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

A wee problem solved

So how do you supply enough electricity to keep the toilets lit at refugee camps? It’s an age-old problem, apparently. But Oxfam might have solved it with a toilet that generates power from urine.

The charity worked in partnership with experts at generating electricity from urination – whizz whizzes, as Diary likes to think of them – to generate the pee-power toilet, which is currently being trialled in the most practical place - outside a student union bar.

So the pee fuels microbial fuel cell (MFC) stacks that generate electricity to power indoor lighting. The work was done by Professor Ioannis Ieropoulos, director of the Bristol BioEnergy Centre located in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory at UWE Bristol.

Each unit could cost just £600, which helps if you aren’t flush.

Pickles jars with charities

Eric Pickles has left a sour taste in the mouth for the voluntary sector after saying that grant funding cannot be used to pay for lobbying government.

He’s gherkin our chain, evidently. He mustard been having a bad day when he decided to dream up with that policy.

So there we are – making a serious issue into a lot of bad jokes about flavourings for hot dogs. But the wurst is yet to come.

More about #TheDress

So there’s now a white and gold version of #TheDress, which is being auctioned for Comic Relief. So far, so good. It’s expected to raise a bunch of cash, and finally those of us who saw the dress in blue and black will understand what the misguided minority were on about.

So well done, that’s nice.

What’s really interesting is that it has thrown the whole of online media – including Diary – into an involuntary paroxysmic spasm of blogging and tweeting.

Writing about social media crazes can get a bit depressing, though. For example, Diary would like to draw your attention to this blog, which is basically blogging about tweeting about blogging about tweeting about tweeting.

Now later today Civil Society News will tweet a link to Diary, and with a bit of luck someone will retweet it, which will then mean that they’re tweeting about tweeting about blogging about blogging about tweeting about blogging about tweeting about tweeting about tweeting.