Was it sore? Dont see why you would. This incident has always had varied loudly voiced views.
Madeleine McCann
- Thread starter Fergies Gum
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik @Rood and Imran @Annihilate Now! start with the good news by celebrating Manchester United Women's emphatic FA Cup win over Spurs at Wembley and the future of manager Marc Skinner.
Then it's the bad news and the ever worsening form of our Men with losses to Arsenal and Palace.
Finally the main debate - ETH Out now or keep him until the end of the season - if not longer. Are you Team Nik or Team Imran?
I can't believe anyone still believes them tbh. unfortunately they come across as so cold that i sometimes wonder if that was why so many werent taken in by them
That's fair, but I'd point out that my assumptions are no different than the assumptions that many people make about this case, their guilt, their thought process at the time, and how they'd react in a similar situation. There's also an element with this where people just want the parents to be guilty, they need to put the blame for this on someone, someone has to suffer for this, and so if even the slightest thing gets mentioned that might possibly reduce the amount of blame the parents take then they automatically default to disagreement because they refuse to accept or concede anything that might alter the outrage they have aimed towards the parents. That's an equal bias that stands in the way of objective discussion.
I agree with you that people are going to react strongly because it's a child's welfare (and rightly so), but wouldn't you agree that that's bias in itself and that's not an excuse for their behaviour - if anything it's an indication that said person needs to understand, accept and remove that (perfectly understandable) bias before an objective discussion can be had?
I'm also not giving the parents the benefit of the doubt here either, they suffer every day for what they did - I'm simply saying there are many situations where parents leave children unattended or out of sight. That's completely the truth. Some of those situations which happen every day and are considered normal are inherently less risky than leaving a child locked away somewhere out of sight/reach. If you leave your child out in your front garden playing out of sight where I can reach over the fence and snatch her, that's more dangerous than if you left her locked in your house and I had to break in to get to her yet that's a common every day occurrence and nobody is calling for parents to be sent to jail for that. The difference is like I said, people don't generally go around snatching children so it's not an issue that ever really has a discussion. People still leave children in their cars while they go into a shop for a few minutes. When you see adverts telling you not to do that, it's because of leaving them in heat not because of any danger of strangers taking them. It's easier to snatch a child in public than it is to break into a house and kidnap them. People literally walk up to children in shopping malls, take them by the hand and lead them off. It happened recently where two kids just walked up to a child in Primark and took her away whilst the mother was looking at clothes on a rack.
My mother has left me in the house alone while she's nipped out for a brief period once or twice when I was younger, and that's happened with many people that I know over their lives and many people that have concurred in this exact discussion about Maddie online that the same thing happening with them over their lives and that simply does not inherently make someone a bad parent and to suggest it does would be ludicrous that the sum of your average parents 16 or so years of parenting could be nullified, meaningless and redefined by one (the vast majority of the time) inconsequential action/mistake that in this case regrettably turned out differently. But because a childs welfare is at stake, the response is biased.
The only difference I can think of (unless you can point out where I'm wrong, which I'd be happy to concede if so) between leaving your child at home alone while you're sat a short distance away out of sight and leaving your child in the garden alone whilst you're inside the house doing chores out of sight is that leaving them at home alone behind a locked door is safer. In both examples you can't see your child, but one is locked away and the other one is out in the open. Yet there's no outrage at kids playing alone without their parents present. I can only put that down to either hypocrisy or selective outrage. I can guarantee that if a child was snatched out of a front garden whilst a parent was inside you'd see the same posts 'what kind of parent does this, what kind of parent would let their kid play in the open without keeping an eye on them' 'where were the parents, I'd never do that' even though you see it everywhere. It's 20/20 internet hindsight that you see every time 'I'd never let my kids do that' when in actual fact parents let their kids do all kinds of similar things. Sure, very few parents leave their kids alone in the house while they go eat at a restaurant at night a short distance away on holiday in Portugal, but parents do leave their kids unattended in various different kinds of situations without thinking twice and the same inherent dangers exist that are just as bad. It's only when a tragedy happens that the action is made out to be so important that noone would ever do it.
EDIT: Sorry for the post length, I really lack the ability to say what I'm trying to say in few words.
