UK-based autism charity Ambitious About Autism has released results of a survey which show that one in six autistic pupils have not been to school since the beginning of this academic year. They polled nearly one thousand young people and their families, finding a variety of reasons for their absence.

One thing is crystal clear: the consistent factor amongst the reasons for absence is the hostility caused by the school system and the government failing disabled students. 62% cited mental health issues, and a fifth said their school was not suitable.

For autistic people who have made it through to the other side of education, these statistics are entirely unsurprising. Schools are hostile environments in more ways than one, based in both the sensory and the social. Fluorescent lighting, loud echoing hallways, and intense dining room smells are just a few of the offensive sensory inputs that all combine with the heavy load of masking needed in order to try to fit in, navigate harsh rules, and attempt to focus on your work.

Autistic children are not your scapegoat

In the survey, 45% of the respondents said they felt blamed by the government for the absences. This should be validated, seen through the endless attacks on autistic people and their families to make the public see them as the enemy of the working class for needing more funding and support.

Neoliberalism sees these children as inconvenient. Not only do they cost more money, they cannot fit into the cookie-cutter system meant to spit out adults who are ready to assimilate straight into a workplace. This is where ableism is shown to be deeply intertwined with capitalism, where anyone who does not fit the mould is seen as a problem.

You may have heard autistic people referred to as ‘canaries in the coal mine’ before. This is the idea that we are the first to see threats or distress, which should be seen as a warning of something more systemic that will come to affect everyone. In the neoliberal education system, autistic children fit this: these environments are not truly built for anyone, and the higher levels of distress faced are only indicative of the fact that all children are being treated in a way that is problematic and misaligned with their needs.

This is a crucial moment for SEND support

This survey comes at a point in time where the government is planning to reform the special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system. This proposes that it will improve outcomes for disabled children, but those more cynical can argue it is a money mission.

The reforms are apparently aiming to address delays and poor outcomes – and, of course, ‘unsustainable costs’. At this stage, Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs) are apparently not being scrapped, but it appears that schools will have their own responsibilities around assessment. This is significantly concerning due to lack of expertise and the possible lack of accountability.

It should not matter that more children than ever fall into the SEND category or need EHCPs. Every single individual deserves access to the support they need, whether that is in a specialist setting or in mainstream, where 70% of (diagnosed) autistic children are educated. We need more specialist settings where autistic children can thrive in environments that are built for them, with the right transport, properly trained staff, and supported transitions. 20% of those surveyed were out of school due to unsuitable school placement.

If schools were changed at a fundamental level, given an entirely different culture, accommodating many autistic young people would still be necessary but could become an easier task. Softer sensory environments, more regulated nervous systems and social support help every child regardless of their need. We will always need individual accommodations, and many autistic children will still need specialist support, but the current system sets everyone up for failure.

This is a critical moment in how we see, hear and support autistic children and their families. They deserve holistic care, in the right environment, and an inclusive system. The focus remaining on money is not the answer.

We have to take autistic children and families seriously

While Ambitious About Autism is using these statistics to raise awareness of why non-attendance occurs for autistic young people, mass media has latched onto them to fuel their debates on the lives of disabled people. Many of the discussions are intentionally inflammatory and lead to further stigma for autistic children and their families, who are simply trying to survive a system that is built to work against them.

Terms like ‘school refusal’ and ‘non-compliance’ are thrown around constantly. The implication is heavily that this is a choice, that young people are simply acting up or their parents should just be parenting better. That is not the reality faced by thousands of families. They have been abandoned by the system and are having to fight every day, often losing their jobs or income as collateral.

Mental health crisis, autistic burnout, and exclusions are almost normalised when it comes to autistic children and young people. It should not be seen as acceptable that huge swathes of children are being failed.

There is a deep irony at how many people on the right use ‘we need to look after our own’ to justify their bigotry, until it is disabled children and parents who are drowning in a system that refuses to care.

This survey should prove the gaps we know exist, not justify the perpetuation of horrific narratives which target such a vulnerable group. Autistic children and their families are not asking for too much: simply advocating for something that is their right.

Featured image via the Canary

In a move many public figures would do well to learn from, musician Chappell Roan has cut ties with her talent agency after flirty emails unearthed between its founder Casey Wasserman and Jeffrey Epstein’s partner-in-crime Ghislaine Maxwell.

UK PM Keir Starmer backed Peter Mandelson despite his ties to a paedophile. Roan, instead, ended her working relationship and demands better from those working with her. Starmer and others would do well to take heed of how it should be done.

