It costs £63,000 per year, per child, to attend this establishment. That cost includes board and lodging and tuition. You have to buy your own clothes. There is a strict dress code. To attend you must be male and aged between 13 and 18. The cost of attending falls on the parent of the child unless a scholarship or bursary is made available. Without such, and most children are not in receipt of those benefits, a family needs to earn £143,386 per year to send one child there and still retain sufficient income for the necessities of life. The median average salary in Britain is £37,430.
It costs £72,198 per year, per child, to attend this establishment. That cost includes board and lodging and tuition. You do not have to buy your own clothes, which are provided. There is a strict dress code for visitors. You will not be allowed to visit your child unless you adhere to the following guidance:
modest dress only, no work clothes (including uniforms and trousers with multiple pockets), no sports shirts or football shirts, no jumpers or shirts with hoods, no mobile phones, no offensive logos, no sunglasses or headscarves unless worn for religious reasons, no ripped jeans, no vest tops, no short skirts or dresses, they must be knee length.
To attend this establishment you must be male and aged between 15 and 18. The cost of attending falls on the State. The boroughs supplying the largest numbers of young offenders to this institution e.g. Hounslow, Ealing, Brent, Croydon, Lambeth, Southwark, Newham, are in the bottom 10–20% for income. Because the majority of boys come from these areas, the best evidence‑based inference of household income is likely to fall in the region of £18,000–£24,000 per year.
Eton, the first establishment, rigorously excludes the academically challenged and, upon leaving Eton, 80 to 90% go straight into Higher Education. Feltham, the second, and more expensive establishment, has a reoffending rate of 70% within a year of release.
Two institutions 20 miles apart. Two utterly different social worlds.
| Measure | Feltham Boys | Eton Boys |
|---|---|---|
| Household income: | £18k–£24k | £200k+ typical |
| Neighbourhood deprivation: | Bottom 10% | Top 1–5% |
| Reoffending rate: | 70% | negligible |
| University entry: | <5% | 80–90% |
| Likelihood of custody: | extremely high | effectively zero |
Two groups of boys, 20 miles apart, living in entirely different countries in terms of opportunity, risk, and outcomes. How very British.
Now, are Eton boys essentially more law abiding than the boys who end up in Feltham? Given what we know about the maturation of the brain, that's unlikely. A teenage boy is emotionally immature, neurologically impulsive, driven by peers, unable to link actions to consequences, shaped by pornography and lacking empathy and boundaries. A boy doesn't finish growing his brain until he's in his twenties. So what is going on with the Eton boys that keeps them out of Feltham?
Er- could that be class bias?
Middle‑class boys have better legal representation, parents who advocate, write letters, hire experts, schools that excuse behaviour as “out of character”, judges who do not want to disturb their career trajectory into university, more likely to get community sentences, rehabilitation, sealed records. Whereas working‑class boys have less effective advocacy - the overworked legal aid solicitor, schools that have already excluded them, histories of generational police contact, the stigma of their postcode, judges who see a “pattern” rather than a “mistake” and are more likely to get custody, even when the offence is similar. And, this is a seriously significant factor, middle class boys are more likely to have two parents in the home, whereas Feltham lads are more likely to have been raised by a single parent.
A Utopian solution might be to empty out Eton and replace its customers with the Feltham children. It would be cheaper for the state and if the fabled Eton education lived up to the promise on its website that: " we proudly offer a unique and outstanding education with endless opportunities. Growing up in our boarding community develops personal growth and lifelong friendships in the safety of our wrap-around pastoral care, while nurturing the value of leadership and service", then the saving in human misery to the countless victims of Feltham's graduates reoffending, would add to the jollity of the nation. Wouldn't work, of course, because by the time a child is sentenced to a Young Offender institution, he is already beyond redemption. Even at Eton. Although it would be nice to see them try, instead of wasting all that outstanding education and pastoral care on the already deeply-privileged.
You see, Feltham doesn't rehabilitate anybody. It contains the bodies of the imprisoned, whilst doing worse than nothing for their minds, souls and spirits. It is a horror show of violence and drug addiction. It takes dangerous children and turns them into dangerous men. There are reasons for this. YOIs are not therapeutic environments, staff turnover is high, boys are moved frequently, sentences are often too short for engagement in meaningful change work, the environment is violent, chaotic, and traumatising, group work is unsafe and privacy and trust are impossible.
