The McCanns - what's this all about?

I have been wondering when we were going to do this.

I find the media circus that they whipped up to be bizarre and unprecedented, class and religion seem to be wrapped in this in weird ways as well.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_white_woman_syndrome

I actually agree with that petition, for what it's worth.

I got banned for another Internet forum for posting a satire of the McCanns' media coverage, and a Facebook group I was in entitled 'If 10,000 people join this group, I'll let little Maddy go' was deleted by the FB admin. Despite this war on free speech, I still think the tasteless ones are the grief merchants forcing these peoples' lives down our throats, compelling us to carry the sympathy card and thus earn cheap points, whilst simultaneously digging into a complete non-story (there has been no further news since the kidnap) with quite terrifying fervour. The McCanns themselves aren't helping, with their self-promotion 'tour' around Europe, The Vatican and North Africa to raise awareness for their probably long-decomposed daughter/their own maudlin plight.

Moreover, instead of closing out the story when they got bored of it, the media softened the blow by resurrecting their trustiest old standard...Diana!

Sorry 2 b hartless :(

That petition is actually one of the most reasonable responses I've seen. It's the media coverage I object to.

btw I am impressed that ILX held out a month before starting its own Maddy thread. I was sorta hoping there'd never be one.

Well, i'm surprised at then ilx reaction so far. That petition makes me feel sick. The McCanns are not to blame for their childs plight it's the fucker who took her. I don't think they've gone about their 'campaign' the right way but if i was in a simialr situation fuck knows what I would do.

You'd leave your three-year-old daughter alone in a house in a foreign country with the doors open while you went and had a few drinks Ned? I suggest perhaps you don't have any children.

don't suggest that

I have 2. And I may well make a mistake in the future and while I'm still grieving/trying to come to terms with my mistake what I really want is some self-rightous fucker who has clearly never done anything wrong in their entire lives starting a petition to have me thrown in jail. And what the fuck has 'foreign' got to do with it?

The "unlocked" part is completely new to me, to be honest.

So you don't think parents that leave their children unattended while they go out on the lash should be investigated by social services?

xp

Although the petition is somewhat discomforting, the fact that the parents left their children unsupervised in an unlocked hotel room does raise questions. Of course the abductor is to blame.

I have no idea what the campaign is achieving, other than providing some bizarre mawkish entertainment to the daily mail/sun/OK/heat marketspace, but I have no idea what I would do in that situation (anything possible is the only answer). The campaign is unprecedented and i have no idea if it would have happened had the McCans been from a lower socio-economic background.

we live in a blame culture, these days

and also: surely better the hotel room was unlocked, rather than locked?!?!?!??!?!?

have you not seen those adverts about leaving children locked in a house?

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0002VEOG8.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

we're already talking the extremes

replace "foreign country" w/ "somewhere they didn't know" and
forget "on the lash" or "unlocked" (worse if true but don't know)

it was a bit more than a "mistake" and it was "irresponsible"

There was a (complementary) creché facility which they failed to use, for some reason. Obviously they're going to be cursing themselves for doing this, but... Oh I dunno. What's common sense? I wrote about it on my blog and someone called me a bastard. For my book I'm planning a chapter on a husband who drugs his wife and artificially inseminates her with other mens' sperm to order, then has the babies 'abducted' as toddlers as a cover for selling them.

I think the petition is a little steep, myself, but at least it isn't ploughing into what Ed rightly calls the 'mawkish entertainment' of feigned, unquestioning sympathy. You have to be skeptical if you don't know all the facts, and it's gotten to the point where anything that redresses the ludicrous imbalance towards the McCann family is welcome. The person to blame is the abductor, yes, but for what's happened subsequently, the family have to take at least partial responsibility.

The couple were questioned by police on 10 May about why Madeleine was left alone in an apartment, with the patio doors unlocked, while they dined at the restaurant

We also wish to ensure that no parent will ever be able to evade responsibility for the safety and welfare of their children by citing the example of Mr and Mrs McCann, whose negligence is unreasonably being discounted in the tidal wave of sympathy brought about as a consequence of their media campaign".

i don't understand this part either, do people who don't have a media campaign normally get scolded by people about having their children snatched?!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!

The couple were questioned by police on 10 May about why Madeleine was left alone in an apartment, with the patio doors unlocked, while they dined at the restaurant

so, in a way, this petition is pointless as it already has been investigated?

Strap your seatbelts in fellas, the dam's burst, 500 posts by tomorrow morning...

I guess this shows how little I know of Catholicism, but I cannot fathom that they left their twins in another country and went to see the pope.

The person to blame is the abductor, yes, but for what's happened subsequently, the family have to take at least partial responsibility.

what happened subsequently?

For my book I'm planning a chapter on a husband who drugs his wife and artificially inseminates her with other mens' sperm to order, then has the babies 'abducted' as toddlers as a cover for selling them.

sounds like a spiffing yarn!

(xxpost) Taking little children to see a catholic official is a lot more irresponsible these days.

xpost to Dom.

I think that's up to social services. It's the fact that some cnut has made a petition and AT THIS POINT that I am frankly incredulous over. And if you read the signatures you'll see that half these people signing it are hating the McCanns for not being like them.

As I say, it's not the way I would have gone about it, but ffs how is this helping anyone?

Ken, they whored themselves out to the media, and thereby lost just about any sympathy I had towards them.

Caption this photo -- Bush meets the Pope edition about six posts down can be found my own take on their Papal visit.

How far is too far? :-D

if the mccann's are in any way responsible for scik mouthy's chapter outline they should be punished severely.

Which other crimes do you think the McCanns should be allowed to commit because their daughters been kidnapped Ned? Public order offence? Selling pirated DVDs at the Sunday market?

Ken, they whored themselves out to the media, and thereby lost just about any sympathy I had towards them

i bet they're kicking themselves about that. and yes i agree they're at least partially responsible for this tragic outcome.

unlocked = she could have wandered off by herself (initially) ?

xxpost omg estela OTM

So be honest I really thought about not starting this thread, and am already wishing I hadn't really. But it was a little strange that we hadn't talked about it, if not from the point of view of what we think of the (shit it's s crap word but I can't think of anything else) campaign.

I too was shocked at the sheer amount of ribbons and bands and stuff but then I live a mile away from Rothley (where they're from)and believe me, although there is a lot of faux grief out there, a lot of parents around here are very upset. They know it's ridiculous in some ways, kids are always dying or being killed and who the fuck cares about them but they also know that sometimes, their child has been out of their sight for a few minutes and that cold fear that strikes you at that moment is the worst thing in the world. If the McCanns are having to live with that all the time, I, for one, have sympathy with them because I can't imagine what that must be like.

Which other crimes do you think the McCanns should be allowed to commit because their daughters been kidnapped Ned? Public order offence? Selling pirated DVDs at the Sunday market?

-- Dom Passantino, Wednesday, 13 June 2007 11:47 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I'm sorry Dom you've lost me. Did I say they should be allowed to commit crimes?

Leaving a three-year-old child unattended in an inadequately protected room while getting pissed in a tapas bar and relying on assumed Middle England disaster immunity/eternal life fantasy: blame or no blame?

Otherwise, if she'd been the child of a 20-year-old black single mother on benefits, you wouldn't have heard anything further.

Ummm... yes. That's the whole point of this thread isn't it, you saying that the McCanns should be above the law because their daughter's gone missing?

xp

No it's isn't and I didn't.

So you agree that they should be investigated by social services then?

So their other kids will be taken away/they'll be sent to jail? I think losing one child is punishment enough.

there's a lot of faux grief, and a lot of faux hate, i think.

at the end of the day, unless you know them personally, or happened to have seen the kid, it's kind of nothing really to do with you aside from feeling sorry for what happened?

i don't particularly understand the whole touring the world thing, it seems like losing focus a little, but then i can't think of anything more practical or helpful to suggest.

So you agree that they should be investigated by social services then?

did you not say that the police have already questioned about this?

(my previous post doesn't mean I think they shouldn't have been more careful, but they don't deserve this extra witchhunt either. They already know they're at fault.)

i still want to know what happens to other people who have had their carelessly left unattended children kidnapped: do they normally go to jail? or are they all "above the law"?

someone write to the social services to get some facts already: site the freedom of informaion act and you can get full statistics on what happens during these circumstances. we NEED TO KNOW. because we care.

think about the CHILDREN.

Social Services targets are of course a different matter (Orkney "scandal" etc.).

on the other hand, they're both doctors, aren't they? maybe they're just breeding them for organs! *shock*

They made a staggeringly stupid mistake and they're doing everything they can to right it, even though it's almost certainly unrightable. I don't know what people think they should do - if there's a media demand for them (and there is), should they just humbly say no thanks and give up? Something like this story was always going to happen - eventually a snatched kid was going to have media-savvy parents - the unexpected thing is how long it's continued, which is as much a function of a body not being found as of the McCanns' campaign. Yes, it's very bad that white middle-class able-bodied girls who vanish get a lot more attention than anybody else who does - I don't think that means the parents should virtuously refuse to exploit that attention.

The really shocking thing in all this is (or was - it seems to have stopped now) the Portugese Police's willingness to dripfeed the UK media with vague details about the "designated suspect" to stoke the salacious frenzy here.

Every time I hear something about this case or see people talking about it, I wonder if I missed something when it first came up. Are the McCanns extremely well connected in some way? Have they got friends in the media or the royal family or something like that? I just don't understand why this one case has attracted so very much attention. Is it really just because the alleged negligence aspect provides fodder for phone-ins and expert debates, or is there more to it that I haven't picked up on?

xpost

My point (and by christ i wish i didn't have one) was about the petition which seems (to me) to be both pointless,as I am quite sure that the authorities in Portugal and the UK are investigating all the circumstances around the case, and vindictive. Espceailly the comments. I don't think anyone is above the law but I do (see my earlier comment) have a lot of sympathy for the parents.

I am showing too much humanity here just because I don't wish to stoke a witch hunt against some greiving parents EVEN if they did make a horrible mistake?

No, not at all, you OTM.

Slighty deviating from the main point, sorry: I think this campaign is both a great idea (what else can they do?), since at least now people know what she looks like, but it can also be dangerous - say the infertile couple abducting a kid scenario is true: "we can't act like she's our daughter anymore now, we have to get rid of her somehow" ...

thanks for summarising my posts ned.

Everyone with small kids has taken a risk that they shouldn't have done at least once, I know I have. Usually it's when you're hassled and busy, not when you're relaxing on holiday, but with 3 kids under 4 I guess they're never truly off-duty. I have tremendous sympathy for them, as I think most people do, and can't see the point in involving social services. I don't know the exact details of how far away they were from the kids when they were having dinner, but I can't honestly said that I wouldn't have done the same myself.

Ned is talking sense here.

The problem with the initial investigations was that the Portuguese police weren't up to it since usually they have fuck all crime to deal with so just lounge about all day in the manner of rural Italian carabineri and when Big Crimes occur they go a bit James Finlayson (observations of a work colleague who does have a holiday home out there).

I'm not really fussed by the media furore - you have to expect it - but rather by the country-hopping, the pope-visiting, all done with their other, younger, presumably very scared and confused kids left with someone other than their parents.

The petition is pointless and malicious, esp. at this stage in proceedings, aye.

some sort of petition to alter the terrible way the media deals with this kind of story i would sign.

but that would be playing right into old tony blairs hands i guess.

Ken, they whored themselves out to the media, and thereby lost just about any sympathy I had towards them

Louis, this is phenomenally stupid of you. They're not doing this to make vast amounts of cash and maybe sell a few million books a little later down the line, they're doing it to keep this story in the global media for as long as possible because it might help actually find the kid. Or alternatively, Groke OTM.

Nick - they're doing what they think might help to get her back. Sorry if that bothers you.

Why does it matter that the other kids are left with say, uncles/aunts/grandparents?

I can't really fathom why they're leaving the other kids elsewhere, but I'm assuming they're being cared for and looked after by someone trusted and not, y'know, left to play in the road.

(xpost)

I think you should stop writing, Scik Mouthy

Shame, I really wanted to read that chapter about the husband and the sperm.

has dom gone to write to social services for the statistics?

something about wrestling and an evening session band

I can't really fathom why they're leaving the other kids elsewhere, but I'm assuming they're being cared for and looked after by someone trusted and not, y'know, left to play in the road.

Nick - they're doing what they think might help to get her back. Sorry if that bothers you.

Why does it matter that the other kids are left with say, uncles/aunts/grandparents?

I appreciate that they're just trying to get her back - that's completely understandable, of course - and I'm not a parent, but my first reaction is that if I had one child abducted and I had two more, younger kids, I'd not let them out of my sight. Sod grandparents, aunts, uncles, whatever - I woudln't trust ANYONE to look after them but me.

i wouldn't blame the mccanns for leaving their kids alone any more than i'd blame an insensibly drunk woman for getting raped. it's a minor act of carelessness which millions of parents have done, and which happens to have had terrible consequences. i'm sure the mccanns are beating themselves up over it far more than the people who created this petition could even dream of.

as for the media coverage, the people criticising it are being very dumb/naive - do you not realise how much the likelihood of finding their daughter is increased by keeping her image in the public eye? personally i could do without ever hearing a word about it again - when you work in an office with news 24 on all day it can become v wearing - but if i'm going to criticise anyone it's the media rather than the parents.

it makes sense obv that the people showing actual human empathetic capabilities here are the people who are parents.

i agree with nick that it seems odd to leave their other children behind while they gallivant around europe but to castigate them for that decision (while knowing absolutely nothing of the family set-up) would seem rather too petty

Taking the other two children with them all over Europe wouldn't have been the best idea either and people would have criticised that even more.

it makes sense obv that the people showing actual human empathetic capabilities here are the people who are parents

Lex tell us more about Matt DC's lovechild!!

[imagebomb.jpg]

I don't (indeed can't) object to all the country hopping and stuff, as in their position I'd be doing exactly the same thing. Perhaps their huge determination to do everything they can to find her stems from some guilt about leaving her alone in the first place, who knows. While doing so was hugely, massively stupid, they don't deserve to have their daughter kidnapped as a result.

