Our weekly round-up of interesting and outlandish information, collected from the corners of the charity sector.
Concentrix circles
It is this column’s solemn duty to inform all of you that, unfortunately, Joseph Rowntree is dead. Deceased. No more. He has ceased to be. Bereft of life, he rests in peace. He is, for all intents and purposes, an ex-Quaker.
Before the tears spring to your eyes, dear reader, it’s worth noting that Joseph Rowntree (pictured circa 1907) in fact went on to meet his maker in 1925.
The famous philanthropist was capable of achieving great things. He established three grant-making foundations and more than one line of tasty chewy sweet. But Diary suspects he is unlikely for at least two reasons to have been sharing a domicile with a woman.
First, as a happily married man, it would be against his deeply held religious beliefs. But secondly, and perhaps more pertinently, he's dead.
Diary is now going to hand over briefly to the Independent on this because, I’m sure you’ll agree, the headline is an absolute worldy.
‘Mother forced to use food banks after tax agency ruled she was living with famous 19th century quaker Joseph Rowntree’.
Talk about strange bedfellows.
Yes, Concentrix – a tax agency employed by the government to carry out credit card checks – sent an unnamed woman a letter accusing her “of being in a relationship and cohabiting” with a Mr Rowntree. The agency subsequently decided that she no longer, due to her living with Mr Rowntree, needed many of the benefits she relied upon for things like, you know, eating and stuff.
Indeed the woman in question was receiving at least some of those benefits from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, not from Mr Rowntree himself who, and Diary really can’t stress this further, is dead.
The woman is now being forced into a lengthy appeals process against Concentrix to ensure that her benefits are restored and she has now been forced to resort to using foodbanks to survive.
She tried arguing with Concentrix but it appears that the company has adopted its name because any rational appeal to it just goes round in circles.
Top work, chaps!
This isn’t the first time that Concentrix has mistaken bank statement transactions as proof of cohabitation. Indeed, according to Rachael Maskell, Labour MP for York Central, a woman in her constituency lost credits due to another Concentrix blunder.
This particular woman was accused of being in a relationship with one Mr RS McColl. Diary’s not been to York, but it has it on pretty good authority that McColl’s is a chain of corner shops.
The government is not renewing Concentrix's contract beyond the end of the year. Probably for the best.
The Tate’s latest exhibits: the neighbours!
One of this column’s erstwhile editorial colleagues – on a journey of self-discovery and personal enrichment – ventured out to Southbank and visited the Tate Modern.
Sure, he didn’t actually pay any money on exhibits, but still returned to work culturally enriched and veritably buzzing on Rothko, Monet and Picasso.
While there, Diary’s colleague did indeed venture to the new Switch House and all the way to its 10th-story viewing deck. The views of London are, he attests, most spectacular. So too, it would seem, are the views into the new Neo Bankside development flats next door.
One of these puppies will set a punter back a cool £4.5m. Diary wonders what you get for that kind of money in this inflated property market.
Well, they’re beautifully furnished and appointed, with all the latest amenities and are located smack bang in the heart of London’s bustling metropolis. All ticks so far.
However you also get a spot on view of a bunch of plebs staring directly into your living room from about 20 feet away. Diary fears that this might keep your reclusive billionaires and shady Sheikhs from snapping up the properties quite as briskly as they may have done otherwise.
Sir Nicholas Serota, director of the Tate, and soon to be chair of the Arts Council England, has ridden to the rescue however with some incredibly practical – if, admittedly, fairly condescending – advice for prospective Neo Bankside tenants put off by the viewing deck. Just buy some curtains, you eejits!
“[Privacy] would be enhanced,” Serota told the Guardian “if those people decided that they might put up a blind or a net curtain or whatever, as is common in many places”.
Curtains? That’s genius! If you’ve got £4.5 mill to spaff on a flat, surely you can pop down to B&Q and drop a fiver on a bolt of cloth and some shears. Have some fun with it and go wild with your patterns: flowers in the conservatory and something more muted for the master bedroom, to offset the size of your flat screen television.
One resident told the Guardian – “while entering the lobby” – that “it’s no fun… I’ve counted 50 people looking at me when I was in my house”. She said she had to keep the blinds down much of the time, but this made the flat gloomy. “I feel like I’m on display all the time”.
Diary senses a solution: the Tate charges people to use the balcony as they are gazing in at the “living art installations” across the way, and then splits the profits 50/50 with the oil barons, oligarchs and property magnates doubling as exhibitions.
Everybody wins… except for like 99.99 per cent of the rest of us.
Bradxit
Finally, Brangelina is no more and, well, yeah. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have split – who will get the lion’s share of the brood? Who gets the pleasure-island in the Caribbean? The mansion in Los Angeles? The big flat in New York?
Diary doesn’t particularly care, if it’s being honest, but Angelina did some work with the Halo Trust (amongst other organisations: shout out to ActionAid) and NCVO are going to give a prize out to the first charity publication which infers some deeper meaning from the de-nuptialisation of Brad and Angelina for the wider sector. So, here goes:
THERE’S WAY WORSE AND MORE IMPORTANT THINGS HAPPENING THAN BRADXIT LIKE, YOU KNOW, ACTUAL BREXIT!
Pulitzer Prize please. Or failing that, a signed photograph of NCVO's most famous pin-up, Noodle the Cat.