YOIs are the worst possible setting for treating sexual offending in adolescents. They cannot rehabilitate sexual offenders. They can only punish them. And punishment in and of itself increases risk.
All this was in Judge Nicholas Rowland's mind on Thursday when he sentenced three teenage boys, two aged 15 and one aged 14, convicted of raping two girls in separate attacks. They were nasty, nasty offences, made worse by having been carefully planned, the use of a knife and filming the rapes. The film showed the boys, who were 13, 14 and 14 at the time of the rapes, laughing and encouraging each other. The victims, their families, the public, media and pundits are all agreed that the sentencing was ridiculously lenient and only a prison sentence would meet the gravity of the offending. Reading the comments, you'd think the three boys, who have 10 rape convictions between them, had got away scot free. Far from it. The two older boys, now 15, were given three-year Youth Rehabilitation Orders - the longest standard term for a YRO - with 180 days of intensive surveillance and supervision. The youngest boy was given an 18-month YRO. All three boys were also made subject to a three-month curfew and given a restraining order for 10 years not to contact their victims.
That sentence is serious and stands the best chance of changing the life course that they have been pursuing. The Youth Justice Board and NSPCC are very clear that the most effective interventions for child sex offenders are community‑based, specialist programmes delivered by trained psychologists over many months with family involvement, stable education and trauma‑informed practice. Programmes that work on empathy, consent, boundaries, pornography, peer pressure, and distorted beliefs have very low reoffending rates — often under 10%. Contrast that with custody, with its 70% reoffending rate.
The current media-led outcry wants none of those pesky fact thingies. It wants punishment, and will only be satisfied by the reintroduction of 18th century punishments: birching, transportation, hanging. Even though those savage punishments didn't deter children from offending. Historical criminology shows that Victorian youth offending rates were extremely high, pickpocketing, burglary, violence, and sexual offences were common. So why didn't harsh punishments deter children? Because the drivers of youth crime were the same then as now: poverty, neglect, lack of education, trauma, unstable homes, exploitation by adults, peer pressure, lack of opportunity and the use of alcohol and drugs. Punishment didn't work then and doesn't work now. If the media frenzy results in the sentencing being recalled and a Young Offender Institution sentence substituted, then be sure that the custodial sentence will be shorter and will have the effect of making bad worse.
In the meantime, just as householders have had to install Ring doorbells and burglar alarms to protect themselves from burglary, teenage girls should take from this sorry tale that they should protect themselves from rape as far as they are able - don't meet three stranger gypsy lads in an isolated place because they've sent a nice text, for pity's sake. It shouldn't be like that. But it is. ..................................................................................................
You see, Feltham doesn't rehabilitate anybody. It contains the bodies of the imprisoned, whilst doing worse than nothing for their minds, souls and spirits. It is a horror show of violence and drug addiction. It takes dangerous children and turns them into dangerous men. There are reasons for this. YOIs are not therapeutic environments, staff turnover is high, boys are moved frequently, sentences are often too short for engagement in meaningful change work, the environment is violent, chaotic, and traumatising, group work is unsafe and privacy and trust are impossible.
YOIs are the worst possible setting for treating sexual offending in adolescents. They cannot rehabilitate sexual offenders. They can only punish them. And punishment in and of itself increases risk.
All this was in Judge Nicholas Rowland's mind on Thursday when he sentenced three teenage boys, two aged 15 and one aged 14, convicted of raping two girls in separate attacks. They were nasty, nasty offences, made worse by having been carefully planned, the use of a knife and filming the rapes. The film showed the boys, who were 13, 14 and 14 at the time of the rapes, laughing and encouraging each other. The victims, their families, the public, media and pundits are all agreed that the sentencing was ridiculously lenient and only a prison sentence would meet the gravity of the offending. Reading the comments, you'd think the three boys, who have 10 rape convictions between them, had got away scot free. Far from it. The two older boys, now 15, were given three-year Youth Rehabilitation Orders - the longest standard term for a YRO - with 180 days of intensive surveillance and supervision. The youngest boy was given an 18-month YRO. All three boys were also made subject to a three-month curfew and given a restraining order for 10 years not to contact their victims.
That sentence is serious and stands the best chance of changing the life course that they have been pursuing. The Youth Justice Board and NSPCC are very clear that the most effective interventions for child sex offenders are community‑based, specialist programmes delivered by trained psychologists over many months with family involvement, stable education and trauma‑informed practice. Programmes that work on empathy, consent, boundaries, pornography, peer pressure, and distorted beliefs have very low reoffending rates — often under 10%. Contrast that with custody, with its 70% reoffending rate.
