Madeleine McCann: Baby P And Me
MADELEINE MCCANN & Baby P: What Did You Do For Them, Daddy?
The mawkish reaction to Baby P’s horrific life and death has turned into an ‘I was there moment’.
Up and down the land young faces are turning to parents and guardians and asking: “What did you do for Baby, P?”
DAD: “Well, I singed a petition in the Sun and online calling for social workers who let him down to be sacked.”
The child blinks.
MUM: “And we went on an outing to London the spot where the Sun says the majority of Baby P’s ashes landed.”
CHILD A(rmani): “Was the Queen there?”
DAD: “Not yet. There’s a plaque there the Sun put up that says ‘Baby P’. That was the codename for him used in the media and the courts. It means that Baby P final resting place was marked by the crime that killed him.”
Childs looks worried.
MUM: “We left a note. And you saw two-year-old Chloe, Sarah Heasman’s daughter, who told the nice man from the Sun, you know the one who stands among the gravestones with his camera:
‘When I told her we were going to see Baby P she thought we were going to play with him. I had to tell her he was asleep – it was the only way I could think of her to describe it.”
(Note to self: Do not tell the little kiddies that Baby P was tortured to death and left to die in his bloodstained cot. Tell them instead that he fell asleep. And with any luck all the visitors traipsing over his ashes will wake him up.)
CHILD A: “Does Baby P know Madeleine?”
DAD: “Yes. They are playing together in a big park.”
(Note to self: Better.)
The Sun says a million people have signed its “SACK THE SOCIAL WORKERS” petition.
A knee-jerk reaction to the Baby P tragedy risks derailing the work of those trying to protect vulnerable children, a local authority leader is due to warn.
Margaret Easton, chairman of the Local Government Association (LGA), will say that “irreparable, long-term damage” could be caused to the services that keep youngsters safe from harm.
She will voice concerns at a special summit on child protection that some staff could “walk away” from the profession following the tragic death of a toddler.
Hurrah for the Sun. Now let’s grab the kids and go and scream “paedo!” and boo and hiss at the van leaving the courthouse…
Of course, the Baby P story needs more. It needs a paedo:
DAILY MIRROR: BABY P STEPDAD HELD IN HUNTLEY’S OLD CELL
Baby P’s stepdad has been moved to a suicideproof cell which caged Soham killer Ian Huntley. The sadistic 32-year-old was transferred to the secure unit after getting death threats in Britain’s toughest jail.
A source in Belmarsh, South East London, said: “Prisoners are desperate to get their hands on him. He is despised. His life was under threat every time he left his cell. The last prisoner subjected to such hatred was Huntley.”
And if he survives the lags - how many fags is he worth? - there are the columnists to worry about.
Baby P needs celebrities:
THE SUN: It’s Coldplay…
Coldplay are proud to have their finger on the pulse of burning global issues…All four band members are parents to young children and the horror of the Baby P story reached them in America.
And?
Guy, 30, who has a two-year-old daughter, said: “One of the worst crimes anyone could commit is abusing a child. It’s saddening. I can’t actually believe that people could do it. I don’t know what must have happened for them to do something like that. It is beyond comprehension.”
Is there a song in it?
And what of our Maddie? Little news of late of Madeleine McCann. She’s missing. She is still missing.
THE AUSTRALIAN: “Caroline Byrne’s killer Gordon Wood sent email to Simon Butler saying he feared verdict”
Feeling hopelessly alone and fearing the worst, Gordon Wood sent one last email before a Sydney court found him guilty of murdering his girlfriend Caroline Byrne.
“Not confident, they are out to get me no matter what,” he wrote to one of his few remaining friends, British-born ski tour operator Simon Butler just before the guilty verdict was delivered last Friday.
“Despite ridiculous spear-throwing claims and ‘expert’ witness it’s still going ahead,” Wood wrote, referring to evidence he had thrown his former girlfriend over The Gap as a person might throw a spear.
A snappy headline. And Madeleine McCann?
Mr Butler said on the eve of the verdict Wood compared himself to Robert Murat, wrongly accused of kidnapping toddler Madeline McCann in a Portuguese resort.
Robert Murat was charged with no crime. Robert Murat was tried for no crime. Robert Murat was just a suspect. Those who did him wrong and set out to get him, were not in the police and the courts but in the media.
But Our Maddie is still making news. And when Baby P’s mother and step-father are tried and named, and the story has been replaced by those of Christmas being cancelled and a man with a million fairy lights on his garden shed, Madeleine McCann will return.
BABBLE BABY (Aus): “Angelina: I Turned My Life Around When I Met Brad”
That would be the married-at-the-time Brad Pitt? And this would be living saint and professional throat kicker Angelina Jolie…
She’s in a new film:
The Christine Collin’s story is similar to modern day Madeleine McCann case. Angie said, “My heart goes out to that family. Not to know what has happened to your child is just the worst thing in the world.
“I love Brad and if anything happened to him it would wreck me, but if anything happened to my kids… it’s something I can’t even think about, it’s so upsetting.”