Chappell Roan announces she’s leaving Wasserman agency amid founder-CEO’s ties to the disgraced Jeffrey Epstein:

“This decision reflects my belief that meaningful change in our industry requires accountability and leadership that earns trust.” pic.twitter.com/nmYujTA3by

— Buzzing Pop (@BuzzingPop) February 10, 2026

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Chappell Roan: ‘accountability and leadership that earns trust.’

According to the Guardian, flirtatious emails were revealed between Wasserman and Ghislaine Maxwell which preceded Roan’s public announcement. In as a shining example of how a principled person responds to apparent ties with a network linked to child abuse, Roan’s full statement reads:

As of today, I am no longer represented by Wasserman, the talent agency led by Casey Wasserman.

I hold my teams to the highest standards and have a duty to protect them as well. No artist, agent or employee should ever be expected to defend or overlook actions that conflict so deeply with our own moral values.

I have deep respect and appreciation for the agents and staff who work tirelessly for their artists and I refuse to passively stand by. Artists deserve representation that aligns with their values and supports their safety and dignity. This decision reflects my belief that meaningful change in our industry requires accountability and leadership that earns trust.

Roan’s refusal to “overlook actions that conflict so deeply” with her team’s values highlights the real problem with Starmer – and men like him. He appointed “Petie” Mandelson as UK Ambassador to the US despite knowing about his friendly ties to a convicted paedophile.

Our own Skwawkbox wrote last week:

Keir Starmer has admitted knowing all about his disgraced senior adviser Peter Mandelson’s continuing close ties to serial child-rapist Jeffrey Epstein.

Before he appointed him to be ambassador to the US.

It was already a matter of record that Starmer knew when he told MPs last September that he had full confidence in Mandelson. Mandelson was removed as ambassador shortly afterward — but kept on the government payroll. That month’s Epstein file release underscored Mandelson’s infatuation with Epstein, but their ties had been on record long before.

The contrast couldn’t be clearer: some powerful people follow principle, while many powerful men and their cronies just ignore it.

Bro’s stick together

The Canary’s Alice Charles also wrote about how corporate media is ignoring the blatant “broligarchy” revealed in the Epstein files. Charles wrote:

While being mentioned in the Epstein Files is not an indication of wrongdoing, it certainly begs the question of why anyone would go to an Epstein function more than once. What were they getting in return? Was a relationship with Epstein really worth risking everything? For example, if Google co-founder Sergey Brin has used his own search engine, he would have found Epstein’s widely reported conviction for child sex offences.

The files story is one of systemic failure and draws attention to the inability of law enforcement agencies around the world to deal with criminals when they are wealthy and influential. But Epstein was no “kingpin”, merely a cog in a global wheel of male patriarchal supremacy – one that must be dismantled finally and completely.

Roan has never been one to shy away from speaking truth to power. Speaking up for Palestine, she has been known to call out the “engine of celebrity endorsement” that US political leaders rely on:

Chappell Roan is donating proceeds to Palestine and told the Whitehouse to fuck off when they tried to pink-wash her

She’s extremely political and this quote is cherry picked out of context

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She’s criticizing the engine of celebrity endorsement and asking us to engage directly https://t.co/vCDtLnE9fo pic.twitter.com/RZOMUfYm3A

— Ben Silver 🫐🍓 (@thisisbensilver) September 22, 2024

Respect for principle not power

This announcement from Chappell Roan exposes the complete lack of principle and integrity among many powerful men. As a result, it exposes a widespread failure across the West to clearly distinguish right from wrong.

It also highlights that those who hold true to their principles are far more likely to make responsible decisions. Something we haven’t seen enough of from the Western elite so far.

For more on the Epstein files, please read our article on how the media circus around Epstein is erasing the experiences of victims and survivors.

Featured image via the Canary

What happens to our bodies when we kiss?

An exchange of good bacteria

Reduces blood pressure

Reduces headaches

Calms nervous bodies

Ben Habib, founder of Advance UK (an even more openly racist party than Reform UK) has announced that he aspires to ‘re-colonise’ the curriculum:

BREAKING RIGHT NOW: Ben Habib has just announced Advance UK will “re-colonise the curriculum” in the party’s first major policy event.
He vows to make schools hold Christian assemblies with the national anthem and teach how Christian thought moulded the UK.
Do you agree? pic.twitter.com/LL9B5e3bV1

— Dan Wootton (@danwootton) February 7, 2026

The party only officially launched in June 2025 and has already made some audacious statements regarding policy. Habib, claims to be driven by Christ, and wants Christian thought to be “moulded” into the UK and ‘western civilisation’.