Good response, mate. The necessary brevity of forum posts means we can't always explain our views fully (at least intially). 
Yes it was pretty unpleasant tbh.
People keep saying that if they weren't doctors this wouldn't have gone on so long. Since when are doctors so special in that regard? Does that really fly or is it just working class being mad at people slightly better off than them?
Totally different, but the country got behind Rhys Jones too. Imo, it's media spotlight, not the class they are. But then Penna already gave an example of a case that's gone on a very long time that hasn't had the media attention.
I could be wrong, but I don't think there will be people saying 'these folks are well spoken and a good job, we should keep this going'.
Totally different, but the country got behind Rhys Jones too. Imo, it's media spotlight, not the class they are. But then Penna already gave an example of a case that's gone on a very long time that hasn't had the media attention.
I could be wrong, but I don't think there will be people saying 'these folks are well spoken and a good job, we should keep this going'.
They are scousers, they are never well spoken
They are scousers, they are never well spoken
I can't actually remember what they sound like tbfIt's very different. Let's take your examples for instance. A mother lets her children play in the garden while she does chores inside. She's what, 10 yards away? She can likely see them out the window and will always have an idea of their whereabouts, if not she will be checking on them fairly regularly.
In the case of the McCanns, they left them alone in that apartment for the duration of the evening, with no intention of checking on them, at least not with the regularity of the parent in the first example. In the first example they at least have some grasp of their kids and feel confident that they're playing within the boundaries of their own property. The McCanns did none of this. They left their very young children sleeping in the house and went out for a number of hours. That's a whole different thing to even just leaving them in the car while you buy a paper, which I also don't know anyone who does.
Surely you have to accept that first of all just because you don't know anyone who does doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. The number of yards whether it's 10 or 50 is irrelevant when the simple fact is the child is out of sight at any given time therefore the danger exists regardless. Children have been snatched from 5 yards away from parents in public with hundreds of witnesses around, the proximity to the parent has no bearing on the child's safety if the child is out of sight. It's completely irrelevant. The child can still be snatched when out of sight, and not only that they can be snatched much easier than having to break into a secured location.
I'm not sure why you've said they had no intention to check on them, as far as I knew they checked on them multiple times during the night. We can have a whole separate discussion about what frequency a rational person would class as okay when it comes to checking on your kid, but why would you have that discussion if simply leaving them to begin with deserves a jail sentence - in that case checking on them in whatever frequency would become irrelevant.
They're Scottish.
It probably does. But you claimed it was so common that you knew loads of people at it, implying that it's widespread. I don't think this is the case.
As for your second point, the distance makes a difference on some level. I'd feel safer if my kids were 5 yards away than 55, even if they're out of my sight. The difference we're talking in these two scenarios is the difference between a glance out the window, and waiting 4 hours, paying the cheque and walking the hundred metres back to the apartment. There's an ocean of difference between the two. It's not irrelevant as you suggest, in the former you'd notice them missing a lot quicker than if you left them unattended all evening. The hypothetical mother has every opportunity to check in on them. The first chance the McCanns had to notice was just before midnight when they got back.
As for the second bolded part, I'm genuinely shocked to learn that it apparently isn't an offence as it is. I thought maybe the Portuguese did things differently or whatever, but I've somehow got to the age of 23 believing that deliberately leaving your young kids unattended and without a chaperone was illegal, on some level anyway.
Using that, you should have your children chained to you at all times!
A very recent case in Spain. The parents were having a drink near the local train station with friends and their 4-year-old child, very late by some standards- say 11pm - the child wandered off down the tracks, a full 4 kilometres, and was killed by a passing train. Tragic. It's difficult to believe a child of that age could "wander" so far alone, disorientated and in the dark but that's the police's present hypothesis. It's not unusual to see frantic parents running along the beach looking for a kid.
I agree that this is down to momentary lapses, negligence or confidence in the safety of a situation. In the hotel, I believe they had a kind of nanny service.
One thing though, I wouldn't like to have their dreams.
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So not really that far away then
I'm fairly certain they're both Scottish but maybe have resided in England a long time and lost a bit of their accent.