The current media-led outcry wants none of those pesky fact thingies. It wants punishment, and will only be satisfied by the reintroduction of 18th century punishments: birching, transportation, hanging. Even though those savage punishments didn't deter children from offending. Historical criminology shows that Victorian youth offending rates were extremely high, pickpocketing, burglary, violence, and sexual offences were common. So why didn't harsh punishments deter children? Because the drivers of youth crime were the same then as now: poverty, neglect, lack of education, trauma, unstable homes, exploitation by adults, peer pressure, lack of opportunity and the use of alcohol and drugs. Punishment didn't work then and doesn't work now. If the media frenzy results in the sentencing being recalled and a Young Offender Institution sentence substituted, then be sure that the custodial sentence will be shorter and will have the effect of making bad worse.
In the meantime, just as householders have had to install Ring doorbells and burglar alarms to protect themselves from burglary, teenage girls should take from this sorry tale that they should protect themselves from rape as far as they are able - don't meet three stranger gypsy lads in an isolated place because they've sent a nice text, for pity's sake. It shouldn't be like that. But it is. ..................................................................................................
They really do take their politics seriously in America, don't they? Another attempt on the President's life. Another assassin shot dead. Some people just don't deserve democracy.
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There are four splendid anthologies of the writings of stanislav and mr ishmael, compiled by his friend, mr verge, the house filthster. You can buy them from Amazon or Lulu. Here's how:
Honest Not Invent, Vent Stack, Ishmael’s Blues, and the latest, Flush Test (with a nice picture of the late, much lamented, Mr Harris of Lanarkshire taking a piss on a totem pole) are available from Lulu and Amazon. If you buy from Amazon, it would be nice if you could give a review on their website.IIshmaelites wishing to buy a copy from lulu should follow these steps
please register an account first, at lulu.com. This is advisable because otherwise paypal seems to think it's ok to charge in dollars, and they then apply their own conversion rate, which might put the price up slightly for a UK buyer. Once the new account is set up, follow one of the links below (to either paperback or hardback) or type "Ishmael’s Blues" into the Lulu Bookstore search box. Click on the “show explicit content” tab, give the age verification box a date of birth such as 1 January 1960, and proceed.
Link for Hardcover : https://tinyurl.com/je7nddfr
Link for Paperback : https://tinyurl.com/3jurrzux
https://www.lulu.com/shop/ishmael-smith/flush-test/paperback/product-9yjvn7.html?q=Flush+Test&page=1&pageSize=4
At checkout, try WELCOME15 in the coupon box, which (for the moment) takes 15% off the price before postage. If this code has expired by the time you reach this point, try a google search for "Lulu.com voucher code" and see what comes up.
With the 15% voucher, PB (including delivery to a UK address) should be £16.84; HB £27.04.
19 comments:
That's a powerful op-ed, mrs ishmael. Its contrarian rigour does the blog proud.
An anecdotal side-bar. No names, no pack-drill, for reasons that will be obvious. Someone pretty famous, now a Knight of the Realm, did something very stupid as a student (late 60's). Busted, charged, tried. The judge had connections to the accused's old school (not Eton, as it happens, or not quite) as did the court reporter on duty the day of his sentencing. The deal brokered by his old school with the Oxbridge college he'd gone up to by the time of his dumb fuckup was that if the story didn't get into the papers, if there was no scandal in other words, he would not be sent down (note to overseas readers - this meant he'd be allowed to stay at university & complete his degree.) The judge passed a merciful non-custodial sentence, the court reporter found a juicier case to act as the next day's marmalade dropper, and our hero carried on his eminent way. Good luck to him, I suppose, but we're entitled to assume that if he'd been the son of a docker, caught trying to smuggle (by post) a chunk of finest Temple Ball back to Blighty in the post, he'd have been righteously fucked. (Shades of the old "not used to wine" in Brideshead RV?)
Anyway, good to see Cirque Ear-Starmer hasn't let the Lucy Connolly* opprobrium deter him from ignoring the tiresome old saw about politicians respecting the need for an independent judiciary.
(* "The police will be making arrests. Individuals will be held on remand. Charges will follow. And convictions will follow." SKS, August 4, 2024. LC arrested August 6, charged August 9.)