Advance UK align with Christianity

Advance UK’s alignment with Christianity is no accident. In times of where there is a huge crisis of meaning, religion provides stability. It is much easier to justify power through the lens of divinity, than it is to take accountability over our humanity. Habib and his cohort know this well.

Their patriotic bravado is a purposeful choice. In order to have their warped sense of ‘home’ and ‘nation’ there must be an ‘outsider’ and ‘other.’

We don’t need to recolonise anything — least of all the curriculum. The British empire fucked so much shit up and its legacy still lives on today. The classroom is not a place where democracy is permitted. As Akala reminds us, “The curriculum is a political choice”. No matter how we try to pretend, the UK will never escape its shadow. Colonialism was and continues to be a travesty to humankind. Britain robbed countries of their wealth, health, and culture. It systematically ranked humans and portrayed neoliberal capitalism as some kind of ‘god.’

Colonial nostalgia

Advance UK’s attempt at colonial nostalgia is entwined with the same settler colonial ideology which not only drove the British empire but also powers the anti-immigrant rhetoric spewing forth from major political parties. We do not need to continue branding Britain as the pinnacle of civility and everyone else its subject. We need a curriculum that honestly confronts power and encourages diversity.

Decolonising the curriculum does not mean erasing Britain or replacing one orthodoxy with another. It means examining how knowledge was shaped by empire. It means recognising whose voices were centred and whose were marginalised. It means teaching Britain’s history in full — including the violence, resistance and global consequences — rather than presenting a sanitised national myth.

A decolonised curriculum will not weaken Britain. It would increase its maturity and thus forth credibility. As Priyamvada Gopal, a professor of Postcolonial studies at the University of Cambridge, argues:

Decolonising the curriculum is about expanding the scope of knowledge not narrowing it.

Expansion is not an attack on Britain. It is an investment in intellectual maturity.

Featured image via X

Lachlan Bruce is a Conservative councillor and a policy and public affairs manager at a British health charity.

The Home Secretary’s plan to “radically reduce” the number of police forces in England and Wales is being presented as bold and modern. We are told that 43 forces are inefficient, bureaucratic and ill-equipped to face modern threats, and that consolidation will save money while improving capability.

We have heard all this before.

In Scotland, the SNP forced through the merger of eight regional forces into a single national body: Police Scotland. It was sold as a reform that would cut duplication, strengthen serious and organised crime capability, and free up resources for frontline policing.

More than a decade on, the reality is stark. Centralisation has weakened local policing, not strengthened it. Communities feel less visible police presence, not more. Decision-making has moved further away from the streets and towns officers serve. Local commanders have less autonomy and communities have less influence. The promise that scale would deliver better neighbourhood policing has proved hollow and false.

What Scotland gained in administrative uniformity, it lost in local responsiveness.

Response times have risen. Public confidence has fallen. Officers themselves speak openly about morale and overstretch; many are leaving in their droves. Rural communities feel forgotten by a system geared around priorities in the big cities and metropolitan pressures. When everything is “national”, local problems struggle to compete.

Under the old model, chief constables were rooted in place and answerable to local police authorities. Today, decisions are taken in a national headquarters hundreds of miles from the communities affected. When policing goes wrong, it is far harder for local people to know who is responsible, let alone influence change.

A single force inevitably standardises practice. But Scotland is not uniform and neither are England or Wales. What works in Glasgow or London does not always work in Skye or Ynys Môn. What suits a city centre on a Saturday night is not what a rural village needs on a weekday afternoon. Centralised systems struggle with local nuance.

The clearest verdict on Scotland’s experiment in centralised policing does not come from ministers or management consultants it comes from the public. Fewer than half of adults in Scotland now believe the police in their local area are doing an “excellent” or “good” job. Just 45 per cent hold that view in 2023–24.

A decade earlier, before eight regional forces were swept into a single national body, that figure stood at 61 per cent.

That decline is not confined to satisfaction ratings. It reflects a system that has not delivered better policing.

The force has faced high-profile operational failings, from the M9 crash in which multiple reports of a crashed vehicle went unlogged, resulting in two deaths, to thousands of arrest warrants for serious crimes standing unexecuted. Instances of evidence mishandling in murder investigations and significant overtime pressures highlight a force struggling with core duties. Independent reviews have also flagged procedural shortcomings in how complaints and investigations are handled.

Whatever the theory behind centralisation, the lived experience is plain: people feel less well served by the police today than they did before the merger. That is not modernisation. It is decline.

Large-scale structural reform absorbs time, money and leadership bandwidth. Years are spent on uniforms, logos, IT systems, command chains and governance, while the everyday work of policing is put under strain. Communities do not experience “transformation”; they experience disruption.

