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

Tailbacks at the loos

So Acevo held a Women’s Summit the other day, which by all accounts was pretty hard-hitting and effective. The day was marred only by a couple of slight hitches in the planning.

First, there was the plaintive tweet from outside from one of the keynote speakers, Labour MP Stella Creasy, who found herself trapped outside, and sent the below:

Second, there was a bit of a queue for one of the loos.

There was one bloke at the conference, apparently, but it seems excessive to offer him an entire 50 per cent of the toilet facilities to himself.

Apparently once tempers started to fray the various female chief executives burst into the blokes’ loos, only to stop and exclaim at the luxury – three cubicles and a row of urinals.

Diary has to say they must have got lucky there. A comparative examination of the ladies and gents in most places is unlikely to leave women green with envy. Green with some other sensation, perhaps, but not envy.

Who’s the shadow charities minister? Er, dunno

Still, at least Stella knows what her job is. That means she’s doing better than large swathes of the party, if the tale of the appointment of the shadow charities minister is anything to go by.

Bit of an odd one, this. On Friday, Labour finished announcing their shadow front bench, including seven ministers in the Cabinet Office. Civil Society Media’s crack reporting team immediately swung into action to discover who had the charity brief. It didn’t take long. Step forward Ian Lavery, MP for Wansbeck in Northumberland, who issued a long statement on his website saying how happy he was to be the minister for trade unions and civil society.

It seemed a bit of an odd choice, since he only mentioned charities twice in the preceding two years, but it’s hardly the first time the sector has had a minister foisted upon it who couldn’t care less.

Anyway, that seemed done and dusted until Wednesday, when a Labour communications officer rang us up.

“Er, we’re a bit confused by the story on your website,” she said. “We don’t know where it came from. Because he’s not the shadow charities minister at all.”

Although he might have responsibility for civil society, after all. They haven’t decided that.

Anyway, it turns out the Anna Turley, MP for Redcar, is the real shadow charities minister. But she hadn’t mentioned it to anyone.

The curry preference service

The Fundraising Preference Service has proved the most controversial suggestion in a new report advocating the creation of a new regulator for the fundraising profession. The service is essentially intended to allow people to opt out of all fundraising communications, and decide if they want charities to get back in touch.

The debate raging over it has been fierce, with many asking why there should be a separate service for charities. Why, one commenter asked, should they be held to a stricter standard than curry restaurants, double-glazing salesmen and people selling help with PPI reclaims.

The first answer and most obvious answer, Diary supposes, is that charities might want to hold themselves to a slightly higher moral standard than PPI firms. Even curry restaurants, perhaps, although Diary loves a good curry as much as the next sarcastic column.

But the simpler answer is obvious, really, as another commentator suggested. Simply establish a Curry Preference Service as well, and solve the problem that way.

Monkey in row over copyright

So further bad news for photographer David Slater, who had his camera nicked a while ago by a gang of monkeys, who took some pictures using it. The pictures were awesome, and Slater licensed them to a news agency. But a US court later ruled that he doesn’t own the copyright, and Wikipedia uploaded them to its Wikimedia Commons, which only accepts copyright-free pictures.

Now things have got worse. Animal rights organisation Peta is claiming that the monkey owns the copyright on the picture, since it took the damn thing, and has filed a suit on its behalf.

It’s hard to see it’ll be worth it to be honest. Even if the monkey does win, it’s likely to get peanuts.

British law has so far been silent on the subject, so far as Diary can see, but we’re taking a punt and publishing it anyway.