Thank you for that, mr verge. My post is a rebuttal to the sloppy, victim-led, shock-horror thinking that will lead to the reintroduction of hanging into the Criminal Justice system. Which will not make our society safer.
And your anecdote is terrific proof of how things work in our non-meritocratic, undemocratic, class-rotten country.
In a county far, far away from Eton and Oxbridge, the defence solicitors here know that if they have an offender from Off, a Ferry Louper, then the canny solicitor has only to inform the Sheriff that the young man's plans are to leave Orkney on the next available boat to take up a job offer in Blackpool, then the lightest community based sentence will be imposed. Sort of transportation by consent. Whereas, if the offender is one of Ours, like Mr Dunnet ( a respected and ancient Orkney lineage, gone astray in the current holder of that name), whatever he does will not have grave consequences, however much the Sheriff huffs and puffs and bloviates.
It is all tribal and baked into our genes by Darwinian survival.
In other news:
Wee Pete Murrels case is up again now the elections over.
Apparently they used the campervan to holiday in England
Embezzlement of £459,046.49 of SNP funds over a 13-year period (2010–2023).
Purchase of a £124,550 motorhome (Niesmann and Bischoff Smove 7.4e) using SNP funds for personal use.
Creation of false duplicate sales documents relating to the motorhome to portray it as a legitimate party expense.
Use of £16,489 of SNP funds towards a £33,000 Volkswagen Golf in 2016.
Use of £57,500 of SNP funds towards an £81,000 Jaguar I-Pace in 2019, and allegedly creating a false invoice to disguise the purchase.
Claiming £18,408.91 in expenses he was allegedly not entitled to, including alleged false invoices.
Spending £159,757.39 of SNP funds at 82 retailers on items allegedly for personal use or the use of others (2014–2022).
Spending £81,610.19 of SNP funds on Amazon purchases (2010–2023), allegedly for personal use or others, and recorded in a way said to disguise their true nature.
Obviously Wee Krankie new nothing at all about the above.
They hate us mr verge; used to be the aristocracy, now it’s the new rich, the owners of megacorp, private bankers, city wiz kids, tech giant owners. They provide the funds for PPE educated uppermiddleclass, never been told NO, Marxism believing fuckwits. Just look who were the first ‘guests’ through the door of No 10 when queer Stammer was ‘elected’, you’ll see who he really answers to.
Remind me, mr inmate, was it a delegation of Keirs for P@lestine or Im@ms for the Canonization of Woody Allen?
Haha yes mr verge, queers for Palestine better get used to being thrown from rooftops. No it was a delegation of mega wealthy US businessmen including ((Larry Fink)) ceo of the richest hedge fund on the planet BlackRock, representatives of Statestreet and ((Vanguard)), and of course Bill Gates the man who provides poisons via vaxxine.
What on earth would a ‘socialist’ Labour Party offer these ultra capitalists? why land of course, stolen from British farmers, data centres with their own SMR Nuclear power stations provided by Rolls Royce. Come the digital I.d. later this year and ‘closer’ ties with the EU we’ll be back to a feudal system, there’s no voting our way out of this serf.
I see mr wee krankie has pled guilty mrs I, close to half a million quids of theft from the Scottish national socialist party. Will it be concentration camp for him or community service? Hmmm.
And dragged off in chains to the nick to await sentencing. Oh Glorious Day!
The Times innocently reports "Sturgeon insisted she had no knowledge of or involvement in her husband’s criminality, which the Crown Office accepted." I'll bet the fucking did. "I say, my dear, how did we afford that new jag on the drive?" "I say, me old dutch, how did we afford that mighty motorcaravan on the drive?" Such an incurious woman.
Probably put it down to a run of good luck on the scratchcards, mr mongoose.
Curious to know why Mr Fish needed all those games consoles. From Peeb summary :
"The items purchased by Murrell include a collection of video games and consoles.
Between November 2010 and March 2017, he bought several Nintendo DS’s, a PlayStation 3, an Xbox One and a Nintendo Switch for a combined total of £1,488.88.
He also bought various editions of the Fifa games franchise, Battlefield 4 for Xbox and Grand Theft Auto for the PlayStation 4.
In addition, the charges state he purchased a Turtle Beach Ear Force gaming headset for £50.89."
Some dynastic/nepo-link to the Blair Regency with that ID stuff, isn't there, mr inmate? Round & round we fucking go.
No coming round again mr verge, this time there will be no going back, cash will slowly be fazed out, everything paid for by phone facial recognition innit.
