It is not only Easter Monday and a public holiday, but April Fool’s day as well. The Volkskrant has a round-up of the best jokes so far.

Opticians group Specsavers is offering customers a special deal on a new product – a car windscreen adapted to your eyes. Car owners can book a special windscreen at the right strength via the website.

IT company Sping claims to have developed an app to allow the police to spot speeding motorists and levy the fines immediately. Are you driving too fast? Then expect a text message from the police stating how fast you were driving and saying the fine will be charged via your phone bill.

New apps are a popular option. Online billing company Moneybird claims to have developed an app to allow people to send invoices in a Limburg, Twente or Den Haag dialect. Experiments have apparently shown that bills written in local dialects are better appreciated than those in standard Dutch.

Royalty

Geneticist Sarah Geerards from Amsterdam’s Meertens Insitute told broadcaster RTV Noord-Holland there are likely to be many more people in the Netherland with a better claim to the throne than crown prince Willem-Alexander because they are more closely linked to William of Orange.

She is inviting viewers to send ‘one or more’ hairs from their head to the institute ‘complete with root’ for testing.

Not all jokes appear to have been published on the big day itself. Last week, Amsterdam broadcaster AT5 said an old Heineken beer cellar had been discovered under the brewing group’s former plant on the Stadhouderskade.

Fifty people would be allowed to visit the cellar on April 1, the broadcaster said.

Road closure

Not every joke has been welcomed either. The police have apologised for the actions of a ‘single colleague’ who placed a message on police website Politie.nl saying the A2 motorway between Amsterdam and Utrecht would be closed on Monday.

The reason was completely plausible: British car show Top Gear would be filming an attempt to break the world speed record on a public road.

DutchNews.nl is still wondering about the April Fool quotient in a press release sent out by Rotterdam city council last week, which said the owners of buildings which are higher than the city’s Laurens church (64 metres) would have to pay a special tax to help pay for repairs to the city’s oldest building.

The charge will be €500 for every metre above the Laurenskerk. That can’t really be true, can it?