Our weekly round-up of interesting and outlandish information, collected from the corners of the charity sector.
No party at the party conference
The Labour Party conference has been the only game in town this week, in terms of the news, and charities featured high on the agenda.
Wait, what’s that? No, they didn’t.
It’s fair to say that charities are not central to Labour thinking just at the moment. This isn’t to do the sector down, mind you. Nothing is really central to Labour thinking except backbiting, infighting, squabbling, arguing and caustic self-immolation.
In fact, central itself is now a dirty word in the mouths of Labour activists, who associate the centre with Tony Blair and therefore, by association, the Antichrist.
Even if the Labour party was in a state to talk about charity, though, it probably wouldn’t feature highly. After all, all social problems should really be solved by taxing the rich and spending the receipts on creating a worker’s paradise.
The charity folk at the conference spent a long time wandering around talking to one another about how important the sector was. The odd MP wandered by to say they liked charities, but there was no threat of a policy anywhere.
Everything seemed pretty unfocused. At one event to talk about communities, someone wandered in and asked if this was the Brexit debate.
“No,” said the speaker. “But why not? It could be. Why don’t I talk about it anyway?”
Very charitable.
Meanwhile onto charity chief executives group Acevo – ironically, without a chief executive itself at the moment – which may not have demonstrated quite the last word in leadership.
Acevo’s rally – possibly inspired by the social democratic ideal that we are all leaders in our own way – just allowed anyone who felt like it to speak about anything on their mind.
Diary’s scribe, who reached the session at an advanced hour, was a little footsore and perhaps inclined more towards libation than inspiration. Your correspondent, faithful reader, began to lose the will when the chief executive of a local Citizens’ Advice, who had wandered in by mistake and just felt like giving a talk, reached in his speech what may or may not have been the words “and eleventhly”.
By that point the booze seemed unimaginably far away.
(Our illustration is more or less to scale.)
Donald Trump. No further jokes necessary.
While we’re on the subject of rubbish politicians, let’s talk about Donald Trump. Honestly, what a bell-end.
Among his many failings, his use of his charitable foundation as a source of continual self-aggrandisement has got to rank as particularly annoying. His decision to use $258,000 to settle legal disputes. The $20,000 he spent on a life-size portrait of himself. And now we discover that he doesn’t even have the right licence to raise money.
Contemptible, really.
Brooks who? Oh, yeah, that’s right. The willy guy.
Briefly, another forgotten politician also drifted through the transom of Diary’s thoughts today when Brooks Newmark, former charities minister and wanton willy snap distributor, demanded the right for evidence of his priapic puissance to be forgotten online.
I hate to break it to you, Brooks, but you will never be truly forgotten. Diary will always hold a fond remembrance for you, and your paisley pyjamas.
