Society Diary: Backwards signs, dwarf wrestling and bold ambitions

14 Sep 2018 Voices

The Dwarfanators in action

Happy Friday dear readers. This week, Society Diary is busy planning an October half term staycation to the UK’s hottest new tourist destination, Salisbury. Apparently the city’s world famous cathedral’s 123-metre spire is a must see, and Diary needs to check in on the world’s oldest working clock to make sure it’s got the right time. Anyway, this week in charity news...

Dwarf wrestling

A transatlantic culture clash has become apparent this week as at least two shows of a dwarf wrestling tour have been banned after protests from the Restriction Growth Association charity. The RGA argued that events for US troupe “Dwarfanators” are encouraging average height audiences to laugh at people with dwarfism.

Perhaps unhelpfully, a spokesman for the show said it would be "first time a show of its kind will be seen in the UK since the Victorian times", which doesn’t do much to distance it from “freak show” accusations. However, he pointed out that many of the wrestlers have invested time and money to be able to tour the UK and could not miss out on two weeks’ earnings.

But one wrestler, Michael Colitti, is clearly not up to date on British current affairs, as he is quoted as saying: "I was under the impression that the UK as a whole had moved away from the Victorian pitch-fork mentality, waiting at castle gates telling people like myself are not welcome around these parts.”

Expensive mistake

The Canal and River Trust filed its accounts this week, in which it celebrated the joys of greater user involvement since it became a charity.

One user it could presumably have done without is the anonymous soul who left a lock gate open on the Shropshire Union Canal, and washed away a 12 metre stretch of waterway, causing £3m of damage.

The article was originally carried in the Telegraph, where readers reacted in the comment ssection with their normal measured approach, refusing to accept the official line and blaming the whole thing on, variously, subsidence, badgers and the charity itself, as well as quibbling over whether this is really the Shropshire Union Canal at all. It all appears a bit, er, fishy.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the consensus is that incidences like this will be much less likely once we leave the European Union. It’s enough to leave you drained.

The charity seems to have taken a canal-half-full approach to the problem, and has gone about fixing the issue with a remarkable lack of moaning. It seems it’s all water under the bridge.

Aiming for the top

Tracey Crouch, our heroic minister for charities, sport, gambling, and loneliness, appeared to have been given a promotion this week. A twitter post about an interview she did with Dutch media described her as the world’s prime minister for loneliness, when translated back into English. When this was pointed out to Crouch, she replied with an *evil laugh*. Diary hopes Crouch’s engagement in light-hearted banter was an indication of a streak of ruthless ambition and that she has her sights set on being Prime Minister.

She may have to up her game though as Theresa May is now doing banter. In the PM’s latest attempt to fend off the circling Boris Johnson, May won over Strictly Come Dancing viewers by tweeting “Get in touch if you need any tips” in reference to her dance-filled trip to South Africa. As a Strictly addict, Diary admits to being charmed by this gag, even if it was the result of her social media team throwing ideas around the room with a Conservative Party think tank. Unfortunately for the ambitious Crouch, Diary now predicts that the pundits have got it all wrong, like they have everything else in the past three years, and May will cling on for the full five-year term. Then she’ll win a majority in the next election with her new human side. She’ll unite her party, unite the country and make a red, white and blue Brexit a success.

ELAS EVISSAM

Elsewhere Barnardo’s charity shop gained unwanted attention when a picture of its window display went viral for putting MASSIVE SALE in reverse, reading from the outside as ELAS EVISSAM.

Social media user "Richard Hanrahan Is Tweeting This" posted the photo under the tagline “We watched this put up letter by letter from a table in a restaurant”. What the unhelpful onlooker failed to realise is that Barnardo’s was actually selling an extensive range of cut-price mirrors.

 

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