much of the country’s media jumped on the news as high street gospel.
Every major online outlet has reported Woolworth's is returning to the high street.
One call from me to owner Very's PR - he doesn't know a thing about it.
Surely a story based on a Twitter account with 900 followers (and spelling mistakes) should be verified? pic.twitter.com/bdfGf2R6Nm— Tom Witherow (@TomWitherow) October 27, 2020
In an interview with the Guardian, the 17-year-old sixth-form student from York behind the stunt said: “Fake news is so easy to spread, and it took Twitter over 12 hours to shut down the account.
“There was spelling mistakes and a lack of a website purposely injected into the account, and yet some of the media still took it as gospel. I feel bad for the reporters.”
Jeremy Corbyn
Thursday was a truly awful day for the Labour Party as the long-awaited findings of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) were published.
In short it was absolutely damning and found...