But what does freak me out is the Diana-esque mass hysteria. Every sodding day I'm getting forwarded emails from people saying "help us find our Maddie". Now, coming from her family I could accept it, but she's not "our maddie" to random grief-tourists. For that matter, I have yet to hear either of her parents refer to her as "Maddie". It's always "Madeleine".

And then there's the whole middle-class white girl thing, for which we can blame The Media.

I'm a member of The Media myself, and there are all kinds of McCann-related jokes and snarky comments doing the rounds in the newsroom, yet if anyone in the public eye says such a thing they're flamed to death from all sides. The Sun even went mental when various MPs refused to wear yellow ribbons in the House of Commons (saying, quite reasonably, that they're against all child abduction and don't need to prove they feel especially bad about one of them), "naming and shaming" those who "refused to support the hunt for Maddie".

Long, rambling post, I know...

I appreciate that they're just trying to get her back - that's completely understandable, of course - and I'm not a parent, but my first reaction is that if I had one child abducted and I had two more, younger kids, I'd not let them out of my sight. Sod grandparents, aunts, uncles, whatever - I woudln't trust ANYONE to look after them but me.

maybe it's a religious thing..
From Matthew 18:12–13

18:12 How think ye? if a man have an hundred sheep, and
one of them be gone astray, doth he not leave the ninety
and nine, and goeth into the mountains, and seeketh that
which is gone astray?
18:13 And if so be that he find it, verily I say unto
you, he rejoiceth more of that sheep, than of the ninety
and nine which went not astray.

The Sun even went mental when various MPs refused to wear yellow ribbons in the House of Commons (saying, quite reasonably, that they're against all child abduction and don't need to prove they feel especially bad about one of them), "naming and shaming" those who "refused to support the hunt for Maddie".

this is the kind of thing i meant re 'petition against 'the media' btw

I'm against all instances of media frenzy and i don't need to sign a petition to prove that I feel especially bad about one of them.

is Matthew 18:12–13 saying that parents love bad kids more than good kids?

yeah referring to her as "maddie" = dudddddddd. god, i loathe tabloids.

sorry, i haven't been following this.

did the pope have her in the end, or what?

is a sheep that's gone astray necessarily bad? it may be v. tasty.

xxpost

what's wrong with maddie?

What parents think.

The reason there's such appetite for the story is surely that people are used to a particular and quite grim arc in these things i.e. child snatched - parents tearful - police say there's still hope - police admit there isn't - body found - killer nabbed - and then the media focus is firmly in "INSIDE THE MIND OF A BEAST" territory and the parents' ruined lives are forgotten until a quote is needed next time.

Whereas this time the arc's been broken - there's no body, so there's no killer, and there's been no concrete evidence against any of the suspects, and I think the more time goes on the MORE the section of the public with a lot invested in this emotionally think that the kid will somehow be found.

"there's been no concrete evidence against any of the suspects"

Don't even get me started on the tabloid lynch mob going after Robert Murrat....

i still want to know what happens to other people who have had their carelessly left unattended children kidnapped: do they normally go to jail? or are they all "above the law"?

It's not an identical situation but there was a case of a woman leaving her baby behind in the car (unknowingly, she was overstressed apparently) and it died because of dehydration. She was not going to jail, but social services was going to investigate the case.

As Dr C has said, parents do sometimes leave their kids unattended. It's easy to judge, point the finger, but being a parent is very difficult. You are absentminded for five minutes and then the accident happens. :-(

What parents think.

-- Hello Sunshine, Wednesday, June 13, 2007 12:59 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

A link to my local rag - is this a first?

xpost - OMG! You're sometimes absentminded around Our Ophie?

I agree with most of this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/india_knight/article1875737.ece

Particularly this bit -

The question is, does it matter that some people’s avid following of the McCanns’ story undoubtedly involves prurience and a strange sort of hunger for the gory detail? Not really, no. The point, surely, is that somebody somewhere knows or suspects what happened to Madeleine, and that her parents are desperate to attract that person’s attention by any means necessary. If, on the way, they make some of us feel uncomfortable, or voyeuristic, or even, whisper it, compassion-fatigued, that’s entirely our problem. God knows theirs is greater.

I'm sure that will give great comfort to the daily bereaved families in Iraq, especially with that "God knows" at the end there.

Anyway, in a kidnap scenario the napper is clearly going to be too frit to do anything in the media glare, so really the media should shut up about it entirely until the case has been resolved, one way or the other, but then that would rely on people not buying papers not to read about/get off on other people's tragedy, Moebius strip &c.

You may think your post was long and rambling Hello Sunshine, but it was almost exactly what I was going to say.

It's the Maddie, not Madeleine, that gets me. It's twee and cheaply emotive and is just the kind of thing that allows/ encourages grief tourism. Oh, and it probably makes headlines easier to write than a terribly long name like Madeleine.

i know a friend who is known as maddie, whose actual name is madeleine.

I'm sure that will give great comfort to the daily bereaved families in Iraq, especially with that "God knows" at the end there.

well then we should get the social service to investigate why they allowed their family member to live in iraq.

Travel expenses might be a bit dicey unless they're twinned with Basra Borough Council.

STOP PUTTING A PRICE ON LIFE.

we should write to anthony blair to complain about it all.

complain about people shortening names in newspaper, that is

Our Kenny OTM.

oh, shortening. Our K OTM

RKO (tm)

Hooray, I win my 'first person to pointlessly bring up Iraq' sweepstake!

I'm sure that will give great comfort to the daily bereaved families of starving Africa.

it's a minor act of carelessness
You are absentminded for five minutes and then the accident happens. :-(

They didn't leave her for five minutes. They left all three of their kids in an unattended apartment while they went and had dinner. They could not see the apartment from where they were having dinner. I know I'm not a parent, but this just strikes me as ridiculous esp. when there were babysitting facilities available at the resort. That said, I think the petition is ridiculous.

Because, frankly, the 6Ts are to blame, especially decadent pop stars JoL, PMac, GeoH and Rings.

Hi,

We have two young daughters. We travelled abroad when they were little, a fair deal. particularly when we only had Amber. (i.e. before Alice was born).

We never left them in the apartment while we went out even to the garden outside! Actually, for the reason of abductors. Call us paranoid if you like.

Having said that, we are not being high-horsey about what happened.

xpost sorry are we into silly responses now?

I'm afraid so. Call it our way of coping.

Anyway, when's the charity record ("Throw Those Tapas Away") coming out?

OK,

Basically, what ENBB said, with: OK, they did badly, but they should have all the assistance they can get.

The police seem to be on a no-win situation, unless they actually find her.

The media seem to be very quick to ship their star reporters (GMTV particularly) out there, all reporting during the morning, and no doubt tapassing it at night.

Yeah, "young pretty girl' gets the news coverage, every time.

POLAR BEARS

Jarvis Cocker

They didn't leave her for five minutes. They left all three of their kids in an unattended apartment while they went and had dinner. They could not see the apartment from where they were having dinner. I know I'm not a parent, but this just strikes me as ridiculous esp. when there were babysitting facilities available at the resort. That said, I think the petition is ridiculous.

Yes, I know, I was talking more about other cases (where accidents happen). That said, my PIL left their son (my husband) in the car when he was a baby to go shopping. Not a wise thing to do. Thank god he didn't dehydrate or something.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6749131.stm

Does this bit read weird to anyone?

On the day that the letter was received, police found their bodies at the spot indicated on an enclosed map.

Does that mean the police were already there or that they went because of the letter. Also Dutch newspapers report that the bodies were found 2 kilometres from the spot indicated in the letter. Surely the Beeb isn't sensationalizing?

No, it's all over Belgian and Dutch papers as well. Their bodies were dumped about exactly where the letter indicated, but that was a sewer with running water, they had drifted off by the time they were found. Still doesn't explain how the letter writer knew, since it was (probably) a local pedophile who had been released too soon and who acted alone.

and police were already there, they just received the letter the day they found the bodies (the letter must have been mailed a day earlier - but it couldn't have been by Ait Oud, he was in jail at the time).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdallah_Ait-Oud

Oh, and it probably makes headlines easier to write than a terribly long name like Madeleine.

OTM

apparently loads of people do what the mccanns do all the time ie go out to dinner leaving their kids at home while on holiday. locking vs not locking the doors is tricky re fires etc, and even a babysitter would have most likely not been *in the room with madeleine* at all times. tricky one.

Oh, and papers over here in Belgium seem to think the letter writer is either some shady psychic or the proof they've been looking for ever since the Dutroux murders that there really is some kind of international super mafia network of child porn/traficking/prostitution that organised these abductions/murders with exactly one person that sends the clues to this one Dutch paper because of guilt feelings or something. Neither of which have been proven, but every time something happens that could maybe possibly point in that direction, the hints return.

(the subtle hints in the papers that either know more about it or try to spread teh phear, I mean)

Stan, honey, stop reading Het Laatste Nieuws. ;-)

I know :-)

But all the other papers only have boring facts :-(

If this letter turns out to be true... I don't know. It's awful.

from that BBC article: The Telegraaf believes the letter comes from the same sender because the phrase "vermoedelijke vindplaats" was also used in the tip-off letter last year about Stacey and Nathalie, BBC correspondent Alix Kroeger added.

Yeah, well, the fact that those words ("suspected finding place") were in the letter wasn't THAT secret, see this article from last year:

http://www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/45491601/Vindplaats_meisjes_gemeld_bij_De_Telegraaf.html

"vermoedelijke vindplaats" was even in bold there.

(click on the second picture: maps AND the handwriting - easily forged, if one would want to do that)

Or wait, The Frenchman did it!

http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-8&ncl=1117078550

Louis, this is phenomenally stupid of you. They're not doing this to make vast amounts of cash and maybe sell a few million books a little later down the line, they're doing it to keep this story in the global media for as long as possible because it might help actually find the kid. Or alternatively, Groke OTM.

1) THEY WILL NOT FIND THE KID; the whole 'Look For Maddy' campaign (with eyes instead of Os in 'Look') has been a farce of the highest order. If she was alive, her abductor would have either asked for a ransom, or made her life not worth living anyway. All of this is academic, though; she was probably six feet under before her parents knew she was gone.

2) The father actually said re: Pope visit that 'normally this would be thrilling, amazing, a great experience...oh, erm, but of course it'll be very sad because little Maddy won't be with us'. Then you have the family saying such things as 'We just need more people to know about her'. More people in about 15 different European countries.

3) THE ENGLAND CRICKET TEAM ARE STILL WEARING YELLOW RIBBONS, well done u r VERY FUCKING SENSITIVE

for some reason that REALLY pisses me off, and that's BEFORE I get onto the FA Cup final montage

that's bad

Oh fuck off already. (xpost to probably-fake Louis)

Kate and Gerry McCann will have to live with the consequences of their decisions of that night forever. What others think of what they did or didn't do, and how people/the media would react if it were other circumstances etc can't matter one flying fuck to them. I, like most people, have an opinion. For once, I'm keeping it to myself.

btw, anyone thinking the media's gone doolally on an unprecedented scale here in their reaction to and coverage of this can't remember the disappearance and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman very well.

xxpost

All other issues aside, LJ, I don't think I'd be able to accept that I wouldn't find my missing child until I had absolute proof. What else can they do but keep looking?

they could read Just got offed's three point solution and have a snack

He's all heart, that one.

I'm trying to imagine how LJ will react whenever his future kids are missing in a crowded supermarket or something for a couple of minutes - as soon as they're out of his view, he'll be grieving ("they're probably six feet under already") - or wait, not grieving, only losers grieve. Immediate new-kid-producing-poppage, wahey!

lol at the idea of lj spawning

Don't you think it's possible that someone took her for some unknown reason and is now terrified of the consequences of owning up to it? No matter what the McCanns say in terms of not caring who has her or why they've taken her as long as they get her back, there is now the very real lynch mob mentality fostered by the Britsh media to deal with. The McCanns may well have Madeleine's welfare at heart above any desire for retribution, but can anyone say the same for the "grief tourists" (for want of a better phrase) also "concerned" about justice for Madeleine or whatever?

it WAS really weird, the way they kept saying they thought or knew or were sure she was still alive but yeah

interesting that as soon as LJ makes the same kind of arguments that have been made since start of thread that people are queueing up to type abuse.

maybe there should be a list of exactly who is allowed to be controversial on ilx nowadays, and who isn't.

then we'd all know, eh?

They probably sounded like dicks too, but nobody reads their posts.

mm, that's true- he does seem glad of the attention i suppose.

perhaps the mccanns should look for the kid more quietly, so as not to disturb peoples lunchbreaks on the internet

i, for one, would appreciate chris morris making a stinging satirical attack on this whole maddie business. he could call it "'If 10,000 people join this group, I'll let little Maddy go har har i r cambridge satirist do you see" or some such. that'll show the the mcanns!!

btw, anyone thinking the media's gone doolally on an unprecedented scale here in their reaction to and coverage of this can't remember the disappearance and murder of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman very well.

...and that was without the Wells and the Chapman families participating in the 24 hour media coverage of the search for their daughters. The McCanns are taking advantage of the media, pure and simple, but why shouldn't they? Their daughter is missing. They want her found. Would you (Louis, mostly) just say "nah, fuck it, she's probably dead" if she were yours? It's entirely possible that they have come to terms with that possibility, yes, but until there's a body or the safe return of their daughter, I can't see why on earth they would give up the search. I don't personally think the British media need to give us the details of their campaigning in other countries, but I absolutely understand why they (the McCanns) are doing it.

btw, Ken, the problem with the Maddie v Madeleine thing is that Maddie isn't her name. It's an affectation adopted by the press - personalisation, closeness, familiarity. Maddie isn't what her parents call her, but it probably seems cuter and cuddlier and more familiar to use a diminutive, somehow - look, she's ours to nickname and refer to as we see fit (see also Princess Di)

Yeah, that's what Hello Sunshine was saying. We didn't quite have that here, but we did have a television appeal where you were supposed to send money to a bank account. It was pretty non-specific about where the money would actually go, though.

I see a difference between the coverage of the deaths of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman and this story, though (and I'm purely talking from a media perspective). That case did follow the pattern described by Groke above, where there was a police hunt and a capture. Here, the McCanns themselves appear to have generated much of the media reports, particularly after the first week. That's why I was curious about who they were.

Gosh, I swore a lot in those earlier posts. Not like me at all, sorry, having a bad day.