But if you need to cry on demand, maybe you should think about it?
BLACK VOICES (US): “Black and Still Missing - Chioma Gray”
A teenage girl is missing. She has been missing for almost a year. Chioma Gray is black. Chioma Gray is not blonde…
From September 2008 - We are now approaching the 9 month mark since the disappearance of Chioma Gray, the 16 year old high school student who was kidnapped by Andrew Tafoya from her school in Oxnard California. 9 Months have passed… 9 months… and during that time we’ve heard countless cries and pleas for Stacy Peterson, Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, Madeline McCann [sic], and now, little Caylee Anthony.
JOURNALISM: ‘What Meyer didn’t say: a speech ignoring the real shortcomings of press self-regulation’
Even now the PCC has not examined the press’ coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. As Brian Cathcart wrote last month in the New Statesman: “Not one editor and, so far as I know, not one reporter has lost his or her job or even faced formal reprimand as a result of the McCann coverage. There has been no serious inquest in the industry and no organised attempt to establish what went wrong, while no measures have been taken to prevent a repetition.”
The McCanns themselves, remember, did not even complain to the PCC about inaccuracy. They asked it for help on behalf of their children, but to address the widespread inaccuracies in the newspapers they went straight to their lawyer. Robert Murat and the so called ‘Tapas Seven’ did the same.
Madeleine McCann is missing from the press. Baby P is this month’s blonde victim…
*
Madeleine McCann - the story so far.
Mourning Sickness: Good Grief It’s Baby P
Baby P: Like Diana’s Death, I Was There
Baby P: Spot The Ashes, Protect The Mum And Kilo The Cat
Baby P: Socialist Liberal Conservatives To Blame And Sterilising The Guilty
The Columnists Do Baby P: Death, Middle Class Evil And Porn
Margaret Beckett, Baby P And Social Workers
Posted: 26th, November 2008 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Media Comments (79) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink
Comments
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November 27th, 2008 at 10:34 am
The majority of Social Workers know exactly who they are and what they do. They are hard-working men and women doing their best with their hands tied by legislation. They now spend around four days in the office doing reams of paperwork and one day out and about trying to deal with the GPB at its worst. (it uesd to be the other way around)
No-one wants to work in the inner city departments because of staff shortages which result in case-loads that are double the recommended limit but many do, and
They are regularly verbally and physically abused but still do the job.
To call them ‘fey’ and ‘in a post marxist mess’ is insulting in the extreme Karen and very naive.
November 27th, 2008 at 8:40 am
Bat E Bird
I do feel sorry for social workers in general - they are condemned if they do and condemned if they don’t. It’s the nature of the beast though - and they need to have the guts to do what they believe in (I think they’re not sure what they believe in - they’re in a post-Marxist mess - probably).
November 27th, 2008 at 5:16 am
211 pam dennis Says:
November 26th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
oh good i see you have found another child to go on and on and about !
……………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Reading your post, I gathered that you would prefer for us to abandon MM to the Land of Distant Memories? Funnily enough - you have a lot in common with the Clan and their vague recollections of a certain week in May last year.
Are you another one of those horrid scraggy slapper women who leave your kids in their beds whilst you fuck off out and have your dinner and a few bottles of plonk ”in your back garden”?
Are you one of those women that has a nice relaxing bath with a glass of champagne - whilst your i8 month old child could be falling down the stairs?
Professor PammyWammy is absolutely right when she asks if the topic of the thread was unclear to you.
You are obviously not interested in child welfare - so I suggest you fuck off and find a thread about the state of nation. Hopefully - you will recognise yourself on it.
No wonder that this planet is going to the dogs with people like you around.
It’s the don’t-care and don’t-give-a-fuck people like you who have brought this and other countries to their knees regarding child-care - And I have not begun to mention your selfishness, heartlessness and bad manners.
Fuck off! You nasty self-serving old Witch. You write as if you were unloved as a child and have never found a faithful partner. Don’t write back and say you’ve been married for twenty years! Coz if you have - I reckon your husband will have been unfaithful since the week he met you.
November 26th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Karen
Not to worry about being a novice teccie, we all had to start somewhere
November 26th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Ms. Dennis:
Was the topic of the thread unclear to you?
November 26th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
One minute the press are slagging off social workers for not doing enough to protect children but the next minute they’re condemning them for taking children into care. This is in my local rag tonight.
Blackburn mum fails in bid to stop her child being adopted
4:50pm Wednesday 26th November 2008
A LOVING mother who failed to protect her baby from brutal assaults by her partner has failed to overturn a court ruling that her child must be adopted.
The Blackburn woman, who is in her 20s, but cannot be identified for legal reasons, challenged a care order in favour of Lancashire County Council made by a judge in April this year, which nullified her parental rights and destined her daughter for adoption.
http://www.lancashiretelegraph.co.uk/news/3884919.Blackburn_mum_fails_in_bid_to_stop_her_child_being_adopted/
Even the headline sounds sympathetic to the mother. How do they know the full details about the case?
