Britney Spears has hit out at people closest to her who “never showed up”, as her battle against her conservatorship continues.
It comes after the 39-year-old’s sister Jamie Lynn, 30, and mother Lynne, 66, shared messages of support for the singer on their social media channels.
The pop star is engaged in a legal bid over the conservatorship, with her father Jamie having managed much of her life and career since 2008, when she suffered a series of mental health crises.
In earlier hearings, Spears spoke about how she was being forced to take birth control against her will to stop her getting pregnant with her partner, who she wants to marry but is also not allowed to.
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The pop star has said she would be happy with co-conservator Jodi Montgomery staying on, but that “my dad needs to be removed today”.
A new lawyer for Spears, Matthew Rosengart, was named this week, after she criticised the man appointed by the court, Samuel Ingham, for not doing enough to help her end the arrangement.
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The case is being heard in Los Angeles, California.
Spears has now issued a lengthy post on Instagram, alongside a picture saying: “Never forget who ignored you when you needed them and who helped you before you even had to ask.”
Her post says: “There’s nothing worse than when the people closest to you who never showed up for you post things in regard to your situation whatever it may be and speak righteously for support … there’s nothing worse than that !!!!
“How dare the people you love the most say anything at all … did they even put a hand out to even lift me up at the TIME !!!??? How dare you make it public that NOW you CARE … did you put your hand out when I was drowning ????
“Again … NO … so if you’re reading this and you know who you are … and you actually have the nerve to say anything about my situation just to save face for yourself publicly !!!
“If you’re gonna post something …. Please stop with the righteous approach when you’re so far from righteous it’s not even funny …. and have a good day !!!!!
“PS if you’re reading this today and you can relate …. I’m sorry because I know what it’s like … and I send you my love !!!!”
Earlier this week, former Nickelodeon star Jamie Lynn Spears posted to her social media: “Dear Lord, Can we end this bull s*** once and for all. Amen.”
Spears also asked this week for her father to be charged with conservatorship abuse.
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Jamie Lynn Spears: ‘I support Britney’
At the height of her fame, Spears was one of the biggest pop stars in the world, famous for hits including …Baby One More Time, Oops!… I Did It Again, I’m A Slave 4 U, Toxic, and Womanizer.
Speaking outside court during earlier proceedings, #FreeBritney supporter Derrin Stull, 25, said that now Spears has had her say publicly and there is “visibility”, action has to be taken.
They said: “Well, I think Britney is just such a light in the world, she’s done so much for society, for music as a person, and it’s really sad that she was allowed to live in this type of situation for 13 years. So I think it’s really important that everyone support her.
“Now that there’s the visibility, there’s no excuse. So that’s really of the utmost importance that we just make sure that everyone knows that this is happening, that this is going on and it’s not right.”
Fellow supporter Christina Goswick, 40, said: “Like she said [at the previous hearing], I believe she’s traumatised.
“She can’t sleep. If you look at her, she looks tired. She just wants her life back and I understand that completely.”
Much has been said about the students whose protests have gripped America this past week.
Their cause has been framed in polarising ways. A violent Hamas-sympathising mob? Or peace activists striving for equality?
Within a frenzied spectrum of views and noise, one young student sat down with me for a conversation.
Aidan Doyle, 21, is a philosophy and jazz double major at the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA).
He was arrested early on Thursday morning for being part of an encampment at the university.
He told Sky News he was shocked that the police arrested so many student protesters, despite not intervening in an attack on the protesters by a pro-Israeli group the day before.
He said his arrest had not deterred him from continuing his protest, which he likened to the Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s.
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Mr Doyle rejected the notion, from President Biden, that the protests are not peaceful.
“Graffiti, putting posters up, that’s all peaceful,” he said, commenting on the president’s statement from the White House.
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“I also think that President Biden needs to actually take some introspection and realise that maybe the reason so many of these protests are happening is partially due to him.”
Mr Doyle added: “Protests in general are part of the American spirit. They’re part of being an American. And if we were to just stand around in circles and sing and dance, and pretend everything was fine, then nothing would change and nobody would care at all.
“Part of a protest is causing disruption and causing at least a minor level of chaos that is, again, not violent but that actually disrupts things.”