Surely part of the press reaction was linked to the fact that they thought they might have another Ian Huntley with that English bloke who lived nearby and they were scared of missing the scoop. Wasn't it the Mirror or the Express that gave the police the nod about him? That was certainly nothing to do with the McCanns and from the journos pov it's pretty understandable to want that story.

LJ does have a point! And ailsa is right.

It's the generality why we don't have the death penalty for murder. Each grieving relative would quite possibly want it if their loved one was killed on purpose,butthelaws are so the whole of society can apply fair method. Some people's sliding scale could want the death penalty for rape, assault, abduction, child abduction, trespass or all the way down to thieving oxen.

The population at large gets involved, tries to prove they care as much as the next guy, so we all get 'have you seen her' posters at local libraries, like we're going to say "oh hang on, that was her at the playground yesterday!"

Shemight well have been killed immediately. (god this stupid spacebar). but until they know for sure, they have to hopenot.

If the media and/or anyone is offering more help/coverage/action, whywould they say no?

Dignity? Self-restraint? Resistance of the urge to turn this business into a pointless moral crusade?

Fact of the matter is that the world is full of cunts so when you have young kids taking care of them comes above personal pleasures - my mum never let me out of her sight until I was ten, apart from school and when I was visiting friends (and she took me both to and from their houses). You have to make sacrifices, I'm afraid. You can't do what you used to do when you were footloose, fancy free students or trainees.

They made a stupid mistake and will probably spend the rest of their lives being haunted by it so there's no point getting social services or anything/anyone else involved because I would have thought the lesson has long since been learnt.

What is not wanted is the route which the media seem to want them to pursue, viz. our tragic daughter -> LAWS MUST BE PASSED -> Daily Mail columns -> Government-appointed Drugs/P4Edo Czar, i.e. in the end the original point is lost.

As regards the death penalty I give my usual Top Ten Arguments Against The Death Penalty, i.e. six from Birmingham and four from Guildford.

Dignity and self-restraint are the first things to go when you're distressed.

The rest, I agree totally.

This has reminded me of a girl I used to work with who, when she was about six years old, went on holiday to Spain with her parents and younger brother. Her parents left them in their holiday home with a load of food and an open door leading to a rooftop swimming pool, while they went to see Queen. They then reappeared THE NEXT MORNING giggling with an enormous breakfast for both children after goign to the beach following the gig and spending the entire night getting stoned. Now THAT'S bad parenting.

Louis, it's not the fact that you don't particularly care, or that they won't find the kid. It's the "look at me, look how above the media I am" posturing, as if anyone's meant to be impressed, that's obnoxious.

I wonder how Louis would feel if someone left Mansun unattended in a Spanish villa?

They never found Mansun again though!

They certainly found the third Mansun album which even Mansun had forgotten about. On listening to it I would concur that it was probably best forgotten.

Prog Rock - what's this all about?

One thing the media hoopla around this case (and others like the Soham murders) does is make people assume abduction and murder of children by strangers is far more prevalent than it is. The actual numbers are vanishingly small. I think it's only 2 or 3 a year in the UK or something like that (don't particularly want to google "children murdered by strangers" on a work computer to find out though). Children are literally a thousand times more likely to die from domestic accidents around the house, car accidents, etc etc. The whole child abduction scare just raises paranoia to levels that are neither good for the child or the parents.

Any parent knows it is impossible, literally impossible, to keep a child under surveillance 100 percent of the time, 24 hours a day. As a parent of a 2 year old myself, I'm not sure I would have actually gone out to dinner leaving kids sleeping by themselves. But even if the McCanns had stayed home, would they be sitting in the children's bedroom staring at them sleeping? Their child could still have been abducted. If anything, I think there's a bit of a reverse problem these days. Parents are so paranoid about their children that the kids are under constant surveillance, they have no unstructured playtime, they're allowed no independence... I think there's got to be some balance, which probably involves small amounts of risk.

It all fits into this fear thing that the whole of our society seems to be revolving around the last couple of years.

Decade.

mmm one of my earlier thoughts on this story was to feel really sorry for the mccanns' other children, how the (entirely natural) reaction of the parents would be to overprotect them to the point of stifling them.

also, i imagine that thinking about what's happening or being done to their daughter (if she's still alive) (which given no body found isn't unreasonable) must be one of the very worst feelings possible - laying into the mccanns for minor carelessness or for being slightly gauche in their (justifiable) desperation for publicity, while they're going through that, seems to be unbelievably mean-spirited

They're also being lambasted for 'going jogging' and/or going to the beach with the kids.

By the Daily Tel, which you'd think would be better than that.

<I>1) THEY WILL NOT FIND THE KID; the whole 'Look For Maddy' campaign</I>

Remember that Austrian (?) girl who escaped after being held captive for years? Well, how do you think she'd feel if her parents had given up on her immediately. You simply don't know, you twit, if it's some pedophile willing to abuse the kid for years (until she's no longer *attractive*) or if it's a frenzied rape'n'murder type. Or it could be someone craving for a child (without any sexual abuse at all). And yes it's entirely possible they won't find her anymore. But you can't stop trying, you unemotional twat.

I for one hope you change your mind/attitude once you have kids.

That said, I don't think I could ever leave my kid to go have a diner or check out a band. Even if it was dEUS playing naked. ;-)

Louis will be outraged... (xp)

i think, as frogman as already pointed out, louis is doing a classic undergrad bait and switch, backing up what is essentially an excuse for bad taste humour with some not paticuarly well though out attacks on MEDIA MIND CONTROL. it'd probably fly on DiS or hipinion.

Yes, he's young

louis isn't being particularly objectionable at all, just irritating, makes me feel like i'm in the jcr again

to raise awareness for their probably long-decomposed daughter

was fairly objectionable.

There is an air of ridicule to some of the "campaign" but I think it's from a more intangible source like "society" or "people" rather than her family.

For instance, I was at my local shop (a small newsagent in a town of 20,000 people a good few miles outside Dublin) and the manager was putting up a big poster for "Find Maddy".

At that point you must wonder who they (the manager in this case, or the general public) are doing this for? Or for what reason? Cos it almost takes on the role of this weird parochial "well, let nobody say OUR TOWN didn't do its bit for Maddy" feeling.

Of course it's because people want to help, but it's that "wanting to help" that kind of rankles for some reason.

Louis seems a bit muddled, he shouldn't blame the parents for wanting to help, it's their child! But I know when I see a poster in my local store in suburban Dublin, I'm inclined to think that THAT kind of behaviour is the pointless globalisation of tragedy or something.

Yeah I was going to say, instances of children being abducted and murdered by complete strangers are still very rare - maybe four in the past decade? That's taking Holly and Jessica as one instance, by the way. It's not like it's happening all the time and the media aren't reporting it because the children are fat and ugly.

ronan otm

like a wee card in the window of a cinema might be the one step necessary beyond all the stuff in the international news and television and on the internet every day to jog someone's memory or make someone finally come forward. as if it's some sort of solidarity rather than adding to the actual search and I think it's understandable that it might eventually annoy some or make them wonder what about the motivation at least

it's as if

I also saw a poster in a local bank. I also thght WTF.

"a town of 20,000 people a good few miles outside Dublin" sounds suspiciously like Marcinelle, the small town a couple of miles away from Charleroi, where the house was where Marc Dutroux kept and killed those girls in '96, so why not? "It can't happen here" is only correct until it does happen.

I think a lot of people would say "that happened in belgium and it ended up in belgium and this happened in portugal"

what? she was abducted in Portugal though.

of course paedophilia can happen here, this country has a chequered (or collared) history of it, but the further you go from where she disappeared the more unlikely it is she'll be seen.

the girls Dutroux kidnapped were Belgian anyway I thought, that analogy makes no sense.

x-post rjg otm

I kind of agree about the bandwagon aspect of some people's apparent response. But it's got a lot to do with the way that an event like this makes parents, in particular, feel real empathy and pain. I don't know if that's a ridiculous aspect of the Media or not, but something about the scale of a story like this makes it very close to home for a lot of people.

:( My heartless commentary (of which the contributions to this thread have been a hasty re-tread) has been informed by a great deal of media study over the past month. I think the moment I snapped and decided to approach this externally, i.e. with no consideration to how it MIGHT affect the people involved (it won't, let's face it) was when c5 news ended their bulletin with "So, back to our main news: Maddy's father has returned home for 24 hours to deal with a personal issue". They didn't specify what issue, they just hit us with news, with grief, for news and grief's sake.

Believe me, if I thought I could help in any way, my attitude would be one of total sympathy, and were I in contact with the McCanns, I would display nothing but care and affection, but this is a case where the media have extended their mawkish patronising claws too far, and I've resorted to what one could probably term wankerish behaviour. I'm not saying I'm above the media, I'm saying that (at least wrt Maddie) the media pisses me off.

as long as you realise that that could be at least as annoying as C5 news

xpost

There is an old Seinfeld joke about this - something like 'I look at the poster - I check the guy in line next to me and that's pretty much all i can do'. But having said that, I suppose (and it's a bit of a strecth) a lot of people go to Portugal on holiday and if one of those people sees the poster and then sees the child...

It's a very very long shot but then that's the odds they are trying to beat.

The other downside is that this inevitably leads to people thinking they've seen her, reporting it and the police wasting time investigating that. Or worse, people pretending they've seen her. Another extension of the mass grief thing.

I live very near Rothley and I think there is a lot of genuine sadness around here. Incidentally the family have started to take down the teddy bears and messages and things that were left around Rothley village square so I think even they are toning things down a bit.

Ailsa, I would prefer it if the McCanns worked with the police, and left the media out of it. Leaving 'missing girl' signs around potential abduction destinations would be an appropriate step, but ensuring that for 3 weeks their precious daughter led EVERY SINGLE British news bulletin? Overkill.

OK maybe you don't

their precious daughter

I'm sorry Louis, but you are an ass sometimes, think for a change!

You're not talking (shite) about Prog Rock here

ffs - read what I just put. And then everybody's else comments. Arrgh, you've got me nearly swearing again.

I don't think the McCanns have enough pull to decide what the news headlines will be. I do think that the parents here keep explaining that in the same circumstances they would do anything - bollocks to "dignity" or "taste" or "not annoying jaded media-watchers" - to try and get their child back.

Brain Lou1s J4gg3r!

Yeah, fine, but my point about the parents is a minor observation; the MAIN thrust of my ire is directed towards the television networks and newspapers and websites (Sky News had an entire toolbar entitled 'Madeleine'!) who have latched onto this single case and universalised it, despite the fact that no further news has developed.

Look, it's terrible whenever a child goes missing, but in terms of importance, it's probably incredibly important to her family, very important to her family's friends, quite important to their neighbours and acquaintances, and not very important to quite a large percentage of the rest of us. Artificially making it important, and relegating other, more pressing news issues, generally tends to irritate me.

Alastair Campbell may not be involved, but the news management in Praia da Luz has been as sophisticated as any we have seen

xpost

In the grand scheme of things, 99 percent of news stories aren't particularly "important" or "pressing" to 99 percent of the population.

It's the "sales booster" for the Daily Express, this and the "Di Conspiracy" story.

I think you are going to be disappointed w/ life, Just got offed

Up until he wins the 2012 edition of The Apprentice, at least.

Yeah, LJ, you're going to need some pretty absurd and weird sexual fantasies to make life a little more exciting.

oh wait

That's disingenuous, NV; issues concerning climate change, Middle Eastern conflict, or anything else that affects how the world works are of enormous importance.

Oh bollocks, who really gives a fuck about climate change?

Or rather, who wants to read about it?

xxpost

Maybe. I think they're not very important in most people's daily lives. Illusion of participation in world events is nice tho, I suppose.

David Peace novelisation to follow in 2009.

I know that when I'm waiting to pick up the kids from school all the other parents can talk about is Hamas this and Gaza that...

But no, you have a point. You just go about things the wrong way, as someone once sang.

acrobat's linked article is pretty OTM a couple of times (except the mysterious last part that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the rest of the article) - e.g. "the couple established a direct bond with the public, making readers and viewers feel they had a role to play in the story,"

Just got offed, you think the mccanns should think "yes we have no idea where our child is but middle eastern conflict...climate change...let's go home" or that newspaper editors, who sell papers to people who can comprehend not knowing where their child is at a much more urgent and basic level than they can middle eastern conflict and climate change, should run w/ the "important" news?

HAI! Louis J there's a middle east thread on new answers now.

I'm far more reasonable in person! :-P I just have the habit of being a little outspoken and brash when typing. My occasional lapse into semi-serious piss-taking can't really be detected online; it just looks more puffed and pompous than before. I'll appreciate I've antagonised just about everyone on ILX (again) through my perhaps unmerited self-confidence, but this is something I passionately believe in, and if we're not honest, what can we be? There's so much news out there; raising this case and highlighting it for a couple of days would have been wholly reasonable. The three unbroken weeks of madness, the FA CUP FINAL MONTAGE, the whole shebang...it's just left itself open to attack on account of its sheer OTT-ness. Much like many of my own posts. :-D

You truly are the dead toddler of ILx, Lou.

Newspaper editors are a fickle bunch, they're as likely to go with a Diana cover as a missing girl or a war in the middle east or a six in a room wank romp.

I think the media should run with the immediately breaking news, but keep half an eye on the serious, developing world affairs material. The Maddie case, as I say, would have been good to go for a couple of days, then put on hold until any serious further developments. Of course, the next development was 'they went and saw The Pope', but this meeting was only enabled BECAUSE of the two-week media shitstorm that preceded it. The media making their own news is absolutely laughable.

http://www.eskimo.com/~sfox/SJF/HIKE/JPG/98Bdig.jpg

OK, but just avoid making "snidey one-liners" about parents' "precious daughters" in future, for one (xxp)

Ok, deal. I shouldn't conflate my own frustration with being a twat.

I think the media should

write them a letter

Alright then. Should the BBC news website remove the "Alan Johnston has been missing for 94 days" counter off their webpage? He's not here, we can't release him, it's not news.

don't worry: that comes under "middle eastern conflict"

There's a counter? I hadn't noticed. Moreover, this is a man who was taken for political reasons, therefore implicating wider consequences, and most importantly, he's (by all accounts) still alive.