No, the opposite. You should accept the fact that humans do occasionally leave their kids unattended and that doesn't make them the devil. The fact that something happens after that, does not alter the severity of what they originally did. The action they took remains the same. It doesn't alter the seriousness of them leaving the child unattended. The risks, potential dangers were always there whether an eventuality happened or not. The tragedy here is what happened to Maddie, and that the person who actually broke the law and broke into a locked building and kidnapped a child is brought to justice (if that's what even happened, obviously there are multiple theories).
Me, my brother and most of my childhood friends grew up with a lot of "freedom".
As kids we could run around in our little village and meet up with friends. Could do that since my earliest childhood memories when I hadn't even gotten into kindergarten yet. Did it worry some parents? Yes. Was there still loads who didn't mind? Yes.
It's not uncommon at all.
You have to admit that there is a difference between leaving the kids playing in the garden, when you can hear them laughing and shouting and being in a restaurant 50m away?
Yeah but Norway is Norway. Over here there's a paedo hiding behind every tree, the Mail told me.
The thing is every reacts differently. We have people who think all the Sandy Hook parents are actors because they are not reacting in the way "they should" to the that tragedy.
Used to go off on bikes all day in the summer holidays.
Firstly that 50m really depends on whether you're cherry picking the distance or not which seems to be wildly different from source to source. Of course I'll admit there's a difference, but I'm not going to sit here and say that the relatively small difference between the two tips the scale from 'good parenting' to 'worst parent in the world who should go to jail'. That's the difference here. I'm not saying that what the McCanns did is okay, if I've somehow come across as saying that then I apologise. What I'm trying to say is that many parents do similar things, and there's a massive massive disparity between the level of condemnation for the McCanns for their action like they're the worst parents ever to have lived and the level of acceptance with the attitude of 'that's decent parenting' for other times when kids are left unattended when the distance between the two examples isn't that great.
Whilst I get the overall point, and I'm not claiming I have any idea on what punishment if any should be involved, there's no way I'd ever leave a 3 year old by themselves anywhere. Especially not whilst I went out for dinner, no matter how much I claim I'd check on them.
It just shouldn't be done.
It just shouldn't be done.
McCann also said she was specifically advised by behavioural experts not to show emotion due to the effect it could have on an abducter, an approach people in similar sitautions have been advised to take in the past.
I chose 50m (should be 50yds) because it was the shorter of the 2 distances, in order not to inflate the distance.
It is funny though, because, we used to do all sorts of stuff out of sight, especially in the summer holidays, disappearing for hours on end often without my parents having any idea where we were. Even so, if my parents were going out in the evening, it was not until my older brother was 15 or 16 that they would go out without leaving us with a baby sitter. That was a dark day tbf, because the baby sitter was quite hot.
There is something completely different about the mccann situation to that of leaving kids playing in the garden.
It was a holiday home, one that the parents had no real idea who had access too. Every rented place has more than one key, they were off drinking and having a laugh, while the kids were alone in a strange apartment in a drug induced sleep.
Also note, the first thing the mccann's did when they got the madeline fund money was pay off their own mortgage.
It was a holiday home, one that the parents had no real idea who had access too. Every rented place has more than one key, they were off drinking and having a laugh, while the kids were alone in a strange apartment in a drug induced sleep.
Also note, the first thing the mccann's did when they got the madeline fund money was pay off their own mortgage.
Are we absolutely certain it happened or is this another story that is being told to feed the conspiracy theory without being checked?
For the record, I think it is possible that they were responsible for Madeleine being hurt and used the whole story to cover up but the publicity it is getting makes it hard for me to believe that it was them. The most suspicious part for me is mother shouting that she had been kidnapped moments after realizing she wasn't in her room when I am pretty sure the most natural reaction would have been to think that she had wandered off herself (the door was unlocked and she was almost 4 so fully capable of walking out herself, for example to look for her parents). What was it that made them convinced it was a kidnapping so quickly?
I don't think they would have had the time or opportunity to dispose of the body, if she was killed under their superivsion, though. They were under constant observation for the next months or even years after the disappearance and would have had zero room for this.