November 26th, 2008 at 7:21 pm
I was farmed out left right and centre and look what happened to me..
right anybody seen biggles
November 26th, 2008 at 7:19 pm
oh good i see you have found another child to go on and on and about !
November 26th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Pamela
I think it’s a bit of a lottery - it depends where you live and who makes the decisions in your area.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I think I’m in the spammer.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:41 pm
And about the interference issue, as horrible and nauseating as the ongoing abuse is, I am also concerned about a spate of recent child murders here which were “first events.” A local mother–a well-regarded, married, middle class professional–is charged with burning her autistic seven year-old son to death by starting a fire in his bedroom as he slept. The house was a total loss, but she and her younger son escaped unharmed.
There was no history of abuse, and she would have gotten away with the child’s murder had someone not reported his/ her suspicions, provoking a forensic investigation. I don’t know who that was, but how could you be immediately suspicious on hearing of a child’s death UNLESS you had some earlier sign that something was not right?
I don’t know about other countries, but our own foster and legal systems are such a mess, I fear people are reluctant to share their suspicions because they think the result may be exposing a child to even worse conditions or opening themselves to a lawsuit.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Pamela
I thought you could just buy one in the States?
November 26th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Here’s the ‘Milk’ gay rights story.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/22/movies/22milk.html?_r=1&8mu&emc=mua2
The Prop 8 story is huge on Facebook - I get asked to do stuff related to it all the time.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
This is about how filmmakers deal with the holocaust.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/movies/23scot.html?8mu&emc=mua2
It’s not blue though - so I guess it would be quicker to google it???
November 26th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
While I’m sure there are some great young social workers, I agree that age and experience are issues. When I was adopting, the first young woman to visit for the homestudy was a lovely girl, but absolutely clueless, babbling on and on from what she remembered of her textbooks. While I was a little put out to think that my chances at parenthood rested with this sweet, but completely unprepared child, I am horrified to think what she might have done in circumstances where she was not as welcome.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:22 pm
June
Thanks.
I’m rubbish at technical stuff.
November 26th, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Maybe the social workers can’t help it - maybe it’s a cultural thing - a confusion or a malaise?
November 26th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Karen to do links click on the url to highlight it at the top of the page you want and then hit edit, a menu drops down rightclick on copy, then go to where you want to put it, right click in the box and hit paste, and there you have it
November 26th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
June
According to my friend (the one in the policy department) - social workers are well meaning but fey - that’s why they keep an eye on them.
In Baby P’s case though the mother was questioned by police twice and the baby was taken away once - so they weren’t clueless - they just believed it was better to keep the family together & that was the wrong decision.
And in the rapist case - it would explain them believing him - but it wouldn’t explain them not noticing that the daughters were distressed esp. as they were being abused at the same time as the Rochdale and Orkney abuse scandals - when it looked like every kid in Britain was going to get snatched in a dawn raid.
It does seem to be one extreme or another - too much interference or none.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
There’s another great article (same paper - it’s what I’m reading at the moment) about the film ‘Milk’ and gay rights activists staging anti-Proposition 8 vigils outside screenings - which is also kind of on the same publicity/exploitation theme.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:36 pm
I just found this item, it does explain and answer quite a few questions about Baby P, the welfare and also that man who raped his daughters repeatedly
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/markeaston/2008/11/spotting_a_sociopath.html
November 26th, 2008 at 5:31 pm
The New York Times has a great article on holocaust movies that touches on the same problem the tabloids have with tragedies - how to keep it in the public eye without it becoming a travesty (although I don’t know if tabloid editors think of it as a problem…).
I don’t know how to do links though.
November 26th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
mod
I wasn’t arguing with her - I was asking a question about day-to-day working practise on English councils because she knows about that sort of thing & I don’t know anyone in social work outside of Scotland.
November 26th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Why read post 11?
Moderator - you may find that Cool and Calm agrees to an extent with you are saying.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Sam
It is senseless. And wrong.
I don’t know anything about England though - my friend has followed social workers around on their visits and written up reports & made recommendations and stuff like that. And they have a zero tolerance policy on domestic violence.
Coolandcalm - do they do that in England???
Moderator - I suggest you read C&C’s post number 11 again
November 26th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
or leave of senses
November 26th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
lack of basic common sense
November 26th, 2008 at 1:50 pm
it does not make sense karen, if the child was distressed and cranky all the more reason to examine him properly, especially considering the history and reason for the examination. and what do social workers then do on their visits ? drink coffee and natter or grab a flannel and wipe the child’s face clean and explain that if its face isn’t kept clean it’ll be prone to face rashes. i don’t know.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
sam
The last doctor to see him wouldn’t complete her examination of him because he was distressed and cranky. Great Ormond Street isn’t renewing her contract for obvious reasons.
November 26th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
i wondered about that, do they not pick up the child and engage with it on their visits ? how can a doctor miss such injuries ?