I think it's logically compatible to say that 1) as a parent in those circumstances one would do anything that might help recover one's child, up to and including using/manipulating the media, news management and all the rest of it, and 2) the news coverage of this is totally over the top, and feeding paranoia about child abductions by strangers, which are incredibly rare events and even more rarely lead to the death of the child.

It's not very important to quite a large percentage of the rest of us.

xp

(apart from when his name came up in a pub quiz last week)

Well, it's not of momentary concern to me either, but he hasn't had a whole month of news dedicated to him.

Well if you want to talk about hysterical hyped-up wall-to-wall media coverage leading to widespread jadedness and cynicism look no further than climate change!

If Maddie is still alive, the only person who could possibly turn her in is her abductor, surely!

B..b..but climate change happens, and it will have enormous and lasting consequences for all of us!

Her name's Madeleine you hack.

B..b..but climate change happens, and it will have enormous and lasting consequences for all of us!

... but it's boring, we all know about it, so shut the fuck up already!

Expecting the Media to function as a focus for organised political debate and action seems a little optimistic.

Well if you want to talk about hysterical hyped-up wall-to-wall media coverage leading to widespread jadedness and cynicism look no further than climate change! planet earth

Indeed

I WAS ONLY CITING AN EXAMPLE RE: CLIMATE CHANGE, there are PLENTY of OTHER, INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT THINGS, BOTH POLITICAL AND GEOGRAPHICAL, THAT HAPPEN EVERY DAY ON THIS PLANET

Important, maybe. Relevant to most people's lives as they live them, no. The News is Entertainment. That's why they talk so slowly and spell out the big words.

THE RELEASE OF THE 65DAYSOFSTATIC ALBUM?

this is like being in college again

except I'm balder, a little thinner and considerably more depressed.

Yeah, and this takes me back to my original point: The tasteless ones, thr truly disgusting ones, are those treating the Madeleine case AS ENTERTAINMENT. Remember, everyone, look for Maddy! *blinky eyes in 'Look'*

Here have these straws...these are good straws.

I could kill for a Snakebite and Black. Right now.

And now for an extended description of the light aircraft in which Maddie's parents will travel to meet The Pope, before embarking on their round-Europe awareness campaign.

nb the BBC actually did this

that is just the way 24 hr rolling news works

it wasn't on BBC News 24, it was the lead article on their website

Look, it's terrible whenever a child goes missing, but in terms of importance, it's probably incredibly important to her family, very important to her family's friends, quite important to their neighbours and acquaintances, and not very important to quite a large percentage of the rest of us.

It's also quite important to the thousands of British people who are planning on going to the Algarve with their children this year.

unless by '24 hr rolling news' you include internet news

Of course I do, why wouldn't you?

Matt, the Algarve is a significantly bigger area than, say, London, and Londoners are abducted with greater frequency. Does this mean that parents with children in London should be exposed to incessant scare-stories? No. It means that they should take the necessary precautions ANYWAY. Much as the Algarve parents should.

Ed, it didn't occur to me at first, I was being dense :-/

You do realise that the media isn't a philanthropic organisation don't you?

No. It means that they should take the necessary precautions ANYWAY

Uhhhhhhhhhh, you're not about to claim the McCanns were negligent here, by any chance? Tick that one off the list?

And furthermore, you do realise that if the general public weren't interested in Madeleine, then they wouldn't be covering this to anywhere near such an extent?

No, Tom, I'm merely saying that parents shouldn't be discouraged from taking their children anywhere on account of an isolated incident. They can easily ensure that the incident won't be repeated with their own children.

Yeah, Matt, I understand that the media is a business, catering for great public interest, and I suppose my concerns are selfish in that they don't reflect what a lot of people think, but it still frustrates me.

I think we've covered this now.

And furthermore, you do realise that if the general public weren't interested in Madeleine, then they wouldn't be covering this to anywhere near such an extent?

And furthermore, do you realise that if the media wouldn't be covering this to anywhere near such an extent, the general public wouldn't be interested in Madeleine?

(goes both ways)

But "the media also creates news" is a whole other discussion, so nevermind.

(goes both ways)

Michael Barrymore thread?

They didn't leave her for five minutes. They left all three of their kids in an unattended apartment while they went and had dinner. They could not see the apartment from where they were having dinner.

I may be mistaken but I was under the impression that the apartment was in line of sight from where they were sitting in the restaurant.

Stand, of course it goes both ways, but any editor worth their salt knows instinctively that this is an enormously emotive story and will sell a truckload of papers (or equivalent). The fact that it is an enormously emotive story is nothing to do with the media, because emotive stories about vanishing children predate mass market media by several thousand years.

Okay several hundred years maybe.

xxpost

Perhaps we should arrange a field trip so we can visualise it clearly.

Nice point, Stan. On the BBC News comment pages there has been PLENTY of opposition to the Madeleine coverage. This is further borne out by the comments sections on two Guardian articles, which I believe would be very useful for my argument.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2082507,00.html
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/angela_phillips/2007/05/why_stories_matter.html

Simon Jenkins clearly OTM

Never ever ever use Speak Your Brains on the BBC to back up an argument.

Except maybe "the people on Speak Your Brains are fucking cretins"

Simon Jenkins clearly OTM

Apart from that big bit at the end when Simon Jenkins forgives the media for its behaviour you mean?

I mean how is any of this consistent with what you are saying?

Journalists may have cooked the McCann story to a burnt crisp. But they cook many other stories that way and I say, thank goodness. There are plenty in power who feel too much was written and said on the Royal Navy hostages, on cash-for-honours, on BAE sleaze and on David Kelly. Tough luck on them.

Damilola Taylor was just one among many youngsters whose lives are ruined or lost on Britain's sink housing estates, conditions highlighted by the extraordinary publicity attached to his case. Many brave people are killed for trying to impose order on Britain's streets, but it was the teacher, Philip Lawrence, who captured the public's imagination. Sometimes there is no better way to alert the nation to street violence, racism or even the dangers faced by families abroad than through the tragedy visited on an individual victim.

The British press plays hard cop to the soft cop of the British constitution. It goes where politics dares not tread, certainly the present pusillanimous parliament that still cannot find a way of holding the government to account for Iraq, as congress is finally doing in America. The press does not operate with any sense of proportion, judgment or self-restraint because it is selling stories, not running the country. The unshackled and irresponsible press sometimes gets it wrong. But I still prefer it, warts and all, to a shackled and responsible one.

Oh you don't think he read it all do you?

emotive stories about vanishing children predate mass market media by several thousand years.

-- Matt DC, Thursday, 14 June 2007 11:40 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Okay several hundred years maybe.

-- Matt DC, Thursday, 14 June 2007 11:40 (4 min

yea, gonna say, the 'apollonian child' is a victoria invention

Victorian

I agree with that section! And I believe that the cases he mentioned in it were very important wider-interest ones, much more important (as things stand) than this one. As I say, I wouldn't have minded if the Maddie case had been brought up for a couple of days, and then postponed until the truth was revealed (as it was with all of the others mentioned), but the manner in which the media went about it was nauseating. I don't want a shackled media! Thing is, the media has almost shackled itself to a certain party line over this case.

RANSOME FOR PILFERED WAIF

"Fair Maddye of Cann did go away out of yon mother's sighte ere the sunrise. Katherine, wench of Leicester raises a ransome of £2 for waif's safe returne in the Shyre"

this thread is a long story of Louis starting off with inappropriate comments and then finding more appropriate arguments to climb down to along the way.

Aren't they all?

The usual 'engage mouth before brain' thing :(

The more appropriate arguments aren't climbdowns, they're clarifications!

So you stand by "they whored themselves out to the media, and thereby lost just about any sympathy I had towards them"?

That was put in rather stronger terms than was appropriate, but yeah!

LJ on a stunningly banal and repetitive tip on this thread. I bet his supervision partner loves it when he gets these bouts verbal diarrhea.

v glib and provocative but still some valid if overstated and cynical points.

like what?

Apparently the media sometimes inflates stories of personal tragedy in order to make money.

I wish he'd learn to stop talking when he's finished making his points, such as they are.

Also apparently there are millions of other children disappearing and dying so it is unfair to them to focus on this one.

Also apparently when you phone up to vote on Any Dream Will Do it costs you a lot of money.

I've heard Gordon Brown sometimes raises taxes without telling anyone about it.

I understand that in the "grand scheme" of things disappearances are trivial matters that do not affect history so much. But it's much the same as gossiping or talking about what happened to your neighbours: it's much easier to relate to an emotional story than, say, climate change or the Nikkei crash. But who's to say what's important and what not? Most people don't give a shit about political changes or election results. They don't get how it could affect their life, Louis. In a sense it's all just intellectual fronting if you chat with your mates about those matters. It's all just in a way *wasting* your life. Otherwise we'd be working instead of posting here on ILX about it.

Louis, there's this band called Rage Against the Machine, I think they're really blow your mind.

True, Nathalie, but this isn't about that, this is about media responsibility.

I thought you'd killfiled me, caek! I know, why don't you go off and do that right now. It would save you having to read my posts, which would in turn save me from having to read your asinine ad hominem 'retorts'.

Dom, RATM are awful.

i think we need a thread of poems dedicated to Madeleine, written by Sun readers.

But if Mozart was around today, he'd be in them (xp)

because every thread LJ posts on becoming a discussion on his right to post/terrible sense of tact and delicacy is becoming really boring.

http://la.indymedia.org/uploads/2006/03/zack.jpg

Zack reads some of his specially written Maddie poetry at a recent vigil outside the Sun's offices.

I think, at some points in the past, Louis might also have given hundreds of people a little too much information about something that is of no relevance to their lives. He might even have done it for quite a long time.

MEDIA RESPONSIBILITY

i'll leave you guys to it

Thanks!

TS: your mother stopping talking to you again vs your mother leaving you in a Spanish villa

It's always the mothers that suffer in the end though.

Them and ILXors

Even a cursory reading of other LJ posts could have told us that.

i also think people need to be able to tell the difference between saying something to grieving (whatever your opinions of their behaviour) parents and posting it on a fucking message board on the internet, by the way.

i think i defend LJ because of a self-harm streak though, so possibly best to just ignore that.

yeh but ilx is hardly yr average internet messageboard. the maddie thread on the 65 days of static messageboard is far more progressive.

OK, 65 Days of Static, Mansun, poppage, cross-dressing, and the "mother googling your name" thing... is there anything we've not covered yet?

Oh, the Muslim thing. Any takers?

we already had a muslim-sounding dood outed as the belgian culprit, actually.

Say what you want about LouJag, but he's got a lot of facets to his personality.

xpost- possibly we haven't had any suicide threats yet.

maybe if one of her parents made one live on sky, the kidnapper(s) would buckle.

xpost- i'm not LJ by the way, if that's the inference.

xpostx10000 oh i didn't know her parents didn't call maddie maddie. wasn't paying enough attention.

ok you guys are allowed to be outraged then.

You know this is how nazi germany started, right?

Oh, Maddiepaws.

(some image macro involving a Madeleine pic why because she look intersting)

er... anything else?

is DogLatin still on this board? i want to hear his views about all this.

Minimal Maddie

Oh massa dem gawn got me nawww!
-- Darramouss - The endlessly self-justifying joke (Darramous...), November 8th, 2006. (Darramouss ftw) (later)

oh boy.

seriously, i don't post as anybody else. i've been using this name on ilx for going on three or four years now, it's hardly my fault that some guy with a similar name pissed you off?

darraghmac is not LJ or Darramouss!

and, i've never even met kv_nol either. but he would probably refer to me as a muck savage if i did.

I thought you'd killfiled me, caek! I know, why don't you go off and do that right now. It would save you having to read my posts, which would in turn save me from having to read your asinine ad hominem 'retorts'.

Much like you could ignore the media's coverage of this?

http://darramous.ytmnd.com/

ban arcotab?

darraghmac is, in all likelihood, a muck savage. Hopefully we will meet at FAP someday and I can confirm this.

eey, fuck you, like.

Whatevs. Peasant until proven innocent.

whatever happened to innocent until proven filthy?

Michael Barrymore has been known to pose the same question

Lolita. (xpost)

Oh, the Muslim thing. Any takers?

-- Dom Passantino, Thursday, 14 June 2007 13:09 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

dom i can normally take your zings with a smile, but as far as this^^^^^ goes, stfu

michael barrymore has been known to pose the same question

I don't understand the Muslim thing. I take it something was said LJ became whipping boy and Dom wanked himself into a frenzy. Ah plus ca change as Mr. White might say.

http://www.tshirtwatch.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/08/zack-braff.jpg

Louis, My retorts are ad hominem because I have _no interest_ in the actual content of anything you say. It is all the most banal, self-involved, ignorant, humorless crap (e.g. you on this thread). I feel no need to respond to it per se, but I piped up to object to the way you KILL EVERY FUCKING THREAD YOU POST ON BY SUCKING OUT ALL THE HUMOUR AND INTELLIGENCE.

You seem to have rationalised your posting style persona as, by turns, the worst kind of unambitious, turgidly written Oxbridge whimsy, or a deeply patronising undergraduate. It's boring _and_ irritating, and the worst thing is you seem to think you're bringing us pleasure as some sort of ILX jester or wit, who occasionally gets serious and tells it like it is. Actually, the worst thing is the way you can never just be silent for a while, read what other people have to say, or walk away from the computer. Just calm down a bit.

wait, am i dom, kv_nol or LJ at this point?

I AM SPARTICUS!

You are a mucksavage, remember?

I AM UNABLE TO SPELL SPARTACUS!

oops, xpost. missed that rant.

caek very much OTM.

caek, when you make a single positive contribution to an ILX thread yourself, i'll let you know.

He just did. Read it, think about it and follow advice. Calm down ffs, it's not all about you all the time.

It's about me.

Kev-lol, where did I leave my keys?

It's about the McCanns

Check under hall table, magazine in kitchen or back of couch.

http://www.4thegame.com/media/00/03/45/mccann_gavin_avfc_profile_2006.jpg

Oh shit xxpost! Good advice for the McCanns [/ghoulish humour]

xpost to Louis: I mostly lurk. You're ruining that for me.

