Our weekly round-up of outlandish and interesting information collected from the corners of the charity sector. 

Rowing calendar makes waves

So a calendar featuring a number of naked ladies from the University of Warwick Rowing Society, which aims to raise money for Macmillan Cancer Support, has been banned by Facebook for being pornographic, and the women in question are very upset.

(It is just possibly they’re secretly delighted, since the calendar has now appeared all over the pages of the Daily Mail, which you’d have to think would do more to boost sales than a Facebook page. But let’s assume, for the purposes of this piece, that they’re very upset.)

So is it pornographic? Well, the calendar features 17 naked young women wearing no clothes while generally cavorting, gambolling and frolicking about. The Daily Star’s opinion is probably clear in its headline, which reads “PHW-OAR”.

You wouldn’t have got away with it in Queen Victoria’s day, let’s say.

But in the ladies’ defence, the Warwick men’s rowing club calendar, which shows naked blokes frolicking about, has not been banned.

The blokes’ calendar is definitely pretty risque. In one picture a fellow has cleverly placed a bucket and hidden his hands so it appears… Well, you get the idea.

Anyway, if the blokes’ calendar isn’t pornographic – and a couple of gay magazines seem to have some, um, firmly held views about that – the ladies are definitely safe.

It’s our party, and you’ll come if we want you

So Nick Hurd has stepped down from the den of turpitude that is ministerial office, and has been the object of glowing hagiographies from both Sir Stephen Bubb and Sir Stuart Etherington, the latter saying he planned to throw Hurd a goodbye party.

Hurd won’t be the first charities minister to prompt a goodbye party, to be honest. He’ll just be the first one to be invited.

But this being the charity sector, there are always a few members of the awkward squad waiting in the wings to disagree. Step forward Toby Blume, free school founder and former charity chief exec, who tweeted grumpily: “Not a single, solitary word of criticism of Nick Hurd's tenure from the entire sector? Akin to speaking ill of the dead?”

Blume proceeded to correct that by firing off a welter of tweets complaining about Hurd, before eventually arriving at a conclusion.

“So the general consensus seems to be that @nickhurdmp is a good guy & an ally of the VCS, but the government have still shafted the sector,” he said. “I’d go along with that.”

Yep, Diary too, to be honest.

Babbling about Brooks

Hurd himself was full of praise for his successor, Brooks Newmark, and supplied Bubb with a glowing encomium.

“Good guy,” Hurd texted. “Bright. A good listener. Nice and genuine. Business background. Think you will get on despite everything I tell him about you.”

Anyone want a policy? Got a couple spare

Diary’s a little late to the story we ran last week about a Labour MP, who accused the Prime Minister of flouting charity rules by nicking ideas off a think tank called Policy Exchange.

The complaint itself is arrant pettifogging, and appears part of a general new belief among Parliamentarians that charities ought not to be allowed to say anything about anyone, but that politicians themselves ought to be allowed to slag off charities to their heart’s content.

Anyway, that’s by the by. The main point of this piece is that the name Policy Exchange is quite an entertaining one. It puts Diary in mind of a convention filled with fat teenagers with ponytails and elderly men in glasses and backpacks, sidling up to one another over first editions of Hansard and the 1953 Labour manifesto.

“I’ve got a policy of increasing free childcare hours for working mothers.”

“Oh really. I’ve got a policy of improved efficiency in armed services procurement.”

“Awesome. Want to swap?”