Wonderful stuff, couldn't make it up. The really diabolical element of all this, the evidence that shows state and judiciary hand-in-glove, is that Murrell's Court appearance was continued (that's a Scottish legal term meaning put off, delayed, postponed) from February, when it was originally scheduled, until comfortably after the Holyrood elections. Wouldn't want the SNP voters to be put off by knowing the depths of corruption of the ruling elite of the SNP. As Joanna Cherry, Scottish lawyer and former politician, who left the SNP in late 2025 after years as an outspoken critic of the party's leadership and direction, has been saying all over the media - all that power in one household - Murrell and Sturgeon, First Minister, Leader of the SNP and SNP Chief Executive, in bed together under one nondescript suburban roof. Common little people. Common little thieves. (Okay, I said that bit). Cherry has been on the case of the missing money for years - you know, the £600,00 raised for independence expenses, and was repeatedly thwarted by Murrell, who refused external scrutiny of the books. And - wait for it - the luxury goods Murrell obtained by embezzlement, including a pretty pendant necklace that Sturgeon has been photographed wearing - are not part of the £600,000 which is still unaccounted for. Maybe the guilty plea was entered as part of a plea bargain to offset the rest of the money, and, of course, to postpone the hearing to a more electorally favourable date.
And, closer to home, for me, the Chief Executive of Orkney Islands Council, Oliver Reid, salary £165,755, was marched out of his office yesterday ( a normal working day here in Orkney, no Bank Holidays for us, we're tough) and placed on indefinite "special leave" while they sort out the mess.
Can't avoid the conclusion that there are no good people in public life. At least, not here in Scotland.
mr verge has put his finger on an interesting little facet of Murrell's depravity. Why did he want all those teenage-attracting gaming impedimenta? Could we be straying into Michael Jackson territory? "I'm Bad, I'm Bad......."
We have from time to time in the news, do we not, mrs i, those rape cases of confused and befuddled sex after getting rat-arsed where "the issue of consent" and who said "no" when and in what tone of voice. And we have learned, we men, the "no means no" script. And grown white men who try this line now get short shrift - and quite right too!
I have managed to get to a ripe old age without raping anyone - even once, mind you - let alone several times, in a gang, with a knife. I tell you what anyone who uses a knife during an act of rape should be disallowed from even saying the word "consent" in a courtroom. We should assume that the use of a subduing weapong is because the swine knew some subduing was going to be required.
And a body who takes a weapon to subdue a rape victim is beyond saving or redemption IMO. I will settle for 30 years in the lowest dungeon in the land. As long as their goolies in a jar by the side of their bed. So that they can studied, and thought about, and taken home if ever we let them out.
Don't hold back, mr mongoose, tell us what you really think. I suspect rape, buggery and sexual assault are far more common than decent men like yourself would believe possible. Speaking as a former probation officer, I could tell you about the frequency and deluded self-talk engaged in by sexual offenders. Speaking as a woman, I could recount instances of transgressive behaviour from seemingly respectable men. As could women of your acquaintance, I'm sure.
Oh, I do not doubt it, mrs i, but I must not tell tales which are not mine to tell.
I do not mean to belittle anyone harmed in such circumstances. I merely say that if you set out with your mates with weapons and set upon some poor girl or woman, you have forfeited any care or thought for your future that you once deserved. And I do not care about race, religion, nationality, culture... any of it. And don't even know who or what these fuckers were but if I was the husband or the father, I'd be outside the prison gates in a couple of years with a shotgun. They'd not get to the kerb. "It's me culture, m'lud, innit. It was a fucking honour killing."
Pikeys mr mongoose, Pikeys. Apparently, so I’ve read, Crown/High court judges home addresses are available from the system, the judge was worried about repercussions from fellow traveller family members.
Unfortunately, "members of the travelling community" can now be anything from Irish tinkers, the olde worlde Roma folks, all the way to Albanian gangsters. Indeed I think most of the more traditional lot have ben forced out by the newer vermin level incomers.
Anyone attempting to pressure a Judge with threats of violence should be convicted of treason and hanged. After the first hundred, it wopuld stop. A bit like the channel boat controllers.
That was me btw.
Have we seen the story of the lad stabbed to death by some Sikh sword-carrying nutter who got shackled by three mini-me police ladies as he lay bleeding out? Ridiculous nonsense piled upon insanity and all polished the other day into a turd by the Dalek spokesman.
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