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

Whale sunk

So the Bible Society has its own giant inflatable whale, which comes as a bit of a surprise. Perhaps even more surprising is that they’ve had to launch a Save the Whale campaign after discovering they can’t actually inflate it in London’s parks – or anywhere much else, for that matter.

It’s a life-sized model of a sperm whale, apparently. Society Diary has a soft spot for the sperm whale, because it's so weird. It has the largest brain on earth, is the second deepest-dwelling of all whales, and is the only natural predator of the supergiant squid. It produces both spermaceti, which is used to make the world's best candles, and ambergris, which is used to fix perfume, and costs more per ounce than gold.

But that is by the by. The idea of the whale is that it will travel around the UK, and that kids can crawl inside and be read stories from the Bible – particularly Jonah and the Whale, appropriately enough.

But apparently they’re having trouble in London, where the Royal Parks have banned the supersized cetacean because they “do not permit collective acts of worship or other religious observances”, which apparently these days includes reading to kids next to a giant PVC model mammal.

So unless a replacement venue can found, the whale will be left, well, porpoise-less.

Politicians by Results?

This week, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) released a report into Transforming Rehabilitation, the Ministry of Justice’s flagship payment-by-results programme to prevent re-offending, in which charities are expected to be heavily involved.

The PAC pointed out that the MoJ is pressing ahead with this despite having no idea whether it will work, and that no other big reform it’s tried has ever worked.

A couple of weeks earlier, the MoJ scrapped the pilot social impact bond at Peterborough Prison because it wasn’t compatible with this new programme, without actually waiting to see whether this pilot for payment-by-results (PBR) produced any results.

Maybe it’s time we had a PBR contract for the politicians who design PBR contracts. If Chris Grayling’s expensive reforms don’t end up with less people on the dole, or back in prison, the cost could come out of his pay packet.

Freeze, sucker!

Mostly, if you enter a charity competition, the prizes aren’t great: mid-range chocolates, home-knitted woolly hats, bottles of strange pink liquor with three stickers from previous raffles still clearly visible.

Remember a Charity, on the other hand, is offering something a bit more upmarket: the chance to live forever. Or at least, the chance to be cryogenically frozen in liquid nitrogen at the point of death until the day that medical science is able to revive you.

The consortium of 140 charities, which seeks to promote legacy giving, is trying to make a subtle link. If you remember a charity in your will, a bit of you will live on forever.

Mo emails

Earlier this week, an email dropped into the Society Diary inbox.

“It's already May and we're halfway to Movember!” announced the title line.

Or to put it another way, we’re as far away in the calendar from Movember as it’s possible to get, but you’re still sending emails.

Is this overkill or effective brand-stretching? You, the reader, may decide.