I'm just mildly intrigued by how someone can tell me to calm down whilst simultaneously giving their own (wildly inaccurate and unfair) character assassination. You seem to have set yourself against a certain type, and for the purposes of convenience have made me adhere to that type come hell or high water. I don't aim to bring pleasure here, I aim to let off steam and air my opinions so that others might contend them. Instead of contending, you've aimed cheap shots ('Oxbridge whimsy' indeed, o thou frightful nincompoop) at the speaker. If I was trying to patronise you, I'd do it so much better, my dear fellow. You'd barely notice.

Anyway, I'm off for a bit. Lurk away.

You suck.

(xpost)I think caek was spot on really. You are a type sadly enough. A type that most of us are all to familiar with because Louis, we were you once upon a time. Yes, we made lots of noise, derailed arguments for "look at me moments", why even I (hard to believe as it is) was once a hyperactive pain in the face. The only difference is that there wasn't an internet, nowadays irritating loudmouthery can is only a submit button away. This isn't an age thing, it's a maturity thing.

I don't aim to bring pleasure here, I aim to let off steam and air my opinions so that others might contend them.

Bollocks. You have no interest in engaging, just matiness and martyrdom. You look for approval left, right and centre. I am sympathetic (probably more empathetic) to your situation. I just think a bit of cop on and quiet could serve you well.

Remember: I don't dislike you or wish you ill. I defended you from the start and think that you should be here, I just wish that you would remember the difference between deliberate provocation and acting the maggot. Also the self mocking is not the way to go. It invites more blows but that brings us to the whole attention thing again and I've already said enough. Sorry for being so fucking high and mighty, I wouldn't bother if you weren't all over the place making such a racket!

Apologies for this everyone (including Louis), I'm done.

(not xpost) Not really doing yourself any favours there caek!

kv_nol OTM

HOW IS ALL THIS HELPING US TO FIND MADDIE?

HOW IS THIS ALL HELPING THE PEOPLE COMPLAINING THAT THREADS BECOME ALL ABOUT L0UIS J4GGER?

I HAS A FLAVOR

how is all this helping?

Note how Margaret Hill, the three-year-old kidnapped in Nigeria, quickly became "Maggie"...

News 24 are saying Kate McCann is about to formally declared a suspect...

"Arguida".

Like many - I guess - I've been following the news on and off and I don't really want to jump on the bandwagon of scurrilous innuendo against the couple since genuine concrete info has been scarce, but a mate who lives in Lisbon sent me a link to the Correio de Manha yesterday with a report that suggests that the McCanns really could be up their neck in it. It states that Madeleine's blood was found not only in the apartment but also in the car that the McCanns were renting, that some samples were recovered in the flat they moved to after the one they stayed in originally and that the samples were recovered after the English sniffer-hounds picked up blood and corpse scent in clothes belonging to Kate McCann (my mate translated it for me as my Portuguese is v. ropey).

I know nothing is certain till the police say something official but my understanding is that this newspaper is a pretty well respected broadsheet in Portugal and surely wouldn't be making such incredible claims as I'm sure it knows it'll get its arsed sued off if they're not true. There could be a perfectly legitimate explanation for Madeleine's blood being found in their hire car - a scraped knee while playing at the beach, for instance. And there's probably a rational explanation for the syringes and sedatives being found in the McCann's apartment - certainly no big deal was ever made of that at the time. Or am I getting finally sucked in to this Detective Columbo-style "there's just one last thing, Mr & Mrs McCann" feeding frenzy against the couple that some started some time ago? I really hope I'm not.

They do strike me as an odd couple and their body language has at times been strange, but I've tended to put this down to the fact that everyone has a different way of dealing with grief/stress/a shock like this. I do know this, though: if my daughter went missing, God forbid, I wouldn't be fucking blogging about my personal best on a morning run and cracking jokes on my internet site. My brain would be far too scrambled with worry to even think about that. But, as said, perhaps documenting your thoughts and a morning run is their way of dealing with all the shit. One thing that got my goat was the way they were v. clever not to acknowledge that they neglected their children in leaving them alone. They seemed to genuinely think they did nothing wrong. Perhaps that's to cover their arses should they be done for neglect (up to 2 years in Portugal I'm told). Who knows?

I still want to think) that they had nothing to do with her disappearance/death, but I guess the next 48 hours or so might tell us more.

God forbid, I wouldn't be fucking blogging about my personal best on a morning run and cracking jokes on my internet site

What's this? Which one of them has done this?

We have to be very wary about declaring that they dunnit, but their direct involvement has always surely been one of the most likely possibilities. It strikes me as odd that it's taken so long for the spotlight to turn on the McCanns. But if they're involved, others have to be involved too. How would the body have been disposed of?

Gerry writes a daily blog on their findmadeleine dot com site.

The Portuguese press have said something about the police having been searching for a body in the sea for the past month. Don't know how much of that is true.

There could be a perfectly legitimate explanation for Madeleine's blood being found in their hire car - a scraped knee while playing at the beach, for instance.

Um, didn't they hire the car in question 5 weeks after the girl disappeared?

Yes, but a speck of Madeleine's blood could still have got there, if it has been transferred from other clothing or something ......

Her ashes are in the teddy bear they're carrying around all the time.

/watches too many movies

x-post I see - I might have a look at the blog, but the idea kind of repels me.

But who might have put a body in the sea, or elsewhere? The McCanns wouldn't have had the opportunity, surely. How near is the sea to the apartments? What is known of their friends?

Isn't one of their friends also being questioned?

Gerry's blog has just been taken down.

Actually, everything has been taken down from that site, which is apparently "being upgraded" today.

perhaps they've been taken down too?

This blog?

http://www.findmadeleine.com/

Still up as far as I can see. Last updated on the 5th.

The McCanns wouldn't have had the opportunity, surely.

Why wouldn't they have the chance to do this? Plenty of opportunity, I would think.

That's weird, because I just tried to log onto it a few moments ago and it defaulted to a site called something like "bringmadeleinehome.com" which had the same home page as the finemadeleine one, but with a message saying "Gerry's blog has been removed and is not available" and a banner saying the site was being upgraded. How strange.

At least they got meeting the Pope out of it.

And a million pounds has been donated to their tour-of-Europe fund!

I should imagine an awful lot of people who gave money will feel betrayed if it transpires the McCanns had anything at all to do with their daughter's disappearance. They'll get lynched at the airport.

xpost to Nath - I don't know much about their alleged movements after their dinner. Did they go straight back to apartment and then discover that she was missing? Then what? Call the cops immediately? Were their friends with them?

I haven't been following this very closely, so maybe some of this this is known, but not to me.

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/05/26/mccanns_wideweb__470x305,0.jpg

WHO SHOT YA
MOB TIES LIKE SINATRA

I should imagine an awful lot of people who gave money will feel betrayed if it transpires the McCanns had anything at all to do with their daughter's disappearance. They'll get lynched at the airport.

If they are, as expected, declared to be suspects, they won't be seeing the airport any time soon.

I remember a very early police report stating one of the main reasons they didn't find any early conclusive forensic data in the apartment was that somewhere in the region of 40 people had been in it 'helping look' before the police got there.

Whether the McCanns had anything to do with it or not, eejits who get all hysterical about teh peedos need reminding that the vast majority of kids who are abused or killed are victims of their own families.

I should imagine an awful lot of people who gave money will feel betrayed if it transpires the McCanns had anything at all to do with their daughter's disappearance.

this is v funny

x-post That's what I was trying to get at. This idea of an international paedo or paedos swooping in, grabbing her, and making for the border, always seemed pretty bizarre and unlikely.

I guess I'm falling into the trap of assuming that the McCann's are involved, which we shouldn't yet.

None of it makes any sense, in short.

Oh I think there's an explanation that makes perfect sense.

What, the biggest case of 'dual' Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy ever?

The thing is, this will all mean Lou1s J@gger WAS RIGHT.

xpost

I don't think Munchausen's needs to come into it at all.

Dr C was asking about the supposed movements:

Kate and Gerry McCann returned at about 2145 GMT to find an empty bed and the apartment door and window wide open.

The apartment has been cordoned off and local people are helping with a search.

Gill Renwick, a friend of the family, said Madeleine's parents - both doctors - had been having a meal in a tapas restaurant a few hundred yards from the apartment and had been checking on the little girl and her younger brother and sister (two-year-old twins) every half hour.

Madeleine was reported missing at about 2200 BST on Thursday and tourists joined the police in an all-night search.

"They last checked at half past nine and they were all sound asleep, sleeping, windows shut, shutters shut.

"Kate went back at 10 o'clock to check. The front door was lying open, the window had been tampered with, the shutters had been jemmied open or whatever you call it and Madeleine was missing...

That's from the BBC report at the time. I didn't notice the inconsistencies at the time - checked at 2130, discovered missing at 2145 by both after dinner, discovered at 2200 by Kate while they were still having dinner, police called at about 2200 - or that they claim to have been walking over half a mile every half hour during their dinner.

.. which would convert them from the most sympathised couple in UK media history....

to the most hated/despised ever? (topping Hindley/Brady? as THEY never went round the world in a massive sympathy umm thing?)

They didn't get unadulterated sympathy in the first place, really.

RJG is right about the funny but in a horrible way I can imagine people being more pissed off about being deceived than about possible infanticide.

No, and rightly so. But most people had at least 95% sympathy (discount some nutters)...

xpost and a fair number will be pissd off because tehy will have EMBARRASSED THE POPE!!!

Thanks aldo!

That's from the BBC report at the time. I didn't notice the inconsistencies at the time - checked at 2130, discovered missing at 2145 by both after dinner, discovered at 2200 by Kate while they were still having dinner, police called at about 2200 - or that they claim to have been walking over half a mile every half hour during their dinner.

-- aldo, Friday, September 7, 2007 9:57 AM (Friday, September 7, 2007 9:57 AM) Bookmark Link

To be fair here, when did we last compliment BBC Online on its consistency of reporting? You've got a breaking story with lots of people clamouring to get any info so inconsistencies will crop up. Also, a bunch of people eating tapas and necking wine all night aren't going to be too hot on specific times.

Wasn't it established that the tapas bar wasn't as far away as first reported?

The Pope ought to be pretty sympathetic to dark secrets in yr past tho.

How so?

why? What has Pope Leslie Grantham III done that I don't know about?

He raped a dog

When was the last time she was seen by someone other than her parents?

The pope?

You don't get to run the Inquisition without knowing how to keep things shtum.

I don't follow the timings in that BBC report as 2145 GMT is 45 minutes after 2200 BST. Unless it's suggesting that the child was reported missing before they returned to their apartment.

well, there you go.

xpost to onimo - Fair point on the BBC, although the time of the story is 1621 the following afternoon which doesn't really make it 'breaking' any more. Yes, I found later reports that the tapas place was actually on the same complex - that'll be the complex that offers a free childminding service - and not as far away as that report says.

I also misremembered above about the numbers of people in the apartment:

Vital forensic clues may have been destroyed in the hours after Madeleine McCann's disappearance, a leading Portuguese policeman has said.
Chief Inspector Olegario de Sousa said so many people entered her room looking for her after she disappeared that forensic teams faced a difficult task.

Mr de Sousa told a Portuguese paper 20 people entered the three-year-old's room the night she disappeared.

Madeleine was taken from the Algarve resort of Praia da Luz on 3 May.

Mr de Sousa said that among those who entered the room on the night she disappeared were parents Kate and Gerry McCann, other holidaymakers and friends and staff from the Ocean Club resort.

He told the Diario de Noticias newspaper: "The presence of so many people - especially in the room where the little girl slept with her brother and sister - could have at least complicated the work of the forensic team.

"At the very worst they would have destroyed all the evidence. This could prove to be fatal for the investigation."

When was the last time she was seen by someone other than her parents?
The reason I ask is that if the police now think the parents did it, presumably it would have happened in the afternoon or early evening, before this meal, so all those timings are irrelevant.

well exactly.

girl dies, they dispose of her body (or pay 'someone' to do it), they put the kids to bed, have dinner like nothing happened, parent goes back to the flat to 'check' on them w/crowbar, finish meal, the rest you know.

End of Columbo.

It still does not make any sense.

They'll need to get that If I Did It book deal sorted pronto.

What doesn't make sense, Mark?

The "why"?

Abusive relationship got out of hand?

And there's probably a rational explanation for the syringes and sedatives being found in the McCann's apartment

What's this all about? I don't remember hearing/reading anything about this.

Fucking hell, I didn't call THIS!

...but if it's true then this week I shall be mostly wearing a smirk

xpost

The new thing seems to be that they accidentally injected her with too much sedatives so she'd sleep quietly during the meal. Maybe dad injected thinking mom hadn't done it earlier, something like that. Highly speculative, obviously. Like everything about this story.

When interviewed right at the very start of all this, Kate made a comment which made me do a double-take. She said something to the effect that Madeleine was "sometimes really hard work", and that - combined with the rumours of sedatives being (or not being) administered to the children - could perhaps mean an accidental overdose which has tried to be covered up.

Speculating wildly, now.

x-post : there was something about 2 syringes and a quantity of sedatives being removed by the police from the apartment. Kate and Gerry subsequently said during a TV interview that they vehemently denied ever having given sedatives to any of their kids to help them sleep. I'll try and see if there's a link to that interview.

Found a more detailed timeline from the Grauniad a couple of days after the event:

Throughout the week the family enjoyed the facilities in the resort, which boasts four swimming pools, the beach and childcare from 7.30pm to 11.30pm for those parents who want it.

On Thursday night the McCanns went out after 8pm, having put their three children into their pyjamas and seen them fall asleep in their bedroom in the apartment. "They weren't out for long, and they could see the apartment from the restaurant" said Brian Healy, Madeleine's maternal grandfather.

Mrs Cameron said the couple checked on the children every half hour; the last check was made after 9pm by Mr McCann. Some time between then and around 10pm when his wife walked into the room to find Madeleine missing, the family believes an intruder broke in and snatched the girl.

Mrs Cameron said: "Nothing had been touched in the apartment, no valuables taken, no passports. They think someone must have come in the window and gone out the door with her."

Paul Moyes, 47, from Cheshire and his wife Susan, who own a holiday apartment in the same block as the McCanns, said they were woken at 11.30pm by a knock on the door and asked to join in a search for a missing girl.

