August can feel like an eternity for news editors struggling to fill papers while everyone else sits in the sun sipping lemonade they still have to find way to fill their papers.
While over in niche charity regulation news we had the launch of the Civil Society Strategy to keep us busy, others were not so lucky and I couldn’t help but spot a few stories elsewhere in the national media which have the faint whiff of August desperation about them.
In some cases this is good news for charities which have been able to reach a wider audience, in others the unfortunate timing brought about unwelcome scrutiny. Others are just, well, a bit bizarre.
Here are some of my favourites.
Telegraph: Abandoned tents do not always go to charity
As we near the end of festival season the Telegraph reports the warning from a charity which tries to make use of abandoned items that most of them are, in fact, taken to landfill.
Matt Wedge, director of Festival Waste Reclamation and Distribution, told the paper that: “There is a common misconception that leaving your tent is like making a donation.
“It’s simply not the case. We co-ordinate local volunteers and charity groups and take as much as we can for the homeless and refugees in Calais and Dunkirk but realistically, up to 90 per cent gets left behind.”
Shockingly, it turns out that since some festivals started advertising that abandoned tents would be collected by charities the number of festival goers abandoning their muddy, and possibly beer-soaked, tent has increased.
Wedge called for a culture shift “to alter perceptions of acceptable behaviour on a festival site”.
The Sun (and others): RSPCA promises to monitor dog meat eating situation
The scandal of the summer was obviously the imminent threat that man’s best friend Fido would be served up with a side of chips for lunch.
In case you missed it Buzzfeed produced a helpful summary of the events. But essentially the Sun and others reported on “urgent” calls to ban the eating of dogs in Britain after campaigners warned it was on the rise.
According to the Sun: “An international canine welfare group fears immigration from the Far East is secretly spreading it [the practice of eating dogs] across Europe. Despite widespread public revulsion with the habit elsewhere in the world, neither killing dogs to eat nor consuming their meat is illegal in Britain.”
This is now a story about immigration, not dogs, so now everyone has to issue serious statements.
A foreign office minister spoke out in support of dogs and the prime minister’s spokesperson said the government would “look closely” at laws recently introduced in the US.
It turns out there are already laws about buying and selling dog meat, but you can kill and eat your own dog.
The RSPCA was also called on to issue a statement. It seemed somewhat sceptical that this is a real problem.
"The RSPCA has no evidence that dog meat-eating is on the rise in the UK, nor have we ever received any reports on this issue. While we do not believe it happens here, we continue to monitor the situation.
"It is illegal to sell dog meat to the public in the UK. There are also no abattoirs that have a licence to kill dogs and it would be against slaughter and animal welfare legislation too. So, while dog meat-eating is not specifically banned here, these laws mean that there is effectively a ban on the practice," it said.
The Mirror: Terrible art in charity shops
Hurrah some positive news about charity shops. The Mirror has declared them to be “wonderful” and says they are “raising much-needed funds for worthy causes”.
Alas this was just the pre-amble for a piece highlighting some terrible art that has been found in charity shops. Obviously the Mirror has not done all this research itself, it is highlighting the efforts of a Facebook page dedicated to “chronicling the strangest, most unsettling and downright awful paintings on sale in the nation’s charity shops”.
Anyway, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and all that. Read the full piece here.
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