Madeleine McCann: McGuckins, CCTV And A Mother’s Scream
MADDIE WATCH - Anorak’s at-a-glance guide to press coverage of Madeleine McCann
SUE CARROLL (Mirror): The McGuckins are “ashamed”.
“What they should not be are convenient scapegoats for the Portuguese police who, a year on, have failed to turn up even a sliver of evidence on the fate of Madeleine McCann”
McCann. McGuckin. It’s Tabloid Bingo! Bingo! Bingo! Bingo!
DAILY MAIL: “Big Brother? Hardly. The CCTV cameras don’t work - and actually make crime even worse”
Says Ross Clark: “The revelation that only three per cent of London street robberies are solved by CCTV cameras comes as no surprise to me.”
It is a similar story with that other great arm of the surveillance society: the national DNA database. So far, there has been muted public protest at the database, on which there is now the DNA of 4.5 million Britons recorded. But the public’s view of the database is based on the assumption that it is helping to catch criminals. Yesterday, however, the Home Office admitted that for every 800 samples added to the database, it helps solve just one crime.
For example?
In fact, as quickly became obvious with the Madeleine McCann case, in which DNA recovered from the boot of Gerry and Kate McCann’s hired car contributed to the couple being made official suspects in their daughter’s disappearance, the reality is that detectives have to sift through imperfect samples incapable of giving perfect matches.
In the McCann case, the DNA ‘evidence’ suggested Madeleine’s body had been in a car which the McCanns had not hired until three weeks after their daughter had disappeared and it eventually proved to be useless.
GLOBE & MAIL (Canada): “Every parent is haunted by a near-miss story”
Salad Days with Judith Timson and her family:
I went outside and measured “not 50 yards” and figured it was probably to my neighbour’s house at the corner, which, if you left young children alone without a walkie-talkie to hear them, might as well have been halfway across town.
Aaaahhhhh!!!!!!!!! How that, Judith? Can you hear me, now?
Every parent, surely, has a near-miss story, when inattention or a bad decision - often made for selfish reasons - could have led to their child’s death.
One of mine was during the supper hour, when, as the frazzled mother of a one-year-old and a three-year-old, I reasoned that the little one could remain on the third floor with her brother watching television, while I went down, blessedly unhampered, to cook dinner. In an open-concept house, I figured I would hear any trouble.
After a few minutes, I called up to ask my son how his sister was doing, but got no answer. I took the stairs two at a time, my heart rate escalating. I found my son still engrossed in the TV, but his sister had crawled off into a bedroom, where she was sitting upright with the cord from a window blind wrapped tightly around her neck, pulling away from it. “No,” I thought, a one-word instant horror story.
I scooped her up and took her back downstairs to safety. And so there was no news story about a child strangling…
Just a comment piece about a child nearly strangling, sort of. Phew!
Madeleine McCann: Making copy while the sun shines
Posted: 7th, May 2008 | In: Broadsheets, Madeleine McCann, Tabloids Comments (93) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
May 7th, 2008 at 9:29 pm
Chenier/Ciara
Thank you both.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:22 pm
90
Christine
Hi, M&A answered my question to that in post 88. If you look at recent comments down the right hand side you will find some of the regulars and the thread they are posting on at present. I was confused too.
May 7th, 2008 at 9:21 pm
90
Christine Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
Try:
McGuckin In McCann Peril: Foreign Crimes In Foreign Climes
May 7th, 2008 at 9:18 pm
M&A
I’m lost! Where is the Maddie thread please? Don’t tell me Clarrie has hushed us up?
May 7th, 2008 at 9:14 pm
88
Carmen
Okay, thanks. I found the most of the other posters on another thread.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:46 pm
87
Ciara Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 8:16 pm e
M&A
Where is everyone. It seems only a few posts in the last 5 hours. That is strange…no??
***********************
Not so strange Ciara, we have parted company with some of the posters who specialised in filling column inches with midless chatter and sexual innuendo.
We have a number of different threads running both here and in the forum and the posters are pretty evenly spread over those threads. there are some serious commentators here now, rather than just a social gathering.
May 7th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
M&A
Where is everyone. It seems only a few posts in the last 5 hours. That is strange…no??
May 7th, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Hello?? Where is everyone?
May 7th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
Hello?
May 7th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
60
Rosemarie Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 11:49 am
poor madeleine, but I wish she would go away.
————————
Sadly, she did, twelve months ago.
May 7th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
The Skye life of Crime blog seems to have frozen……… strange!!
May 7th, 2008 at 2:11 pm
where ?
May 7th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Most on the newish thread now, sam.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
79
Lone Pigeon Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
‘Just the tip of the iceberg them two…..’
that didn’t half remind me of that polonium story.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
67
brandon flours Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
the 2 drunk parents who were hospitalised in portugal
oh them!
