It’ll cause a spike in traffic
Diary’s attention was drawn, almost hypnotically, to a piece on the Directory of Social Change website called Is your charity being held back by the law on unicorns?
It suggests, among other things, that life would be better in the charity sector if it was legal to splice narwhal genes onto horses to create unicorns for the purposes of fundraising.
Diary suspects it is legal, actually, since under British law anything not specifically forbidden is allowed, and it’s pretty hard to imagine anyone has banned narwhal/horse hybrids.
The non-existence of these creatures may be more to do with discounted cashflow estimates, which probably suggest the outlay on creating unicorns is contra-indicated.
Anyway, the DSC column turns out to actually be about social investment, so you won’t find out too much more about mythological creatures. But it did get Diary thinking about some useful advice for publicity-hungry charities: if you want people to read something you write, it’s a good idea to stick unicorns in the headline.*
Number 10 (articles in newspapers and magazines)
Society Diary has a particularly soft spot for the National Coalition for Independent Action – a group whose basic raison d’etre is to act as a pain in the arse to those in power.
Andy Benson, its founder, got on stage yesterday at a Directory of Social Change meeting to talk about whether you should deliberately flout the Lobbying Act and said, basically, yes you should, as often as possible and twice on Sundays.
He brandished two sheets of paper, covered in close-typed, double-sided text, listing 198 methods of non-violent action you can engage in if you really want to get on the wick of those in authority.
By doing this he was himself practising number 1 (public speeches) and number 9 (distributing leaflets). He then moved on pretty quickly to number 5 (a declaration of indictment) by saying that as far as he was concerned, the government could stick the Lobbying Act where the sun don’t shine, which may also count as number 30 (rude gestures).
Anyway, Benson won’t be obeying the Act (141 – civil disobedience of illegitimate laws), and it seems pretty clear he’s aching to get nicked for it. It’s pretty clear because he said so.
“I’d be proud to be the first person prosecuted,” he said.
It’ll leave you in stitches
The Charity Retail Association’s award for innovation this year went to a life-sized knitted nativity scene. We’ve already covered it elsewhere, but it’s such a good yarn (a purl of a story, if you will) that Diary just couldn’t leave it alone.
And if it needles you to read it twice, you can tell us to get knotted.
*Strangely, one of our contributors has had the same idea, and has stuck unicorns in their headline. You can read it here. Our unicorn piece isn’t really about mythological creatures either. It’s about impact measurement.