"We went down to the beach with scores of other people to look for her," said Mr Moyes. "The police arrived at around midnight and by that stage we were already out looking. There were uniformed police, plain clothes and even off duty local officers who joined in.

Nothing about that sedatives theory causes blood to be found anywhere, though.

I think the McCanns were planning to rob a security lorry leaving the resort the next morning, Madeleine found out about it and they had to keep her quiet.

I mean, Jesus people.

Nah, it's not Jesus's MO.

I'm pretty sure Madeline was killed by Jews.

why? What has Pope Leslie Grantham III done that I don't know about?

Shat in the woods? That's what people keep trying to convince me of.

Maybe it was a case of rage and they accidently killed her?

Haven't followed either but what were the other kids up to while all this was happening?

This is all so terribly sad.

Mind you, if it finishes off the careers of Judy 'Shaker' Finnegan & Richard 'I-love-me-who-do-you-love?' Madeley, then there is some justice in this world.

Where were Richard and Judy on the night in question?

EXACTLY

The accidental overdose occurred to me to. McCann's are having a crap holiday - M is being a little madam - they're desperate for a quiet night out without the kids - they sedate her with something a bit stronger than Calpol that doctors might have - it goes wrong etc etc.

Whereas the rest of us who are parents just deal with the toddler tantrums and live with the fact that we can't always go out for dinner sans kids because we have parental responsibilities.

The apparent neglect aspect of this enrages me.

If Dr. C's theory is true, then by confessing immediately they'd have at least got a smidgen of sympathy. Consequently orchestrating the media and becoming evil self-promotion geniuses is going to cost them the lot.

x-post to CJ Well yes, me too. I wouldn't have bothered going to bloody Portugal with 3 tiny kids - they'd have just as much fun in the back garden. (Reveals unadventurous approach to bringing up kids..)

Consequently orchestrating the media and becoming evil self-promotion geniuses is going to cost them the lot.

... if they did it.

Hence why I said 'If Dr.C's theory is true'. Lawyers, there ain't no facts yet.

Aye I think it's worth being careful to insert lots of "allegedly"s in these amateur sleuth posts.

xpost

(Sorry, read that in a hurry)

Let's not start calling it 'Dr.C's theory'.

everyone's a Dr. these days

"Dr.C's tenuous whimsy"

Is that his new band? :)

The Tenuous Whimsy would be an awesome band-name!

Go right ahead, Louis....

Fucking hell, I didn't call THIS!

...but if it's true then this week I shall be mostly wearing a smirk

-- Just got offed, Friday, 7 September 2007 09:28 (29 minutes ago) Link

and the winner for thread's douchiest comment, by some distance..

The Tenuous Mimsy

it's a fast show ref, ^@^

in that case, remove "by some distance"

"The Tenuous Whimsy would be an awesome band-name!" comes in a distant second

can't help explain that one

It would be Kula Shaker in cardigans with a glockenspiel.

worst cluedo solution ever

Have your say, people. Comment is free.

yes, "allegedly" but ha, actualy no.

My theory was posited in the way of saying "this does not make sense"

worst cluedo solution ever

Golden LOLs there!

...but if it's true then this week I shall be mostly wearing a smirk

-- Just got offed, Friday, 7 September 2007 09:28 (1 hour ago) Link

I am not one that usually calls you out Louis but ffs - a child is (most likely) dead here.

Ach, fair enough, but my figure of speech only related to the debate. The death of a child is tragic whichever way you look at it, and when considering THAT, I won't be smirking, I'll be shocked and horrified, along with the rest.

BRILLIANT

Its not always important to have an opinion on something

yeah dude just stop talking

yes it is

xpost

but that's just my opinion

The apparent neglect aspect of this enrages me.

Me too. So, parents on this thread, I am interested. Have you been to resorts like the one the McCanns were at? Are you aware that parents leave their kids in this manner on a regular basis? I don't have kids and don't go to resorts, so I've no idea what goes on, but I got the distinct impression from a phone'n'moan radio programme not long after Madeleine's disappearance that what they did was by no means unusual.

I fear that the procreative urge is as strong amongst the irresponsible as among the responsible.

OK, accentmonkey:
1) Yes.
2) So it seemed

and your third, unasked question

3) No, we'd take them with us, have dinner early, and have early nights.

Then again, our two have never ever been a 'handfull'.

Maybe we're fantastic parents. Maybe they are incredible kids. Maybe both. (i suspect option 2 tho)

Well, this is what I'm wondering. The very fact that you say "so it appears" means that you don't meet people on holidays who say "oh, we've left the kids asleep in the apartment" as if this was the most normal thing in the world. So I'm wondering how normal it is. That's all.

I bet this whole suspect thing is just because they wanted to leave Portugal and police didn't want a lengthy extradition battle every time they had another question for them/as long as they're not 100% certain the McCanns didn't do it. (arguido's aren't allowed to leave the country)

Translated in Portuguese press-speak: They Did It!
Translated in English press-speak: They're Being Framed!

BabyListening services were all the rage when we used to do Butlins, back in the day (i.e. when I was 14 or so)

Sky News are reporting that

Portuguese police have suggested to Kate McCann that traces of her daughter's blood were found in a car the family hired 25 days after the girl went missing, a family friend said.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/home

BabyListening services were all the rage when we used to do Butlins, back in the day (i.e. when I was 14 or so)

I do remember my parents and their friends fecking off out for the night once when we were on holidays in someone's holiday home in New York. They left eight kids (oldest: 14) locked into a kind of chalet for most of the night. But, you know, that was 1981. I think things like that were more acceptable then.

By age 14, many kids are babysitting! It's quite a different thing to leave a teenager in charge of other kids than to leave a 4 year old!

To pick up on Mark's answer to accentmonkey's third question, yes, they'd come with me and we'd eat slightly earlier. But it's certainly not unusual to see kids asleep in buggies at 9pm and beyond in Mediterranean resorts.

And on his other one, I've already posted today that the apartment complex they were at offered free childminding between 1930 and 2330.

traces of her daughter's blood

so where did they get enough of her DNA to be so certain it isn't one of the other kids' blood?

Also: I don't think babylistening devices have a half mile radius, but anyway.

I started babysitting at 11.

We never, ever got left on our own in holiday settings - if we weren't taken out to dinner to socialise us into acceptable dining-out behaviour, one adult in the party would remain with us back in the room, or at the pool (I would have been the three year old that wanted tapas). However when we were older, say when I was 9 or 10, it was perfectly acceptable to go tearing around in a pack with whatever kids were staying at the resort.

My initial opinion - that leaving toddlers unattended for any length of time is stupid - has not been revised.

Portuguese police have suggested to Kate McCann that traces of her daughter's blood were found in a car the family hired 25 days after the girl went missing

Might be a massive coincidence. They should check the previous clients...

so where did they get enough of her DNA to be so certain it isn't one of the other kids' blood?

-- StanM, Friday, September 7, 2007 12:03 PM (17 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

OMG you've nailed it!! The police kidnapped her

We did it! Internet message board solves murder mystery shocka!

This has reminded me of a girl I used to work with who, when she was about six years old, went on holiday to Spain with her parents and younger brother. Her parents left them in their holiday home with a load of food and an open door leading to a rooftop swimming pool, while they went to see Queen. They then reappeared THE NEXT MORNING giggling with an enormous breakfast for both children after goign to the beach following the gig and spending the entire night getting stoned. Now THAT'S bad parenting.

I was just about to tell this story again and realised I'd actually done so two months ago.

By age 14, many kids are babysitting! It's quite a different thing to leave a teenager in charge of other kids than to leave a 4 year old!

Yes, I know. I was babysitting at that age. During my babysitting days, though, I was never locked into a chalet with seven other kids at night in a foreign country and no means of contacting anyone.

It's still a different degree of irresponsibility than leaving toddlers alone.

This has reminded me of a girl I used to work with who, when she was about six years old, went on holiday to Spain with her parents and younger brother. Her parents left them in their holiday home with a load of food and an open door leading to a rooftop swimming pool, while they went to see Queen. They then reappeared THE NEXT MORNING giggling with an enormous breakfast for both children after goign to the beach following the gig and spending the entire night getting stoned. Now THAT'S bad parenting.

your ex-colleague only thought it was bad parenting because her parents wouldn't share the spliff.

i kind of think in a way, leaving toddlers alone is much safer than leaving a teenager alone.

It's still a different degree of irresponsibility than leaving toddlers alone.

I never suggested otherwise.

My point is that I knew that parents of my parents' generation were inclined to take risks with their children while on holidays that they would not necessarily have taken at home. I wondered to what extent this was still the case.

i don't know.. i never really got the impression that parents have become more responsible now than before.. have they? maybe i've just watched too many episodes of "Honey we're killing the kids" though.

(It's a shit program, by the way)

I wonder how tomorrow's Express is going to spin this? It won't want to dig itself in further with "anger at slur" like it did last time.

Two editions: one for the TheyDidIt crowd, one for the They'reBeingFramed crowd.

and another for the "TheyDidIt!" (in the "Yatta!" sense) crowd

To answer accentmonkeys questions : I have never been to a resort type thing with (or without) little kids, so I don't know what people get up to. But leaving 3 small children a few hundred yards away, unattended, in a strange environment isn't good. I can't believe that many people do that. I can imagine that it's common to nip off to the bar in the same building, or outside within sight, if they're in bed.

If you go on holiday with small children your routine and ability to do stuff is going to revolve entirely around their needs and safety and nice cosy adult dinners without them ain't gonna happen.

At lunchtime the Radio 5 Live reporter in Portugal thought that Kate might be charged with something later today!

I don't know what sort of childminding service was available at the McCanns' hotel; would they come to your room? Would it be a drop-off/pick-up kind of deal? I can understand, if the kids were asleep by 8pm, not being inclined to wake them and take them down to some resident childminder. But, at that point, I'd think "sod dinner", order room service and watch the telly - maybe we could take it in turns walking along the beach or something. (But I'm used to not really going out in the evenings, maybe the McCanns' home-life was a bit less restricted; I also know what a palaver it can be to get toddlers to bed, so if they're asleep, thank your lucky stars that you've at least got an evening of some peace, even if it means no balcalhau under the moonlight or whatever).

xxxxxxpost

Right, I'm staring to hate myself for listening out for updates and being interested in what's happening. There is no reason for it beyond morbid curiosity. Radio off!

you're just going to keep checking this thread for updates instead ;)

I've taken the kids on a few resort holidays. You plan your holiday around them. They eat with you. You don't let them go anywhere alone and you don't leave them alone in a room. Some resorts/hotels have Kids Clubs where they have supervised games for an hour or two and I'd trust my kids with these if they wanted to go - though they've always said no when asked.

That said, they've still managed to disappear out of sight at the swimming pool/beach and it scared the hell out of me. I spent a lifetime (about 10 minutes) search for David on the beach, decided he'd been snatched, played out a hundred horror stories in my head, then found him building a sand castle 30 yards from where we last saw him.

you're just going to keep checking this thread for updates instead ;)

Never!

Alright, yes.

OMG did you hear the latest news? It's on the radio now!

"Gerrard fit for Israel qualifier"
?

Kate McCann unfit to be charged with murder of child, police opt to arrest Scott Carson instead

Scott Carson's dad claims it's good enough and tries to cash in his bet.

that was kirkland

aldo realises he's confused Scott Carson with Chris Kirkland in the battle for England's 4th choice keeper.

4th? you mean rob green's ahead of both? madness.

carson should start.

the man can't even keep a goal let alone a child amirite??!?!?!

"...and then watched in horror as he bounced the baby twice and then booted it 80 yards down the road"

For all his qualities, Scotty C does have a face that would not be entirely out of place on the 6 o'clock news

As part of a child murder story, rather than actually presenting the news by mumbling "little girl's bin morda'd like"

Wow. You have some impressive radio stations on the big island.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6983604.stm

"Portuguese police believe the mother of missing four-year-old Madeleine McCann is involved in her death, a family spokeswoman has said."

When she returned to the restaurant to raise the alarm, did she take the twins with her?

http://www.teamtalk.com/Images/141459.jpg

Munchausen's By Proxy, anyone? It's always been a possibility.

I know nothing is certain till the police say something official but my understanding is that this newspaper is a pretty well respected broadsheet in Portugal and surely wouldn't be making such incredible claims as I'm sure it knows it'll get its arsed sued off if they're not true.

Uhm, not that it matters much anymore, but no. Guide to the portuguese press, for your source-checking convienience:

Respected:Público, Expresso, Jornal de Notícias to a lesser extent.

Populist, but not useless: Diário De Notícias, O Sol

Gutter press: Correio Da Manhã, 24 Horas

Roffles: O Crime

I'm also sort of puzzled by this whole "media going for the stories with the most emotional resonance instead of stuff like climate change/conflict in the middle east is 100% A-OK/just how the world works basically and there's no point whatsoever in complaining about it" stance that some posters took upthread, I'm guessing (hoping?) that this position wouldn't have been adopted quite as freely if Louis hadn't come on to the thread tho.

mr. reuter's original instructions to his correspondents in the 1800s included the dictum that filed stories should hopefully include death, or celebrities, but ideally both

x-post Slightly high-handed put down of CJ's post there, Daniel. For your convenience.

xposts: You saying that my antagonism has provoked an equal and opposite response? It's nice to have a bit of vindication seeing as whenever I open my mouth people generally go all wobbly at the constitution.

Geez, I'd actually forgotten all about the McCanns after the British media decided they were boring. This recent development, however, is genuinely interesting to me precisely because of the previous reaction. Why can't I feel a teeny bit smug? Why can't I gaze upon the hordes of Facebook badge-wearing yellow-ribbon wielders with a slightly raised eyebrow? Yeah, it's a tragedy, but if these allegations turn out to hold water, why the hell can't I smirk? This whole shebang could be the finest media satire Chris Morris never wrote. Stop being so fucking self-righteous! I can't see how you CAN'T be a a bit of a twat about this to be honest. The situation brings out the cruel, cynical media analyst in me!

Wow.

Fish in a barrel, but it's Friday afternoon and I'm knackered.

OTM.

tit

Smithers, release the hounds.

