Blokes at the back, please

This campaign about how it’s better to have breast cancer than pancreatic cancer, caused some controversy over whether breast cancer charities get too much support at the expense of other medical charities.

And there’s a certain amount of evidence for this thesis in The Sun, which has launched a campaign with the charity CoppaFeel! to get women to check themselves for breast cancer. It featured extensively on the front page and, er, page 3.

But pity the blokes in this scenario. A piece about the Going Commando campaign, about male self-examination, is apparently relegated to page 23. Whyever would that be?

Labour MP Stella Creasy deserves the last word on the subject.

Wear brown for…

A very loose rule of thumb to grade the coverage a medical health charity can expect. It should affect women more than men; the younger the sufferers the better; it should kill some sufferers but not all of them; and it should affect a part of the body people like to talk about.

This chart offers a slightly less glib analysis.

On Monday the chief executive of Beating Bowel Cancer, Mark Flanagan, stood up at a debate organised by the Lord Mayor’s Charity Leadership Programme, and spoke on much the same subject, saying that it was hard to work in a world dominated by large cancer organisations.

Society Diary feels its time for a high-profile campaign to support diseases of the rectum, stomach, colon, etc, which seem to get, as it were, a particularly bum deal.

In light of the success of Wear it Pink and similar initiatives, Society Diary would like to propose it’s called Wear Brown for Bum Cancer.

How is an elephant like the charity sector?

Lisa Nandy, the shadow charities minister, appeared on the Daily Politics show last week to share her vision of a new logo for the Labour Party. She picked an elephant, which the show later pictured, looking rather louche, in an armchair.

But Society Diary began to wonder whether the elephant might not be a better logo for the charity sector she represents.

After all, a charity needs to be thick-skinned because people are always complaining about it. It needs big ears, for listening thoughtfully to others, and it needs a long nose to continually be poked in where politicians don’t want it.

Don't stay cooped-up alone

Staying on the animal theme, we give you the excellent news that a charity called HenPower has received a £1m Big Lottery grant.

The charity places hens with lonely pensioners to stop them feeling cooped-up alone, and provide them with a free source of eggs.

Society Diary would hesitate, obviously, to describe the idea as having been hatched by a genius. Or egg-celent, for that matter. Or as cracking. Or clucking great.

Nor would we commend their henthusiasm, announce how pleased we are that the charity has received a rooster booster, or congratulate the charity for having feathered its nest.