Happy Birthday, Andrew. Hope you get everything we want. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

The Colour Of Spring is 40. Courtesy of the great @wyndhamwallace.bsky.social thequietus.com/opinion-and-...

Forty years young today... "Mark Hollis may have cast aspersions on how Talk Talk began, but this belated rush to hail latter accomplishments has bred collateral damage. The Colour Of Spring’s miraculous regeneration is its greatest casualty." thequietus.com/opinion-and-...

Children and women can never hope to be safe from sexual predators for as long as a newspaper can run stories like these, minimising the harms of abuse. Sadly, moreover, the Telegraph is anything but an outlier, merely reflective of the establishment it instead protects.

Let it be known that this is the way things will always end - if only eventually - for all those who fail to recognise just how serious sexual abuse really is, whether by enabling it. covering it up, or minimising its significance. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Yet another reason for Mandatory Reporting across the board. People of all political stripes may well have known about this but, for expediency’s sake, chose to say nothing. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...

Kudos to @salisburycathsc for their honesty. They may not say why this is but many of us can guess. "Moulton said Salisbury Cathedral School is reacting to a change in thinking among parents, with fewer than five per cent of its 220 pupils now boarding." www.bbc.com/news/article...

Nick knows, and Nick's got the courage to speak up about it. I like Nick an awful lot. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026....

“It seems inconceivable that the governors were not aware of what was going on. My abuser was sent off on a sabbatical to get psychiatric treatment for his obsession with boys." www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/1586898...

These schools were never safe. These schools are still unsafe. These schools will never be safe. It’s time to end this charade. How many abused children will it take to convince you? #boardtodeath www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crim...

Please be kind to any survivors of sexual abuse you might know. Every minute there's another headline reminding us of how we were manipulated, how we were silenced, how no one listened, how no one stopped it, how long it was allowed to go on and how powerful the abusers were. 💔

It's beyond credibility that members of the royal family weren't aware long ago of the depths of Andrew's Epstein links. The difference between those who abuse & those who cover up abuse is simple: one gets their rocks off, the other not. Otherwise: nowt. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

It's a good day to remind the world that the private boarding school where I was repeatedly abused during the 1980s, Horris Hill, offered a position they called "Official Visitor", granted to Andrew Mountbatten Windsor, also great nephew of the prolific child abuser, Earl Mountbatten of Burma.

“I was never culpable or complicit in his crimes," says Peter Mandelson. "Like everyone else I learned the actual truth about him after his death." Erm... After his death? He pled guilty to state charges of procuring a child for prostitution in 2008. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

No shit, Sherlock www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

It's beyond credibility that members of the royal family weren't aware long ago of the depths of Andrew's Epstein links. The difference between those who abuse & those who cover up abuse is simple: one gets their rocks off, the other not. Otherwise: nowt. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

Here's another sexual predator working for another British boarding school where he was able to ply children with alcohol & take pictures of them naked, which he kept for half a century. What will it take for people to recognise these places need to pay? www.bbc.com/news/article...

Another reminder that Eton College knowingly passed on a sadistic alcoholic, their own headmaster, to another boarding school where he continued to abuse children and also protect other abusers. Such schools must now be held *properly* accountable. news.stv.tv/east-central...

This matters. No one emerged from such institutions unscathed, and Britain is run too often by men who had all empathy beaten out of them. There as many abuse victims as there are those who depended on sacrificing human decency to survive, and it's a habit they've never shaken.

Succinct confirmation of an unspoken yet crucial truth about Britain's private boarding schools: "They shamefully failed to protect the pupils and appear to have knowingly exposed them to teachers with a history of abusing children." #Boardtodeath uk.news.yahoo.com/abuse-inquir...

Chenevix-Trench has been known about for decades www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Now do EVERY SINGLE BOARDING SCHOOL in the UK (and indeed beyond).

It's all so distressingly familiar from my own experiences of coverups at Horris Hill. "Children were sexually abused, they were physically abused, and they were emotionally abused. Members of staff sexually abused children from the 1950s until the 1980s." www.childabuseinquiry.scot/news/scottis...

It appears @fettes-college.bsky.social had access to the incoming report about the appalling abuse its pupils suffered before victims can see it themselves. Yet again, criminals are provided with an opportunity to get ahead of the game, while victims are ignored. www.fettes.com/news-events/...

If you're feeling hopeless, there's comfort to be found in the heartwarming story of FM Cornog a.k.a. East River Pipe and his manager / partner Barbara Powers, who've brought me some of the most heartening, heartfelt music I've ever known. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQO_...