Why can't I feel a teeny bit smug?

its probably better to feel smug about something you've done, rather than the fact that you've managed to avoid becoming one of the yellow ribbon wearing facebook multitudes

i'm not sure why i'm reading this thread, i probably 'agree' with you that i wish it wasn't rammed down our throats, but then i don't have a tv and i don't read newspapers, so its not really rammed down my throat at all. maybe i should feel smug about that

what a smug-up

listen motherfucker, i'm the one with what you want

Ah guys it's the irony, the whole Europe tour, the Pope visit, the 'Find Madeleine' campaign...hell, even this thread! I mean, I may be displaying an insufficient amount of sympathy, and I may be saying things which could probably be construed as insensitive, but IF these allegations are true, surely you can see why I'd find it amusing?

ilx is not luke haines

if the morbid faux-grief of the british public give you cause for amusement, thats great, i dont really know why you would give a shit personally

I saw a lot of TV and read a lot of newspapers, dude!

http://www.garbledonline.net/starbrass.jpg

British tabloid press lolz.

Slightly high-handed put down of CJ's post there, Daniel. For your convenience.

Yeah, I'm sorry about that, CJ. It's just your post is basically the equivalent of me getting on here and saying "hey, I just read this piece in The Daily Mail, I gather it's quite a respected paper over in the UK". But of course you had no way of knowing that.

(the "for your convinience" wasn't high-handed, tho, just an admission taht nothing pertaining to the portuguese press could ever really be considered convinient, for anyone.)

mr. reuter's original instructions to his correspondents in the 1800s included the dictum that filed stories should hopefully include death, or celebrities, but ideally both

Well, yeah, you'll get no argument from me that the press is, always has been, and most probably always will be drawn to sensationalism and what sells. But, like other more-or-less eternal truisms like "power corrupts" and "big business will always exploit the little guy", I think this is one of those eternal truisms that it's worth railing against.

what have you got to be smug about Just got offed it's not like you even guessed the mother might be involved?

don't think daniel was v high handed either

Daniel_Rf, i agree

Well, I guessed very early on that the whole search campaign (and media circus) would be futile. If these allegations are true, they're futile in a particularly ironic manner.

people guessed quite early on about you

Never did get fellated by posh Home Counties totty to the dulcet tones of Gomez. ;___;

yeah dude just stop talking

-- ^@^, Friday, September 7, 2007 11:23 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

I don't know - are those of us who opposed the Iraq war entitled to feel smug because it's all gone to shit and people are dying? If the British economy goes tits-up as a result of the credit crunch, and we end up in a prolonged recession, is Filey Camp entitled to feel a bit smug?

Smugness isn't a terribly attractive quality.

honestly i can't even believe we're humoring this kid anymore.

Hey, with any luck he might hop over to ILE and start posting about his sex life or something. Think about the entertainment we might miss out on!
-- Matt DC (Matt DC), Friday, 28 July 2006 14:42 (1 year ago) Link

*smug*

Yeah, it's a tragedy, but if these allegations turn out to hold water, why the hell can't I smirk?

have you never done maths GCSE? You didn't show your working :(

the bit about carson booting it 80 yards was funny though! :))

[Chorus - Kanye](Jeezy)
La La La La (HEY)
Wait till I get my money right
La La La La (YEAH)
Then you can't tell me nothing right (Why are we...late)
Excuse me, is you saying something?
Uh uh, you can't tell me nothing (YEAH)
You can't tell me nothing (HAHA)
Uh uh, you can't tell me nothing

xposts to Matt DC: Those are massive common-interest stories, though. This is one isolated, unprecendented incident, and if the allegations are true, so much wasted effort will have been put into the lives of people who didn't deserve a second glance. The comparisons you supply are unfair. If it doesn't reflect well, I won't be 'smug' as such. I'll merely be amused, if, as I say, these allegations contain truth.

Ken - I got a high A*, so THERE

I wish Mark P would actually supply a reason for his dismissive abuse.

An A*? Woah, I fold.

did you do maths a-level?

(i did A* level)

I don't really think he needs to anymore. (xxxpost)

I did Maths A-level, yes.

You got an A* in Being A Fuckwit Studies as well.

Haha. Why does a cloud of bad humour follow me everywhere I go?

(you don't have to answer that one) ;-)

We don't need to.

Gosh, even when I self-deprecate you continue to stick the boot in!

you know you love it, lj

louis. my reason:

because you whoever the hell raised you obviously did so in such a way that you now have a comically overinflated sense of your own intelligence and importance the extent to which you wrongfully presume, in seemingly almost every situation, that it would be a better idea to subject us all to your empty blather rather than sit back, shut the fuck up, and listen to people who make up for their inability to type in the purple prose of retarded dandies with actual insight. this is not generally a problem for me because by some happy coincidence i tend not to care about most of the threads that you deem worthy of inclusion into your little one man vanity project, but when it is a thread i'm reading, and when you're on that thread being even more a smug dipshit then you normally are on cricket or sex threads or whatever, then yes, i'm going to abuse you.

one other thing: we are not your parents. it is not our job to humor you when you are being a smug little retard. you are actually LUCKY that someone took the time out to explain all of this to you.

there! you got your reason! the world exhales.

Isn't the whole point of ILX to have an opinion and to comment? Is my mere expression of opinion a surefire sign that I'm a raving egotist? There are plenty of people whose intelligences I look up to, on ILX, in real life, etc. I don't regard myself as 'above' anyone here, that's crazy. I just feel that my opinion deserves an airing, alongside all the other opinions on this thread, and this messageboard.

Speaking of cunts who think they're above other people, I think you need a fucking mirror.

What exactly is amusing about all this, in your opinion? That thousands of people got caught up in a search for a missing toddler when -- ha ha! -- it was really the nice middle-class mum all the time? If only they'd been more cynical and given less of a shit, they'd be safe from your smirking?

I can't see what entitles your smirk. There are hundreds of kids snatched all the time, and they don't get this treatment ... sure, that's shitty. And if Kate McCann had been a wee hairy there would have been many more difficult questions fired at her about her parenting. But none of that makes it amusing that people believed her child had been abducted and were concerned about it; or that, instead, it now looks like she's dead.

I'm noticing subtle changes in the reporting on BBC World. "They mounted an extraordinary publicity campaign" as the opening to a report sounds like something you'd hear the reporter say after she had been charged, if she had been charged.

Whilst thinking about this thread on the journey home I actually grew pretty depressed. I shouldn't let anything that happens on the Internet get under my skin, but Mark P's post has actually succeeded. It may be a cuntish put-down of the most obnoxious kind, but there's some inkling of truth behind some of what he says. Yeah, I react too easily, and yeah, I'm outspoken. The rest is bullcrap. So I said I'd be 'a teeny bit smug', so I admitted it, doesn't mean you have to unimaginatively jam the word 'smug' into two further epithets. I'm rarely smug. On ILX I rarely have much to be smug about. When I say I look up to posters here, I mean it; I'm learning all the time. The way I learn is trial and error, application and ascertainment. Abuse like yours is merely going to provoke self-indulgent screeds like this, which nobody wants to read.

That said, people are so eager to misconstrue me that I may as well not bother defending myself. When Stet says that "thousands of people got caught up in a search for a missing toddler when -- ha ha! -- it was really the nice middle-class mum all the time", no, that ISN'T why I gain a sense of irony. It's the MEDIA OVERKILL and the, erm, self-indulgent screeds of the parents (not to mention the Facebook supporters) that will be totally and comically undermined...should these allegations be proven true.

BBC, you were fucking PARTY to this 'extraordinary publicity campaign', you've made your bed, now lie in it.

OPINIONS4U

if you're gonna be smug on this thread you gotta do it the Passantino way

^^^ add to the faq

no, that ISN'T why I gain a sense of irony.
the irony came later, first came the smugness. And it looks to me that you're finding your smugness from the fact that there was media overkill when people like you could see all along that it was nonsense. Which sounds a lot like laughing at all the people who got caught up in it, owing to their lack of cynical savvy. Comedy indeed.

BBC are now saying police believe Kate "accidentally" killed Madeleine, but I don't see where they're getting that from.

i wouldnt worry too much about it LJ, really!

because you whoever the hell raised you obviously did so in such a way that you now have a comically overinflated sense of your own intelligence and importance the extent to which you wrongfully presume, in seemingly almost every situation, that it would be a better idea to subject us all to your empty blather rather than sit back (and) shut the fuck up...

to be fair this describes all of ILX ever

Don't tell me I leave for a couple of hours and THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT LJ AGAIN!!??

I can never work out if it's our fault or his, but yes.

Yeah, rolling teenpop ain't the beacon of timeliness it once was (or beacon of much of anything else, as ilX goes from first stop to last stop to no stop on many people's Web journeys). Actually, was it ever a beacon of timeliness? Was basically me trying to catch up with 2004.

-- Frank Kogan, Friday, 7 September 2007 16:41 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Leave the poor boy alone - there's an entire generation of vaguely-left-leaning students who have been waiting 10 YEARS for their Princess Diana moment to define themselves against. In the absence of anything else, I suppose an upducted child in Portugal will have to do.

Where's John Mulvey when you need him?

it was nick southall who first called out kate mccann, child murderer, on ilx, though to be honest my first fuckin' reaction to the story was 'the parents did it.' i'm less sure about that now.

this story went away in july and came back for silly season. time for a denouement.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91210-1283278,00.html

If either of you could let us know where Osama is hiding, or what next week's lottery numbers will be, that would be greatly appreciated.

Everything very much pointed at Madeline being dead before the McCanns were 'named as suspects', and it still does now that they have been.

I don't think that this latest development is particularly sad (the whole situation is obviously awful, as is the murder of anyone), and at least if (not saying they did...) the McCanns killed her accidentally then there would have been no sexual assualt.

What I'm trying to get at is that I can see why someone could find it ironic, or feel 'a bit smug'. Tasteless yes, but nothing worse - and not deserving of everyones' vitriol.

I find it odd that anyone would feel smug, not because it's a macabre thing to feel smug about, but simply for the reason that every single person I've spoken to since she went missing has said "Oooh, I bet the parents did it". I mean, its sort of ingrained in the British conciousness after the cases of the road rage woman, and Peter Falconio (innocent in that case, obv). The thought is inescapable whilst watching any tearful press conference, no?

Yeah, but many people seem to enjoy directing cynicism through the most well-worn channels. What I'm not sure of is whether they know they're well-worn or not, and how that bears upon their motivation. Sorry, that sounds very high-handed.

Heh, poor Express
http://bonaldi.thehold.net/chiz/maddy.jpg

I had a brief chuckle at Private Eye last week that ran a trip along the bottom of the page of about 20 near identical Daily Express 'MADELEINE' front pages over the past few months. A full five of them had the Madeleine/Diana double whammy as well.

LJ, the reason people are on at you is you've confused LONG WORDS with CLARITY OF EXPRESSION.

We still have to wait on this case because of legendary Keystone aspect of Portuguese cops plus possibility of extremely corrupted forensics. My mum spent most of this week's phone call discussing this case. However I do not see why anyone could/should/would be giving themselves a massive pat on the back for recognizing early on that most killings of small children are usually perpetrated by family members.

This is what I would remind my uncle, the cop, every time he informed me about The Apocryphal Rapist Around The Corner.

Statistically speaking the biggest odds (?) were on ONE of the parents. It is in rare cases that a child is abducted or that s/he was killed by both parents. Most of the time it is one of the parents. The mother when she's emotionally unstable or the dad when he has lost his job and is narcistic. This is a simple way of putting, but that's what is mostly the case.

Still, we don't know for sure if they/she/he is the killer.

That's what a psychiatrist said on the news and something I already more or less knew.

I had a brief chuckle at Private Eye last week that ran a trip along the bottom of the page of about 20 near identical Daily Express 'MADELEINE' front pages over the past few months. A full five of them had the Madeleine/Diana double whammy as well.

http://www2.b3ta.com/host/creative/59481/1188374362/madeliana.jpg

(by an odd coincidence, found on another messageboard)

Madeleine was The People's Toddler.

The People's Poppet

But leaving 3 small children a few hundred yards away
BBC says the restaurant was 100 yards away. It seems crazy to be even debating this but it just goes to show how little we all know.

tbh I can't see why we're back to how stupid the parents were. Remember Sophie Hook, abducted out of a tent in her uncles garden (while with two other children), or Sarah Payne in a field at the back of her grandparents house, or even Jamie Bulger taken from a shop where he was with his mother. If some nutjob wants to kill a child there are always going to be opportunities.

BUT you have to get past that as a parent because otherwise you would never let your kids out of your sight and this would drive you (and most probably them) insane. My son is now getting to the age (10) when he wants to cycle around the neighbourhood (just as I did when I was 10 and when - despite what some people think - the chances of being abducted were pretty much the same as know i.e. very low) and my daughter (6) wants to be able to go to her friends house - a hundred or so yards down the road. And to be honest it worries me about a million times more that they will be hit by a car than abducted.

I HAVE stayed at these types of resorts and certainly they do feel safe. We have certainly sat at the front of the villa while our kids slept at that back. Someone could snuck in the back window and murdered our children. Fuck it, we may have even been drinking, what kind of monsters are we?

So, while I'm not saying that the McCanns were not stupid to leave their kids in the apartment, I can see how it could be done and not only by drunk, child abusing halfwits.

All this may or may not be relevant here if any of this stuff about the parents being the culprits turns out to be true but before some other parents are placed on the scaffolding for neglect when their children have been killed let the record show that I for one will have some sympathy for them.

There was a diagram last night on the ITV news - the apartment was facing the main road, the bar was over a swimming pool and round another block from the other side of the apartment block they were staying in. So although it does indeed seem to be only around 100 yards as the crow flies, there were two sizeable buildings and a swimming pool in the way.

Also last night a new timeline for the night in question was given - went out around 1930, kids checked by Gerry McCann at 2045, a friend at 2100, another friend at 2110 then discover missing at "around 2200" by Kate McCann. Which isn't quite the same as going out after 2030 and checking religiously every half hour, as was originally stated. The cluster of three is unusual, and arguably suggests the children weren't exactly sleeping soundly at the time.

(I take Ned's point too, you can't watch over them all the time and I've certainly drunk on a balcony while the kids have been at the front of the apartment.)

I don't have any children

I'm sure there's time for you.

