Monday 30 July 2007

And the Yanks are picking at the scabs!

Well, as if the Sol article, reported in both the Daily Express and the Daily Mail wasn't enough, we have the American news channel, msnbc, running a live vote!

Q: Is it acceptable that Madeleine McCann and her siblings were left alone?

91% no

8.8% yes

No, no matter how safe her parents assumed the community to be, three children that young should not be left unattended.
91%

Yes, her parents say they checked in on the kids every half hour. Critics may be coming from a different cultural perspective on child rearing.
8.8%

6651 votes cast at this time!

msnbc

Now why can't at least one of the UK news channels run a poll like that? I know these polls are not necessarily representative of general public opinion, but at least we would see if indeed there were many people out there who think the McCanns were wrong to leave the children, or if indeed, it's a, "tiny minority," as the McCanns seem to think.

If you pop on over to the forum at the Daily Mirror, you will see what happens when people take a critical look at the McCanns and their friends. The questions being asked on that forum are, in my opinion, quite reasonable. Why were the children left alone? How far was it to walk from the tapas bar to the apartment? Why was the apartment left unlocked? How did Jane Tanner manage to see, "distinguishable pyjamas," on a child being carried if it was quite dark? Who checked on the children and at what times? Who was the last person to see Madeleine in the apartment? What is the fund being spent on? What has the £67,000, reported by the Daily Mail, as having been spent, been spent on? All quite reasonable questions, I would say. However, these reasonable questions are inciting venom and foul language from a few people who cannot stand anything they see as criticism of Team McCann. One person even went as far as posting on the forum the most vile pornographic images I have ever seen, in an attempt to disrupt discussion.

Wassup Docs?

Well, it looks as though a long period of restraint by the UK media is coming to an end. The Sol article, published on June 30th and little known outside of Portugal, apart from the millions reading it on the internet, has at last been given some attention in the UK press. That was the Sol article claiming that the McCanns and their holiday group, hereinafter referred to as the, "Tapas 9," had agreed a, "Pact of silence," over what happened on the evening of May 3rd when Madeleine McCann disappeared from her bed. (See previous post for translation.)

Now we have fresh claims from Sol, that Robert Murat was asked by the Portuguese police if he had met Doctor Russel O'Brien, one of the Tapas 9 in Exeter before the McCanns' holiday at the Ocean Club.

"The Sol report said Murat, 33, has been asked by detectives if he knew one member of the group – hospital consultant Russell O’Brien, 36.
It claimed police spoke to Dr O’Brien after it was discovered the pair were both in Exeter days before Madeleine was kidnapped. Murat spent 10 days in there, arriving back in the Algarve on May 1 – 48 hours before Madeleine was snatched. Dr O’Brien and his partner Jane Tanner, also 36, moved to a rented home in the city four weeks earlier."

Daily Express Monday July 30th