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

No figures of fun

Congratulations to Paul Palmer, professor of something very important to do with charities at Cass Business School, and to Sir Stuart “Big Stu” Etherington, grand high panjandrum at the NCVO.

The two men, serious doyens of the sector for many years, celebrated a joint 60th birthday last week, at the Cartoon Museum.

The two men took themselves extremely seriously, as you can see by the picture. We hear the event was something of a draw.

Sadly Diary’s invitation was lost in the post, but we’ve been able to pencil in some details - Diary hears the two men comported themselves perfectly and drank nothing but lemonade all night.

Also, neither made any speeches suggesting a fundamental restructuring of sector regulation. Which makes a nice change.

Awayday? Say nay

In other news, Diary hears the whole NCVO staff is holding an awayday today in Ally Pally.

Diary has a tip for you. If you’re taking all the staff on an awayday, you can achieve the same effect by staying exactly where you normally are.

Mobility Scooter Joyriding

Diary is happy to bring you in full a news item we encountered the other day on the ITV website:

A Jersey charity is warning islanders it is illegal for anyone who is not disabled to use a powered wheelchair or mobility scooter.

Shopmobility, who hire out mobility scooters, say the vehicles are dangerous in the wrong hands and can cause severe injuries if misused.

They urge people not to hire them under a different name.

The maximum penalty is £500.

Wait. What? Mobility scooters are dangerous in the wrong hands? Why more so than in the right hands? The right drivers are presumably elderly pensioners with iffy reflexes and in many cases, poor hearing and eyesight. How are they safer drivers than anyone else?

Anyway, Diary struggles not to be amused by the images which spring to mind: bored pensioners hiring out mobility scooters and joyriding around, basically, crashing into pedestrians and putting dents in cars.

A kind of Hell’s Grannies, as it were.

That’s how to fund a charity bike ride

So politicians are supposed to take action on behalf of the electorate, to save them the need to do it themselves. Now Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has shown his peers a new way to do it.

Most people, when they go on a charity bike ride, pay their own expenses. But Abbott has saved the Australian people the trouble. He did the charity bike ride, and ordinary people could still pay the expenses. Lucky them.

According to the Guardian, last year Abbott claimed more than $1,100 (about £500) in expenses from taxpayers for flight and travel to the Pollie Pedal event, in which politicians cycle around to raise money for charities. All totally legit, apparently. Nothing to see here. What could be wrong with that?

That’s not much opportunity to contribute, you may say. But fear not, people of Oz. You also got the chance to chip in on behalf of a number of other politicians. Including one who didn’t even cycle. And another politician’s wife, who just fancied going along. More than five grand sterling, all told.

So that’s saved you the effort of doing a lot of cycling yourselves.

I really don’t want the money

So a while ago we told you about a homeless Canadian bloke who’d found £1,200 and returned it, rather than keeping it.

But it turns out he really, really doesn’t want the money.

A crowdfunding campaign was set up to reward the man, and raised around £2,500 to say thanks for his generosity. The trouble was, no one knew where he lived. And he hardly had a mobile number.

But undeterred, Alex Berube of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police decided that he was going to get his man, and spent quite a while hunting him down.

Unfortunately, when he found the fellow in question, it turned out he didn’t want this money either, and insisted on it being donated to foodbank charity Our Place.

What he really wants, it seems, is a job.