He denied any accusations of antisemitism, but conceded there is a spectrum of opinion within the movement.
“If you’re going to criticise a movement, I think you have to look at the movement’s goals and their mission, not what fringe members of the group say or do.
“You have to actually look at what we say, what the organisers say, and what is in the mainstream, and what our mission and our goal is: the peace and prosperity of the Palestinian people.”
Asked if he believed in Israel’s right to exist as a country, he said: “I think Jewish sovereignty is incredible. I think it’s an amazing thing.”
He added: “I think that if there is a country for Jewish people that protects the Jewish people, that is of utmost importance, especially with the vile and rampant antisemitism that exists across the world that I see every day and that I try and combat as much as possible.
“But doing that and then simultaneously repressing another group of people, dehumanising them and brutalising them, then the question of whether your state has the right to exist becomes secondary.”
Students, charged and released with a date in court, are here now to collect their belongings. They’re missing bags, belts, shoes, all lost in the chaos of the night before.
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From the very heart of the protest encampment, our cameras had captured the chaos.
Officers moving in. Tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse. Stun grenades to disorientate.
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They were scenes which have stirred an already fevered debate about Israel and Gaza, yes, but about much more too. About America, about policing, and about free speech too.
President Biden said yesterday: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations – none of this is a peaceful protest.”
‘Wrong’ say the protesters. Their movement, they say, is the very essence of protest; of civil disobedience which is threaded through US college campus history.
They reject any notion that they are threatening or violent. Yet the deeply divisive history of the Israel-Palestine conflict ensures that the beholder will so often be offended by the actions of the other side.
It was the students perceived antisemitism through their pro-Palestinian slogans which had drawn a group of pro-Israel protesters to the encampment earlier in the week.
The chaos of that night was reflected in a statement by the university’s student radio station which has been covering every twist.
“Counter protestors used bear mace, professional-grade fireworks and clubs to brutalize hundreds of our peers, UCLA turned a blind eye. Police were not called until hours into the onslaught and stood aside for over an hour as counter-protestors enacted racial, physical and chemical violence,” the statement from the UCLA Radio Managerial team said.
Watching the clear-up after the nighttime police sweep of the protesters I spotted two people embracing. A young man and an older woman.
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3:17
Professor recalls violent arrest at protest
It turned out to be a thread of history. One was a student who’d been arrested the night before.
The other was a student from a past time. Diane Salinger had been at New York’s Columbia University in 1968, at protests which now form a key chapter in American history.
“I’m so proud of these people here. I’m so proud,” she told me.
“You know the civil unrest of the students back in ’68 and it continued for several years, it actually changed the course of the Vietnam War and hopefully this is going to do the same thing.”
But then, back at the police station, a conversation that hints at the wider challenges for America.
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‘Tom’ is a protester who wanted to remain anonymous – a graduate who feels politically deserted in his own country. For him, no government is better than any on offer.
“The problem with our system is that we can’t rely on the police, we can’t rely on the military to keep us safe.
“When we need to make our voices heard, we need to make them heard, and the only way to do that without being repressed is by keeping each other safe and I think that last night and the last few months have really exemplified that,” he told me.
These protests are about more than Gaza. They are aligning a spectrum of dissent.
A scuba dive boat captain has been jailed for four years for criminal negligence over a fire that killed 34 people.
Captain Jerry Boylan was also sentenced to three years supervised release by a federal judge in Los Angeles, California.
The blaze on the vessel named Conception in September 2019 was the deadliest maritime disaster in recent American history.
Boylan was found guilty of one count of misconduct or neglect of ship officer last year.
The charge is a pre-Civil War statute, known colloquially as seaman’s manslaughter, and was designed to hold steamboat captains and crew responsible for maritime disasters.
In a sentencing memo, lawyers for Boylan – who is appealing – wrote: “While the loss of life here is staggering, there can be no dispute that Mr Boylan did not intend for anyone to die.
“Indeed, Mr Boylan lives with significant grief, remorse, and trauma as a result of the deaths of his passengers and crew.”
The Conception was anchored off Santa Cruz Island, 25 miles south of Santa Barbara, when it caught fire before dawn on the final day of a three-day voyage, sinking less than 30 metres from the shore.
Thirty-three passengers and a crew member died, trapped below deck.