Let's be honest it's got nothing to do with 'rich parents' and everything to do with coppers having a jolly out in Portugal
But times back then were great growing up. After the age of maybe 7 or 8 me and all my mates roamed alone over a 1 mile radius, going down the woods. Modern cautious parents wouldn't allow it and the little uns will get the run around of 5 square meters.
Maybe the McCann's should of took less risks with their child, but they paid the ultimate sacrifice. If you aren't looking over your kid 24/7 your always risking them with some potential hazard.
I wouldn't either with my kids but what era did you grow up in? In the 80s when I grew up loads of parents did similar. My mum would leave me outside in the pram when she went into the shops. Before pubs had kids rooms, loads of kids were left out in cars while the parents had a few. My sister and I were older than Madeleine but we were left in the car when the parents went into a restaurant with friends. I remember a comedian talking about this phenomenon, saying 'you were grateful they came out with a pack of crisps before drinking and driving you home'.
But times back then were great growing up. After the age of maybe 7 or 8 me and all my mates roamed alone over a 1 mile radius, going down the woods. Modern cautious parents wouldn't allow it and the little uns will get the run around of 5 square meters.
Maybe the McCann's should of took less risks with their child, but they paid the ultimate sacrifice. If you aren't looking over your kid 24/7 your always risking them with some potential hazard.
Scot-free?
The theory is Maddie was drugged to sleep and there was an overdose in the days prior to the alleged kidnap and that they had dispossed of her body prior to that and the kidnap itself was then staged.
I was born in '93 so definitely grew up in a more sheltered time. I am aware though that people had a much more laid back attitude in decades previous, such as people leaving their doors unlocked, kids playing out on the road etc, but this was 2007. We're not talking about 1987, or particularly old parents. Even in 2007 I remember the fact they had left them alone was shocking to most people. You had one or two older people going "that's nothing. In my day I was left alone at 6 months and expected to have the spuds peeled when they got back!" but they were in the minority iirc.
Well, there were what, 6 people with them? I think there were even pictures of Madeleine from exactly the same day she disappeared.
I would never leave the kid alone but in their defense...
1) I read it was common practice and parents could leave a note on the door to let staff check on the kids.
2) the odds of your kid being snatched is like one in 610,000 or something. Your more likely to die in a plane crash.
If they never did it then yes they were wrong to leave her but they just made a mistake. One they don't deserve to be battered about. If she fell over and died in the hotel room then I could see why they would get castigated.
Logically it seems to be a planned kidnapping. They probably took her into a boat and out of there.
All other scenarios would rely on so much luck and coincidence as not to be feasible.
But saying all that my gut says they killed her and dumped her in a big trash bin that the incompetent cops missed. This last one has nothing behind it but a gut feeling....the parents just seem wrong the way they act somehow.
1) I read it was common practice and parents could leave a note on the door to let staff check on the kids.
2) the odds of your kid being snatched is like one in 610,000 or something. Your more likely to die in a plane crash.
If they never did it then yes they were wrong to leave her but they just made a mistake. One they don't deserve to be battered about. If she fell over and died in the hotel room then I could see why they would get castigated.
Logically it seems to be a planned kidnapping. They probably took her into a boat and out of there.
All other scenarios would rely on so much luck and coincidence as not to be feasible.
But saying all that my gut says they killed her and dumped her in a big trash bin that the incompetent cops missed. This last one has nothing behind it but a gut feeling....the parents just seem wrong the way they act somehow.
If you can't be arsed to put up with your children while on holiday then palm them off with one of the in-laws.
This happened in 2007, not 1987. Leaving toddlers alone, at night, in a foreign country, so that you could go out for a meal and a few beers was definitely not commonplace back then.
This happened in 2007, not 1987. Leaving toddlers alone, at night, in a foreign country, so that you could go out for a meal and a few beers was definitely not commonplace back then.
Yeah, don't take them at all. They are more likely to die on the way over there anyway, apparently...
Parents are guilty as sin imo.
Although Michael Gove has done the same recently, where he left his 11yo son alone in a B&B for 6 hours when he went to a party and he isn't far off from being our PM. I reckon more people probably still do it than let on.
Yes, I suppose it's whether that could be retrospectively faked, ie changing the camera date or whatever.