Our weekly round-up of interesting and outlandish information, collected from the corners of the charity sector.
The show [trial] must go on!
Rodgers and Hammerstein. Gilbert and Sullivan. Yentob and Batmanghelidjh.
Wait. What?
Yes, ladies and gentleman. Something is happening. Something this column never knew it wanted until it happened. And now wants, so very, very much.
Yep. A musical. With show-stopping numbers. With tunes. With... dancing. You know, musical things. And not just any musical. It's being produced by a proper theatre company.
You literally couldn’t make this up. Nor will the lyricists apparently. The song lyrics are being taken directly from the transcript of the evidence session.
For those who don't remember this particular evidence session, Diary feels only pity. And a little surprise. Because it seemed like literally everyone in the charity sector was glued to it. Rarely has someone who has screwed up so massively shown so little awareness of the fact. You can help yourself to a recap here, if you fancy.
The pithily titled The Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee takes oral evidence on Whitehall's relationship with Kids Company is set to take the West End by storm between 24 June and 12 August 2017 and, this column for one, cannot wait.
Where to start, though? Well, the name’s not great. It’s not quite as easy to remember as say: Cats, The Book of Mormon or, even, The H.M.S Pinafore. But it is being authentic to the original text, and that’s got to be something.
Look, just read the announcement. It’s glorious. “What happens when something goes wrong?” It asks. “Who holds us accountable?” it wonders. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? indeed.
Yes, when the Conservative MP for Harwich and chair of the committee, Bernard Jenkin (or Jenkin Valjenkin, as he will henceforth be known) declared that he didn’t want the inquiry to dissolve into a “show trial”, did he realise quite how badly those words would come back to haunt him?
Could he have possibly, in his lowest, darkest moments, ever really thought that his own words would be ripped straight off of Hansard and, more or less verbatim, set to jaunty music and sung back at him, night after night, for over six weeks in a not-for-profit theatre located smack dab in the heart of the West End?
It sounds like some eternal torment lifted from straight out of Greek mythology: Prometheus and the eagle; Tantalus and the fruit; Sisyphus and the rock. And, now, Jenkin Valjenkin and a dodgy musical with a very long name.
The announcement made one NCVO employee so upset he declared – incredibly prematurely, it must be said – that 2017 was going to be even worse than 2016.
2017 is shaping up to be even worse than 2016 https://t.co/UZaSFwt7D8 pic.twitter.com/EbKT0KL9VK
— Nick Davies (@NJ_Davies) November 16, 2016
There’s no need to be all Les Miserables about things, Nick!
Tickets for this go on sale from 6 December and, you better believe that this column is going to be shelling out for the front row.
Back of the [inter]Net!
Yesterday was something of a red-letter day for Ruth Ibegbuna, founder and chief executive of the Reclaim Project. She was awarded the top-gong, overall award at the Social CEO Awards at a no-expenses spared, ritzy event in London last night.
According to Diary’s source on the ground there was wine AND crisps. While the make of crisps has yet to be properly ascertained, Diary would hope that the powers that be would shell out for Kettles. Or at least the Sainsbury's ones that look a bit like Kettles. Pringles, at the outside. One can’t really pair mid-range Malbec with ready salted Walkers, after all.
Yes, Ibegbuna took the top gong home and, naturally, her victory has lead Diary to her Twitter feed and, one must admit, it’s certainly active. There seems to be three things that Ruth really loves in her life: the Reclaim Project, the Labour Party and John Barnes.
It's a bit random, but hey, the heart wants what the heart wants.
In Ibegbuna's case, it wants John Barnes, once-svelte and now slightly portly winger, of Liverpool Football Club fame. Having taken home the social CEO award, she wasted no time getting onto the Anfield Legend calling for a retweet.
Actually, I mainly won this award for a lifetime of selfless devotion to both equality and @officialbarnesy
— Ruth Ibegbuna (@MsIbegbuna) November 17, 2016
Surely that's worth a RT John?
Barnes scored over 150 goals in nearly 600 professional appearances for a number of top-level clubs in the 1980s and early 1990s, including Liverpool, Watford and Newcastle but, as of yet, has provided zero retweets from at least 6 direct mentions on Ibegbuna’s twitter feed.
A poor number of assists, even from out wide.
Babbling Holbrook
Diary's ears pricked up a little when Peter Holbrook, chief executive of SEUK, stood up at the Acevo conference yesterday and asked "Has the minister actually gone?" before launching into his speech. Usually a sign he's going to be nice and rude.
He was safe enough, anyway. Rob Wilson, having delivered his customary speech about social investment, youth volunteering and fundraising regulation, immediately announced he had urgent business of a strangely unspecified nature that prevented him from taking questions, and disappeared so fast that Diary wondered, briefly, whether Derren Brown had made him vanish.
Probably for the best, anyway, because Holbrook proceeded to tear the Tory party a new one, just by reading out things that they promised to do and asking whether they've done them.
Here are a couple of examples.
"Government has never had all the answers, but today it is not even asking the right questions. Society is too complex, its pace of change too fast, for it to be understood, let alone managed, by a central bureaucracy. In this post-bureaucratic age, the people to identify new problems and discover the best ways to solve them won’t be ministers holed-up in Whitehall, but the legions of committed individuals, voluntary organisations, social enterprises, commercial companies and communities. The post-bureaucratic age demands that we change government so that it is more open to being driven by a vibrant civil society."
"We will take a very different approach to the way that relationship is conducted. We will bring an end to the micromanagement of voluntary sector providers through contracts that specify in minute detail not only what should be supplied but how the services are to be managed."
And:
"We will enshrine these principles in a revised Compact between the public sector and the voluntary sector and give the compact the teeth it currently lacks by undertaking to abide by the judgments of the commissioner. Moreover, we will create a powerful Office of Civil Society to fight for the sector within Whitehall and a Civil Society Select Committee to provide democratic scrutiny in Westminster."
So, total success then. At least, if by "total success", one means "abject failure".
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