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

Canal and Rivers Bust-up

So the Canal and River Trust has got itself into a bit of a fight over where people anchor their boats, which Diary finds quite tasty. Because moorings are morish, as it were.

So the National Bargee Travellers Association claims that the charity has introduced irritating rules designed to move them on, and have moored themselves outside the CRT offices in Milton Keynes in protest. The charity has barged into their lives, they say, so they're barging back into its.

So the argument is that these people have licences which require them to sail about. But like most people who have jobs and houses and kids in school, they mostly want to stay in the same place. So how far, exactly, do they have to float their boat to float CRT's boat?

A pizza the action?

 

So Macmillan Cancer Research have launched a partnership with Pizza Express. This is the kind of action that Diary wants a slice of. It is, in fact, one which will take some topping.

Time for the end of the charity chair

Diary was thinking about nothing much earlier this morning, and started to think about how the sector is proud of its inclusiveness, its big tent thinking, and so on, and how this makes the role of the chair an odd one.

Only one person can sit in the chair, you see, and so this is discriminatory against everyone else working there.

This column moots that the board, in keeping with this furniture theme, is renamed the sofa. And not just any old sofa, either. Not a little futon-type thing that only two skinny hipsters can squidge themselves onto.

No, the charity board should be one of those giant L-shaped leather things that DFS are constantly selling half price, even though no one has ever actually paid full price for one, ever.

Rob Wilson calls on everyone to do better

Usually Diary will try and come up with its own headlines, involving some kind of tortured pun but, as we wind to the end of another week, it’s just going to let Reading’s local paper take all the plaudits for this one.

 

 

 

Above is a screenshot of said article, featuring our beloved minister for civil society stomping through some of his home patches’ less salubrious parts looking, it must be said, fairly miffed by the whole experience.

Diary can’t help but wonder what exactly it is that he and his companion are pointing at here. It can’t be the closed roller door with the graffiti, so it must be the fire exit. But what is it about this fire exit that has so drawn his ire? 

Anyway, the MP for Reading East seems to think that Reading’s city centre is a bit of a dive and has called upon all of Reading’s collective citizenry to do better.

Mr Wilson said: “Spending time walking around Reading town centre and observing closely the areas of concern, it’s clear that certain shop-frontages and business premises have been overlooked for what appears a significant period of time.

“It’s simply unacceptable that businesses have to routinely clear up truly appalling mess every morning from the front of their shops and that litter is discarded on our streets in a blasé fashion, with no thought for or pride in our town.”

But local councillor Tony Page was strangely unimpressed. He suggested that Mr Wilson’ comments were probably less to do with a sudden fascination with urban renewal, and instead stemmed from the fact the he’s feeling “sore following the drubbing given to Reading Conservatives” at last week’s local elections.

That’ll do very nicely, thank you councillor.