Joe Gordon writes with news of 24-hour comics marathon taking place at the ICA on Saturday. The idea is that various cartoonists will attempt to produce a 24-page comic in 24 hours, and will raise money for charity. More details from Joe’s FPI blog.

This year’s charity for the event is Childline. This is an organization I’ve been a bit suspicious of. When it was first set up it seemed to be feeding on public hysteria and its objectives appeared to include encouraging kids to report “suspcious” adults who would then be accused of paedophilia, satanic sex abuse, or whatever the tabloid newspapers were currently getting hot and bothered about. However, the organization seems to have grown up a lot. It is now part of the NSPCC, and in August in produced an excellent report on homophobic bullying in schools. This is an area where a helpline for worried kids can be hugely helpful, because in most cases the victims are afraid to go to teachers or parents for help on the very reasonable suspicion that this will only make things worse. To pull just one set of statistics out of the report, a study in Scotland found that only 15% of children subject to homophobic bullying at school reported the problem (compared to 69% for other types of bullying), and of those with the courage to ask for help, only 10% were happy with the outcome.

None of which is to say that phsyical and sexual abuse of kids isn’t a problem. But thankfully kids with such problems can often get help, and are treated sympathetically if they ask for help. The same is generally not true for kids who have concerns about their sexual orientation or gender identity.