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

Well, it's nice to be nominated. Oh, wait. No.

It’s incredibly hard to go through life without picking up certain unwarranted monikers. Diary, for example, was once voted ‘least likely to amount to anything’ in its final year at school. It’s hard to say with any real certainty whether this column had the last laugh in that matter.

Which brings us in a roundabout way to this year’s nominations for the Islamic Human Rights Commission’s Islamophobia Awards.

As part of the nonprofit, advocacy and research group’s gala fundraising dinner the ‘Islampohobia Awards’ are “a satirical event that aims to raise awareness of Islamophobia”.

Across the four awards categories – UK, International, Media and Movie/Book/TV Category – IHRC have certainly nominated a few strong candidates. Poison pen columnist and all round caricature villain Katie Hopkins looks the shortest odds in the UK category; while Donald Trump finds himself facing decidedly stiffer opposition in the International category than he has so far in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, being pitted against Dutch hate-monger Geer Wilders.

More awkwardly, certainly for this column anyway, is the nomination of one William Hartley Hume Shawcross, noted Royal biographer and current chair of the Charity Commission.

In fact, if one is to read the nomination closely, it’s not just Mr Shawcross who has been nominated, but the Commission as a whole, for its (and Diary quotes): “blatant targeting of Muslim charities/organisations”.

You have to feel for the Charity Commission on this one. On the one hand, you have David Cameron (also a nominee) and the swivel-eyed loons on his back bench, demanding the regulator come down on terrorist sympathisers among charities like a ton of bricks - whether or not such sympathisers exist.

On the other there is the sector itself, in all its tofu-munching glory, demanding that everyone be constantly nice to anyone in any sort of minority, whether they warrant it or not.

Anyway, Diary's view is that we need to help the Commission out on this one, and put in a vote for Katie Hopkins.

The Wright stuff

Civil Society News is home to two proud Essexians, or whatever you call people from that fair, flat land. Oddly enough, neither of them – as far as this column is aware, anyway – has ever got a ‘vajazzle’, despite the proclaimed proclivities of their countrywomen.

This brings us on to the programme which first made the word famous - The Only Way is Essex, or ‘TOWIE’, an acronym so pregnant with despair, hurt and loathing as to bring a severe chill to Diary’s very soul.

Now that the UK’s fascination with this programme seems to have thankfully (albeit finally) abated, Diary is left to ponder upon exactly which desolate and squall-lashed, metaphorical shoreline the so-called ‘stars’ of the show ended up washed up on?

Thanks to the British Heart Foundation, one need wonder no-more. Well, not about Jessica Wright, anyway.

“The Only Way is Essex star Jessica Wright has joined the fight against heart disease by fronting the British Heart Foundation’s biggest fundraising campaign 'Wear it. Beat it.' taking place on Friday 5th February.

“The reality TV star is encouraging the nation to join her in looking red hot on Friday 5th February and holding a fundraising event to help raise £1m for new lifesaving heart research.”

Obviously when this campaign absolutely smashes its £1m target, Diary will change its tune. You can take it as read though that Diary will never apologise about its earlier TOWIE remarks.

While we're at it, though, Diary did start to think about whether Donald's famous 'do could stand a bit of vajazzling, or whatever you call it when you slap some beads on a toupe.

So we cooked up a picture to see what it might look like.

Silver Linings Calais-Book

Sometime last year, this column wrote about a Muslim academic in Australia who was donating $1 of her money to Unicef for every “hate-filled tweet” she received on Twitter. Diary liked that story, mostly because it doesn’t like anonymous internet trolls.

In that same indomitable spirit, the lovely people over at Calais Action have also began raising money for refugees currently living in appalling conditions in ‘The Jungle’ and every pound raised so far has come “as a direct result of an abusive, often racist, almost always xenophobic comment by a troll”.

The best part of £1,000 has already been raised. So trolls, keep on trollin'.

An MP’s mansplaination

Ah, the Westminster Social Policy Forum. Basically just a half day’s worth of sector bigwigs, Parliamentarians and policy wonks walking tall and brandishing big sticks. Twenty-minute hot takes everywhere. Quotable quotes spouted left, right and centre.

Step forward Bernard Jenkin MP, chair of the Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee. He was preceded by Sarah Atkinson, director of policy and communications at the Charity Commission.

Atkinson had finished her time slot by saying that trustee boards needed to show their charities what “good governance looked like”.

Jenkin, springing to his feet, proceeded to mansplain that the director of policy and communications at the Charity Commission had “nearly given the perfect answer”, as if she was an eight-year-old who'd managed to get through most of her times tables but had screwed up 8 x 7.

Atkinson looked visibly discomfited, but Jenkin ambled on regardless.

“It’s not just about how it looks," he manalysed. “The sector needs to know what good governance feels like.”

Cheers Bernard, thanks for swanning in and offering us the benefit of your wisdom. And, incidentally, just WTF are you on about? What does good goverance feel like?

Bernard is married to Baroness Jenkin, who managed to famously assert that the poor can't cook. Must be fun times at their breakfast table.