I learned young that, when someone says you've got nothing to worry about unless you're breaking the law, , that's usually utter horseshit. I was abused as a child by my prep school Horris Hill's staff, and this taught me everything I've ever needed to know since about how authority works.

A quick comparison of the Board of Peace and the United Nations

Slowly but surely, victims of abuse at Britain's private schools will always fight for justice for the appalling crimes they endured while the establishment turned a blind eye. www.ewn.co.za/2026/01/14/i...

So Boris Johnson is responsible for funnelling £4million PER YEAR to Prince Charles', now Prince William's Duchy of Cornwall for a prison filled with deadly gas, and we have to keep paying until 2033 since Prince William presumably thinks a deal's a deal? www.theguardian.com/society/2026...

And this just in: 'New Classical' is dead. The Royal Family have killed the piano. www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HnS...

Andrew met Epstein in December 2010. Epstein pled guilty to soliciting prostitution from a minor in 2009. If you think the Queen and now King Charles didn’t help cover up for Randy Andy in the years afterwards - perhaps even before - you’re 100% nuts. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Having reviewed Donald Trump's social media posts, I have rejected my own ESTA and will no longer allow myself to visit the US.

This Sunday I am mainly trying to think of a worse human invention than organised religion.

Uncanny

All very well, but there's no law to force Andrew to disclose anything. Indeed, Starmer's government has failed to implement Mandatory Reporting, which would make it a crime not to report abuse and was recommended by the Inquiry inbto Child Sexual Abuse. www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

1.5 million children are said to have been sexually abused since the Independent Inquiry Into Child Sexual Abuse concluded. In the three years since, not one of 21 recommendations has been delivered by the UK government. It's almost like they hate kids. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO7w...

So it turns out that one *can* respond to stories of child abuse in boarding schools with appropriate measures for crimes of this stature. The UK should take note... www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

These mealymouthed, forelock-tugging responses are shocking. This step was so overdue it's neither powerful or brave. As a victim, I don't support the royals, either: I hold them responsible for a coverup. As for standards, Kemi: Shouldn't kids have *always* expected to be safe?

Things that make me happy: Talking to Spain's Josh Haden for the first time in 30 years... www.uncut.co.uk/features/spa...

Finally, the Sunday Telegraph admits folk aren't sending kids to boarding schools not because of VAT but because they actually want to spend time with their children. "Historic child abuse cases still emerging from the sector make for horrifying reading." web.archive.org/web/20251026...

If you - or anyone you know - attended Horris Hill prep school and are looking for a safe space to discuss your experiences, I've just established a private Facebook group for survivors. www.facebook.com/groups/11612...

I figured it was time to have a chat with the exceptionally charming and erudite Roger Eno for @uncutmagazine.bsky.social about the songs, books, paintings and poems that make him most sentimental... www.uncut.co.uk/features/rog...

From top to bottom, they're all the same. One of my abusers, Horris Hill school's deputy headmaster, regularly conducted the chapel services that we, as 8-13 year-old boys, attended. Elsewhere, he was having children remove their underwear before whipping them with a golf club they'd had to choose.

Last week, a former Eton college teacher was found guilty of child sexual abuse. This week brings accusations against Hurstpierpoint College. Meanwhile 2025's Boarding School of the Year Award went to Monkton Combe weeks after a former teacher was charged w/ buggery. seenheard.org.uk/hurstpierpoi...

This is what it’s like to be the victim of child sexual abuse at a British boarding school. You try to point out that abusers come in every colour and so to focus only on Pakistani grooming gangs helps no one. Then someone who doesn’t enable replies calls you a scumbag who wants girls raped.

If you, like me, were a victim of boarding school abuse, in my case at Horris Hill - and, I'll add, if you were there feel free to contact me - then you might find comfort in this podcast about my experiences & the power of music, on which many of us came to depend. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ3...

It was a joy to appear on Seen & Heard's podcast w/ Chris Braitch to discuss how music got me through my boarding school hell, then, four decades later, finally reawoke the memories of what had happened to me there. "Music's always been my most reliable friend." www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngZ3...

I'm especially excited about the new @uncutmagazine.bsky.social because not only did I speak to The Blue Aeroplanes, one of the bands to earn me my school era 'Indie Wyndy' nickname, but I also get a shout out on the Readers' Letters page for the first time in 21 years of writing for the mag...

A Mosque in London has banned females over 12 from competing in charity runs. But I know a college in Windsor that bans females over 12 from competing in education, and has done since 1440.

A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit. For every tree is known by its own fruit. For people do not pick figs from thornbushes, nor do they gather grapes from brambles. –Luke 6:43-44 www.theguardian.com/politics/202...