I don't have children, but I nodded all the way throug Ned's post.

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44102000/jpg/_44102195_question_afp203b.jpg

this photo is so strange. it looks like a still from an american TV drama.

Geez, my sense of irony doesn't stem from suspecting the parents all along (I didn't), but from the potential revelation coupled with the protracted, ridiculously OTT media campaign, orchestrated by the (potential) perpetrators. This and this only is my reason for amusement.

It's all growing ever closer to that Daisy Harris Murder Inquiry sketch on Moneky Dust.

LJ can you please stop justifying yourself, it's not necessary.

the protracted, ridiculously OTT media campaign, orchestrated by the (potential) perpetrators. This and this only is my reason for amusement.

see, it didn't amuse me, it just depressed me. life is not a blue jam sketch, and it's upsetting and unsettling when it resembles one.

Someone's shook.

shook like that baby that got shook by that english nanny.

i love it when ilxors attempt character criticisms of people they've never met on the internet.

louis seems to attract this more than most.

i think the criticism that papers run this story and not real news is just, but maybe based on a misconception of what papers are bought for.

but even the nonprofit 'independent' has gone big on this story.

t/s: louise woodward vs. kate mccann (allegedly) vs. rosemary west vs. myra hindley

There's not actually a side to take there, though, really. Unless you are perhaps talking about a cagematch, in which case my money's on Rose, as the possessor of v powerful shoulders.

I suspect, Louis, old bean, that the collective hump ILX appears to have taken is due to your stating the bleeding obvious. The tabloid press behaving like berks does not qualify as a surprise. Fwiw I understand and agree with your position to a large extent. The whole thing is nuts.

The speculation on the death of a child is distasteful, naturally. I can't imagine deriving a degree of satisfaction from it in any respect.

I suspect, Louis, old bean, that the collective hump ILX appears to have taken is due to your stating the bleeding obvious. The tabloid press behaving like berks does not qualify as a surprise

I don't think they've gotten at me because of my 'stating of the bleeding obvious'; most of the criticism has been violently opposed to my viewpoint. Furthermore, I'm NOT talking about the tabloid press AT ALL (having not really read much/any during the whole kerfuffle). I'm talking about the mainstream broadsheet press, the BBC News/Sky News websites, the television news, and the radio stations.

My 'degree of satisfaction', as I evidently can't tire of repeating, derives not from speculations over the child's possible whereabouts, but from the cold hard truths of a) the media coverage/parent campaign and b) the allegations.

i think the criticism that papers run this story and not real news is just, but maybe based on a misconception of what papers are bought for.

i think that the way this story underlines how i willfully misconceive what papers are bought for is partly why it depresses me, beyond the fact that it's, y'know, quite a grim story.

But before caek returns to point out what a stunningly banal and repetitive tip I'm still on in this thread, I'll step back from proceedings until we know some real cold hard truths concerning precisely who IS responsible for the child's abduction/murder.

How is this 'not real news'? I mean, other than opposing it with a trite "there are more children dying every day in Darfur" argument?

Look at it this way:

1. British child is abucted in resort popular with lots of tourists
2. This is, yknowm, of MASSIVE INTEREST to anyone planning to go to that region of Portugal
3. It's also of interest to the thousands of Brits who may have considered, while on holiday, leaving their children somewhere while they go and have a bit of 'me time', while considering their kids to be perfectly safe.
4. Many of these parents might, happily, rethink their complacency.
5. If they WEREN'T responsible, then one poor couple are in the worst situation ever.
6. With the above caveat, they have gone all around Europe with this story and raised millions of pounds from well-meaning people, and gone to see the Pope who has pledged his support.

So either we are dealing with a random nutter roaming a popular child-friendly resort, or we have an instance of infanticide and massive fraud that has taken in some of the most prominent people on the planet, like the figurehead of one of the largest religious groups in the world.

IN WHAT WAY IS THIS NOT A BIG STORY?

Look, WE ALL KNOW that the press reports this stuff in hysterical tones. This is not a radical viewpoint. The fact that you think that pointing this out and standing there with hands on hips with a smug 'look at me!' grin makes you look like a fucking idiot masquerading as an intellectual.

Essentially, you look like an even more naive, blinkered version of Momus. And you are perfectly capable of NOT doing so. So stop it.

I didn't read it as being opposed to your viewpoint, to be honest. I think many people on this thread agree with the main thrust of your argument. Feel free to shoot me down in flames if I'm wrong but you are amused at the media shitstorm, primarily. This has, however, been expressed unfortunately (I'm thknking specifically of the word "smirk")

And I apologise for the misapprehension. The words degree of satisfaction were not intended to imply that you, personally had derived that. It was more general. I can't understand anyone deriving any degree out of satisafaction from the situation, it's abhorrent to me.

I'm picking my words carefully as I have no wish to jump merrily on the have a swipe at LJ bandwagon. I think you're on the right track. I also think that you get a bit carried away at times and it comes back to bite you in the arse.

xpost Matt DC, somewhat more bluntly, on point

Sorry, I know this looks patronising, but it really does appear you are so lacking in self-awareness you need this stuff spelt out for you.

guys please shut the fuck up

http://www.communicationmatters.org.uk/Publications/Videos/The_Power_of_Communication/Fig_-_Power_of_Communication.jpg

Everyone OTM.

Particularly Curtis, I imagine.

Thought the chap on the right runs him a close second.

I NEVER SAID IT WASN'T REAL NEWS.

At the start, it WAS news. It was news for ALL the reasons you state. I accept this.

TWO WEEKS LATER, it was STILL news. And because there were no further developments in the case, the NATURE OF THE NEWS became ridiculous. UTTERLY LAUGHABLE, in fact. My mockery only began after we were subjected to a good fortnight of recycled non-news.

I AM NOT merely mocking the 'hysterical tones'. I am mocking the INSANE LEVEL OF UNNECESSARY DETAIL foistered upon us. Like, giving a thorough analysis of the McCanns' Pope-tour aeroplane. Thanks for that, BBC, way to turn tragedy into EDUCASHUN.

Furthermore, it has TURNED ITSELF into MASSIVE news through a sort-of self-justifying vicious-cycle process: what's in the news IS the news. If it turns out to be infanticide/fraud, well, that's fucking enormous news!

I accept that I may not have delineated my targets thoroughly enough, and have hence looked like a posturing prat. But I honestly know exactly what I'm gunning at: a combination of hysteria, macabre speculation and 'infotainment'.

Dang.

I let you down, you let me down!

Yes, I get that.

And yes, it's silly.

xpost

yes, Dang

xpost again

the real loser here is ILX

Or possibly the Expess

r

Yes, I get that.

I know, it wasn't aimed at you!

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00005MLU0.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

No doubt.

Forums=misapprehension.

(Sorry Louis - I know the 'not real news' line wasn't you, I was kind of conflating two arguments for convenience, it wasn't terrible well phrased).

Anyway LJ - everyone gets your point. It is so screamingly obvious to a lot of people they probably didn't even feel the need to say so in the first place. Most people probably agree with your basic premise. The fact that people are STILL objecting to you in such vitriolic terms should at least make you think about the way you express yourself in these arguments.

God I sound fucking hectoring again.

Well, like I say, unless someone else accuses me of expressing an opinion I don't actually hold in the interim, I'll schtum until we know some real truths. You're probably right that my tone is repetitive and overly insistent, not to mention sensationalist. I still feel that the battle I've waged on this thread is a valid one.

http://www.toonhound.com/hector-1.jpg

I love Lou1s J@gger

I don't love his immunity but I love him

i still hold out hope that Jagger will be returned safely

(arguido's aren't allowed to leave the country)

They've left!

How is this 'not real news'? I mean, other than opposing it with a trite "there are more children dying every day in Darfur" argument?

Look at it this way:

1. British child is abucted in resort popular with lots of tourists
2. This is, yknowm, of MASSIVE INTEREST to anyone planning to go to that region of Portugal
3. It's also of interest to the thousands of Brits who may have considered, while on holiday, leaving their children somewhere while they go and have a bit of 'me time', while considering their kids to be perfectly safe.
4. Many of these parents might, happily, rethink their complacency.
5. If they WEREN'T responsible, then one poor couple are in the worst situation ever.
6. With the above caveat, they have gone all around Europe with this story and raised millions of pounds from well-meaning people, and gone to see the Pope who has pledged his support.

So either we are dealing with a random nutter roaming a popular child-friendly resort, or we have an instance of infanticide and massive fraud that has taken in some of the most prominent people on the planet, like the figurehead of one of the largest religious groups in the world.

IN WHAT WAY IS THIS NOT A BIG STORY?

Look, WE ALL KNOW that the press reports this stuff in hysterical tones. This is not a radical viewpoint. The fact that you think that pointing this out and standing there with hands on hips with a smug 'look at me!' grin makes you look like a fucking idiot masquerading as an intellectual.

Essentially, you look like an even more naive, blinkered version of Momus. And you are perfectly capable of NOT doing so. So stop it.

-- Matt DC, Saturday, 8 September 2007 23:36 (Yesterday) Link

jesus, stop being a dick fucking hectoring. i wasn't putting hand on hips etc, etc, i wasn't advancing a "radical viewpoint", or claiming to. i was *responding* to:

1) Daniel Rf saying the press is, always has been, and most probably always will be drawn to sensationalism and what sells. But, like other more-or-less eternal truisms like "power corrupts" and "big business will always exploit the little guy", I think this is one of those eternal truisms that it's worth railing against. and Tracer Hand agreeing.

i also agree but added a note of "this is what papers are bought for". more or less saying in a sentence what you said there, in fact. i don't feel smug about it but fuck it, that's what i think. if you're going to call people out, do it right.

2) someone ASKING who had said it was the mccanns ages ago, or maybe thinking it was louis, scroll up -- anyway it was nick, not louis like they thought, so i said so. is that a problem? i'm not smug about it at all, and as i said it was just a kneejerk response when the news came in based on that robin williams ep of 'homicide: lots' </ jokes>.

i don't think the 'darfur' argument is trite... it's crass, is what it is, but calling it that is just a refined, twas ever thus way of defending the status quo. don't get so het up over whether such-and-such an opinion is radical or provocative or not.

Yeah sorry Enrique - I'd already apologised upthread for attaching the 'not real news' comment to one of LJ's posts because, well, that's what he'd been pretty much implying throughout. I pretty much agreed with your 'what papers are bought for' line, so hey this is me holding my hands up and that doesn't happen very often.

(This is why you should never post to ILE when drunk and particularly when you have just had the *exact same* argument in the pub an hour before - the fact this was an argument conducted by several people in head on the table levels of exasperation probably didn't help my tone upthread).

Anyway, leaving Portugal just when you've been officially named a suspect - classic or phenomenally bad PR? Are they even allowed to do that?

Well, I guess they are if they're doing it.

I don't understand what's going on at all.

Telling the whole world that you don't trust the police force that's supposed to be on your side: not very classic, I'd assume.

Stupid parochial assumptions about other countries' police forces + stinking sense of middle class entitlement = super-dud.

Hadn't seen this pic before, makes some things a little clearer:

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44104000/jpg/_44104522_map.jpg

Stupid parochial assumptions about other countries' police forces + stinking sense of middle class entitlement = super-dud.

-- Noodle Vague, Sunday, September 9, 2007 1:06 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

the portugese do seem to have screwed the pooch on this case, though, surely?

these revelations certainly put a new light on the mccanns' demands that the police "show them the evidence" - why, so you can know which lies are going to work and which lies won't?

i agree that sensationalistic stories about bad things happening to clean-looking white people get way too much play, but i also agree with matt AND "that one guy" that people often buy the papers in order to follow really outrageous stories like this one, and there's nothing wrong with that, necessarily. the longer the perp goes unapprehended, and the more imaginable the circumstances around the crime, the more addictive the story becomes. if they'd found the killer the day after it happened we'd all have forgotten about it by now.

xpost on the contrary, they appear to have lured the mccanns right into their trap!!

i write all this as radio 4 is going into its second hour of coverage on the rhys jones funeral

xxpost

I figure a certain amount of ineptitude is common to cops around the world, true. But it's quite possible that the Portuguese police have been badly messed with. All those people in the girl's bedroom on the night in question, for example.

This whole thing becomes weirder by the minute. They must be allowed to leave the country - it's not like they could slip out unnoticed, but I thought they had to report back to a police station every 5 days or something?

As I live just down the road from Rothley - I'll pop over later and ask them what's what.

Ask them if they offed their daughter while you're on.

Ask them what they think about LJ too, because we don't know anymore.

tbh i don't know what the portugese police have done one way or another -- they have done badly PR-wise, with all the 'are they/aren't they suspects' stuff, and what looks like not very rigorous interviewing of the mccanns back in may.

ha, perhaps their cops are less used to leaking juicy information to the tabs, and so they just *look* worse coz all us amateur pembletons out here need something to mull over. we need more facts. but also a resolution.

the ""smell of death on kate's clothes" story comes from british forensics cops via "friends of the mccanns", rather than the portugese cops, i think -- to give an example of "how it's done" in the uk.

Overnight ITV news was definitely trying to paint the cops as incompetent johnny foreigners, basically saying they'd gone in and said "Was it you what done it? You did it, didn't you? We know you did it. Yes, you did it. Didn't you? It was you. If you say it was you, we'll give you a shorter amount of time in jail. Because you did it."

I can understand friends sticking up for them, but I'm developing Louis-esque levels of disdain for apparently complete strangers totally convinced of their innocence.

Dude I'm not saying I'm convinced of their guilt (I'm not), I'm saying that if they are guilty, there'll be uproar.

people will be looking for their money back

I wasn't accusing you of anything, bud. I was just saying there seem to be these tits on the news going "HOW DARE THEY PICK ON THE PEOPLE'S PARENTS?!?!?!" with a tone reminiscent of those annoying Henman fans at Wimbledong.

Yeah, and those people are thoroughly repellent, BUT I think it's a bit too easy, too convenient, to suddenly place all suspicion at the door of the parents.

Have the twins been questioned yet, for instance?

Argh.

Police are basically as fallible and venal as each other, everywhere. Portugal has PLENTY tabloids and I'm assuming that theirs are also staffed by country-appropriate condescending public schoolers and nepotism cases pretending to be 'populist'.