Friends, Romans, loyal Society Diary readers, this column comes to bury the working week that was, not to praise it. What a weird and wild week it has been. Indeed only today it is being reported that Donald Trump has agreed to finally sit down and meet with his favourite ‘Little Rocket Man’, while Westminster has again been caught up in a scandal, with a number of MPs including the speaker John Bercow being accused of bullying and harassing staffers.
This week in charity sector satire: *To the tune of The Final Countdown* IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN to GDPR regulation coming into force so someone’s made a GDPR specific playlist on Spotify and it’s great; the RSPCA gives Diary yet another reason to go hog-wild on the animal puns and a tip of the hat to comedian Richard Herring.
The joke’s already been made twice
*To the tune of If You Don’t Know Me by Now* If you don’t know this GDPR by now, you will never, ever, ever know GDPR. Ah, what kind of sadistic, sick, terrible person doesn’t love Simply Red?
Anyway, as this column does indeed hope you all know by now, the General Data Protection Regulations are on their way from Brussels and will go into force on 25 May 2018. From that day forward, all organisations which hold personal data will need to be GDPR compliant – no ifs, no buts, no grace periods, you’ve already had over two years!
As the deadline draws ever nearer it would be safe to say that a lot of charity data protection officers, database managers or indeed anyone who handles personal data more general will be pulling a lot of late shifts trying to get everything compliant by the 25 May.
With all that in mind, Robin Fisk, chief executive of Donorfy, fundraising tech guru and apparent underground pirate DJ/1980s mixtape enthusiast has knocked up a Spotify playlist to help ease the long nights hunched over the database.
The playlist is unimaginatively titled ‘Donorfy’s GDPR Playlist’, which is truly a great shame. This column would have, personally, gone with something like ‘Fisky Business’ or ‘Saturday Night Fisker’ or maybe even ‘Fiskally Irresponsible’. Get it? It's a play on being 'fiscally irresponsible' which, Diary's sure it doesn't have to tell you dear reader, is pretty darn rock and roll.
However, despite the lack of thought about the overall name of the playlist, one cannot say that Robin and the people at Donorfy haven’t put some serious effort into compiling the list itself. The 79-song epic list begins with Madison Avenue’s Don’t Call Me Baby, a classic anthem for the Y2K generation, and ends with the driving drums and jangly guitar riffs of Age of Consent by New Order. Consent, yeah, that's the joke!
Other songs include: Hanging On the Telephone by Blondie, Private Investigations by 'yer da’s' favourite band Dire Straits and the 2002 remaster of Don’t You Want Me by the Human League which is, as Diary’s sure you’re all aware, an absolute tune!
We’re talking wall-to-wall bangers here, people! Well, except Ed Sheeran and Carly Rae Jepsen – yes, Call Me Maybe works within the overall context of the playlist but, seriously, Robin? Come on.
Link to the list for those Spotify users out there.
A-paw-ture
Oh yes, this column is excited because today represents Diary’s third favourite time of the year - with PDSA Pet Fit Club being the first, daylight second and Christmas running somewhere in the high 300s between the annual dental check-up and any day in January - yes, online voting has opened for the *checks website* RSPCA’S PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARDS!
The RSPCA has drawn up a shortlist of 14 pictures taken on mobile phones by ‘Young Photographers’, under the age of 18. The RSPCA is now calling on the public to get their votes in ahead of the prize being awarded in two weeks time.
Entrants include a very close up picture of a cat’s face, an infrared, gross bug-thing, a lizard’s eye and a little baby turtle waddling along the sand and into the sea.
Entrants have been split into three age groups: under 12s, 12-15s and 16-18 year olds. Voting closes next week on the 16th, so if you’re keen to get involved then get your votes in.
Red Herring
Finally this week, a quick congratulations to comedian Richard Herring who, Diary guesses, donated his whole day yesterday to combating ‘Men’s Rights Activists’ on Twitter in the name of International Women’s Day, which of course was yesterday.
Not only did Herring do something of a public service by explaining to, by the looks of his feed, literally hundreds and hundreds of men that there is an International Men’s Day. It’s on 19th November [hand on the chin thinky emoji face].
In the process, Herring also raised over £130,000 for Refuge, the charity for women and children who are the victims of domestic abuse. Good on you Richard! And good on you too to Refuge for all the incredible work being done at the charity.
If you’ve got a few quid spare and would like to firmly emasculate one of social media’s faceless, nameless army of troll-men then why not donate it to Refuge at the link above.
Diary out!
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