the McCann enquiry

[David Johnson]

First I should say I have every sympathy for the McCanns and their loss. I am not one of those who suspects the McCanns of being responsible for the death of their child.

However the last few days have seen a worrying development.

1. The Rupert Murdoch empire ferociously supported Cameron in the last election and has done so ever since.
2. The Sun, part of that empire, serialises the McCanns book last week and has a number of interviews with the McCanns on Sky during the same period. Wall to wall coverage of the case.
3. Four years after the abduction of Madeleine and a year after getting elected, Cameron gets Scotland Yard to hold a review of the case in a foreign country, Portugal, which is likely to take months if not years and cost millions.

And I thought there wasn't supposed to be government interference in the operational activity of the police force in this country i.e. investigate this, don't investigate that. The police are supposed to be independent in this country.

Is this not an example of a government instructing the police to investigate one abduction as opposed to another e.g. the disappearance of a British toddler, Ben Needham in Greece 23 years ago, purely on the background of Murdoch empire pressure?

Cheers
D

[wayne]

This is a sickening scene to behold, the Mcganns story was bad enough already with the disparity of reaction to it unlike previous situations like it before.

Helps i suppose being very nice and middle class as opposed to being from those lower classes after all a family leaving their "beloved" children to go to a bistro is ok as going to the local Mcdonalds/chippie

Nice to know there always millions of pounds and police around when PR needs it.

[max_tranmere]

Hi David, I agree with what you say, but this is not unique. Government's have often instructed the Police to do this or that, and have done so for their own political ends. The Police force back in the 1980s was more or less Margaret Thatcher's private army when she used them against the miners.

[pornoshop]

and she was right to do so

[David Johnson]

Hi Max,

I agree that this is not unique i.e. political pressure on the police to act a particular way.

However, this is the first time I can recall, an individual newspaper, by itself, demanding the government carry out a police enquiry and the government caving in for public relations and continuing media support reasons.

Cheers
D

[David Johnson]

Before blithely agreeing with Max's statement that Thatcher used the police as a private army to break the miners' strike, maybe you should ask yourself

Are workers, in general, better off now than they were in the 1980's as a result of Thatcher's actions and union legislation?

Britain is now the land of casual, very low paid i.e. little more than starvation wages, non-unionised, part-time i.e. limited rights work.

Can this be viewed as an achievement for the majority of people in the UK in this position?

No it isn't and it is to the shame of the Labour party that they did not do more to rollback the Thatcherite clock.

Cheers
D

[number 6]

Agree with Wayne,can you imagine the outcry if this was a tattooed bloke and his chav wife going out on the piss on a saturday night and leaving their young kids at home watching dvds. The murdoch press would slaughter them. Yet when its a cost middle class white family then of course they are wonderful parents who would never neglect their kids. The truth is the McCanns left their kids on their own and they are partly to blame.

[andy at handiwork]

I think it is highly likely that the police have been told by the government to be as harsh as possible against the rising level of protest against cuts, to dissuade people from actively opposing them.

[max_tranmere]

It was said that Mr Murdoch had private meetings with Maggie at no.10 and asked her to provide vast numbers of Police to try and crush the print unions during their siege of News International at Wapping in (I think) 1986. She agreed, and there was something similar to the 'war' that took place between the Police and the miners. I remember Andrew Neil, who now presents This Week on Thursday nights on BBC1 (who was then editor of the Sunday Times, and one of Murdoch's senior people) saying years later "we were trapped in the building for several days - it was lierally a siege". He and others apparently slept there, they were trapped inside. Maggie agreed to Rupert's request for vast numbers of officers, and the siege was broken.