Just the tip of the iceberg them two…..
May 7th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
61…Marie Nicholas
The “Enigma” discussion was very interesting.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:28 pm
75
sam Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
——————————
Yes, I think you are right.
Up until now the gameplan has been to blame everyone in sight.
Now the libel lawyers have stepped in the blame game has become extremely expensive…
M and A
Chenier , found this possible solution to gridlock http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7384788.stm
May 7th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
A fool there was and he made his prayer, (Even as you and I), To a rag and a bone and a hank of hair, (We called her the woman who did not care), But the fool he called her his lady fair.
Mr R. Kipling.
The bloke what wrote exceedingly good books
May 7th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
74
chenier Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
‘Admittedly it had no points of similarity whatsoever to Madeleine’s disappearance, but it gave the parents, and the twenty year old, an opportunity to express their support for the McCanns…’
there’s really no similarity though, it’s just a garnering of sympathy then, i think.
May 7th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
70
Carmen Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
“We are also families asking with children to think if something similar may have happened to them.”
It is just so sloppy. But an apparently sloppy use of language can turn out to be a very precise use of language revealing unfocussed thinking
****************
Something similar to what? If they are referring to an alleged abduction do they really think an entry in Gerry’s blog will bring forward information that had previously been kept quiet?
Oh, somebody abducted my five year old last year, but I didn’t like to mention it before?
———————————
Be fair!
Some people lead very busy lives!
And there has already been a result; surely you can’t have overlooked the heartwarming story about a baby who was kidnapped for five days twenty years ago?
Admittedly it had no points of similarity whatsoever to Madeleine’s disappearance, but it gave the parents, and the twenty year old, an opportunity to express their support for the McCanns…
May 7th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
oh, okay right, i got stuck on the sloppy writing bit, as i’m prone to it, but yes. so maybe it should read something like who else has lost their child whilst out on the binge you mean hence the muddle. my grammar is awful btw.
May 7th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
As in - something else to focus attention on “child catchers in Portugal” and away from the real possibility that harm came to madeleine whilst in her parents care. Or actually uncare.
Sort of like we told you so. we said there were nasty people in Portugal.
And another innocent family being dragged into the mire and murky waters of this case.
I just wish that they would remember that the victim - and only victim - in this is their daughter Madeleine.
They are not the victims. They were the direct cause of her disapperance if only by leaving her and her siblings alone.
Do they not realise they could have lost all 3?
Selfish arrogant bastards.
sorry!
May 7th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
69
PeterMac Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
EDIT
“We are also families asking with children to think if something similar may have happened to them.”
It is just so sloppy. But an apparently sloppy use of language can turn out to be a very precise use of language revealing unfocussed thinking
—-
hi, what’s the problem with that though ?
May 7th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
“We are also families asking with children to think if something similar may have happened to them.”
It is just so sloppy. But an apparently sloppy use of language can turn out to be a very precise use of language revealing unfocussed thinking
****************
Something similar to what? If they are referring to an alleged abduction do they really think an entry in Gerry’s blog will bring forward information that had previously been kept quiet?
Oh, somebody abducted my five year old last year, but I didn’t like to mention it before?
May 7th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Off thread I know, but I have only just seen it.
Remember that KM proof reads GMs blog and it is then proofed again when it is entered
(This is the blog which incites and procures people to reveal their confidential witness statements to the principal suspects.)
Day 366: 03/05/2008
EDIT
“We are also families asking with children to think if something similar may have happened to them.”
It is just so sloppy. But an apparently sloppy use of language can turn out to be a very precise use of language revealing unfocussed thinking
May 7th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
alledgedly
May 7th, 2008 at 12:23 pm
the 2 drunk parents who were hospitalised in portugal
May 7th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
58
brandon flours Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 11:40 am
lone
what do you think of the comatose2 ???
what’s that?
May 7th, 2008 at 12:09 pm
63
PeterMac Says:
May 7th, 2008 at 11:58 am
62 Chenier
That way round, yes. But not the other.
(As it were !)
——————————————–
Quite so.
I am still somewhat amused that we were speculating about the PR possibilities of a Rohypnol claim here on Anorak long before the McGs made the claim to the media.
Perhaps their PR person reads Anorak?
May 7th, 2008 at 12:02 pm
40 Ferdinand Says:
———-
19 brandon flours Says:
” They seem to be getting alot of misspent flak…”
——————
And this will backfire on Portugal. If the impression emerges that now there’s open season on British tourists - which is certainly wrong in the matter, but a damning image.
———–
Which is the more damaging impression that of tourists facing justice in Portugal or as appears to be the case - no harsh justice faced?
May 7th, 2008 at 11:58 am
62 Chenier
That way round, yes. But not the other.
(As it were !)