Labour now proposes to repeat this experiment across England and Wales.

Labour ministers argue that smaller forces cannot handle terrorism, serious organised crime or major incidents. Yet those capabilities are already delivered through collaboration, regional units and national agencies. You do not need to abolish local forces to share intelligence, pool specialist skills or co-ordinate nationally. That work already happens.

What does depend on local structures is neighbourhood policing: the trust built by familiar faces, local knowledge and visible presence. British policing rests on consent – on familiarity, trust and presence. That tradition is fragile. It depends on people recognising their officers, not seeing them as remote agents of a distant system. Centralisation erodes that bond. That is precisely what is most at risk from sweeping structural reform.

The Home Secretary says she will create new “Local Policing Areas” in every town and city. But Scotland shows the flaw in this thinking. You can draw as many boxes on an organisational chart as you like; if power, budgets and priorities are set centrally, those “local” units become branding exercises, not real centres of authority.

Real neighbourhood policing is not created by White Papers. It depends on genuine local control, stable teams, and accountability to the communities they serve.

There is a deeper problem here. Labour’s instinct is always to centralise: fewer institutions, bigger systems, more control from the centre. We see it in health, in economic policy, and now in policing. The promise is always efficiency. The outcome is usually distance between decision-makers and the people affected by those decisions.

Scotland’s experience should be a warning, not a template.

Police reform should be driven by evidence of what improves safety, confidence and community trust, not by a Treasury-led hunt for savings or a managerial belief that “bigger is better”. The Police Federation is right: any change must strengthen frontline and neighbourhood policing, not weaken it.

England and Wales do not need a centralised policing model. They need more officers on the streets, stronger local accountability, a focus on the things that really impact the public and forces empowered to serve the communities that know them best.

Conservatives should offer a different vision: one rooted in local accountability, visible neighbourhood policing and respect for policing by consent. The answer to modern crime is not to abolish local forces, but to strengthen them backing collaboration where it works, investing in frontline officers, and giving communities real influence over the policing they receive. Reform should bring the police closer to the public, not place them further away.

We tried Labour’s idea north of the border. It did not deliver. Repeating it would be an expensive mistake.

Welp, looks like Donald Trump has been caught in yet another scandal. This time, he stands accused of laundering money with Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, as political analyst Brian Allen explained:

🚨 BREAKING — Epstein Files:

Donald Trump bought a Palm Beach mansion for $41M, financed by a loan tied to Russian oligarch Dmitry Rybolovlev, then flipped it to the same oligarch for $95M.

Same buyer. Massive markup. No renovations. No logic.

That’s textbook money laundering.

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— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) February 10, 2026

Trump accused of flipping properties for huge profit

This is all over quite a notorious Floridian property.

Trump acquired the Maison de l’Amitie estate in Florida in 2004. The six-acre property set him back a cool $41.35m.

This is the property where he outbid the paedophile Jeffrey Epstein, and the feud between the two supposedly began.

But that’s not the end of the story.

Just four years later, Trump sold the property to Rybolovlev in 2008 for a whopping £95m. Over double what he paid.

Trump claims he made some renovations, installing some of the gaudy gold fittings he loves. But surely he didn’t install enough of this bullshit to double the fucking property value?

Red flags galore

The issue with this comes down to the timing. This $95m sale occurred just as the US housing market was about to crash. And at the time Trump, was facing a $40m personal guarantee on a loan from Deutsche Bank, something he was struggling to pay.

One of the newly released emails from Jeffrey Epstein sheds more light on Donald Trump’s real estate model and gives as an example a mysterious figure referred to only as “R.”

“R” is almost certainly Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.

Excerpt from the email… pic.twitter.com/wmKkRwT7n0

— Euan MacDonald (@Euan_MacDonald) February 9, 2026

Strange timing for a Russian billionaire to step in and buy the property, wasn’t it? And for double the cost. Especially when said billionaire’s ex-wife claimed he was using it to hide assets at the time.

Oh, and then he just tore the whole place down in 2016 anyway, having never lived in it.

Investigator Glenn Simpson testified to congress that the “extreme markup” on the property was suspicious.

Yes, it fucking is.

All coming out

Trump’s name is in the Epstein files thousands of times:

It should’ve been over when….. Can’t fit everything but what am I missing that’s a “must add”? pic.twitter.com/vorafakYSw

— Bri4Change2024 (formerly Bri4Change, Bri4Change1) (@Bri4Change2024) February 10, 2026

When this orange weasel has been through countless scandals, when is enough actually enough?

For more on the Epstein Files, please read our article on how the media circus around Trump is erasing the experience of victims and survivors.

Featured image via The Canary