It is a horrible situation and as yet we cannot know – we can all form opinions about what we think of the couple from how they have presented themselves as they have chosen to be in front of camera – but that is very subjective.

As for evidence and how can DNA get in the boot – well we do not really know yet what was found and there may be much more to come.

How many parents have not left their children sleeping and had supper in an hotel complex – indeed, I myself have been guilty of this with our eldest son and have to say I had no fear of him being abducted or wandering off – no – it was waking up and screaming the place down, which was why we checked on him every 10 mins which made a mockery of our “couple time” as by the time we had walked to the room to check and come back there was NO couple time and we did not do that again but were we just lucky that no-one abducted him, or on a lighter note did the crying put them off??
I do not mean to be flippant as it breaks my heart when I think of that poor little girl whether she is alive or dead and what actually happened to her

I’m not sure whether to be flattered or outraged to be accused of political correctness on this blog

I do apologise, I was having an off-day. I should know better than to reduce a set of complex political and social considerations to a bogey-man cliché.

Robert, I know what meta means, I’m also aware that they visited the pope. Agree that the narrative doesn’t fit a conventional news agenda. It’s most analogous to the disappearance of that guy in the Australian outback (I can’t remember his name a couple of years back) and the suspicion that initially fell on his girlfriend, combined with the some aspects of the holly and jessica case, but I think part of the reason it’s dominated the news agenda is because it doesn’t really fit any established template and therefore can’t easily be pigeon holed and filed away ?

This particular drama was played out against a backdrop of summer among the acrchetypal meditteranean UK expat/tourist community and what interests me is the way it has caused “brits abroad” to be perceived in Portugal – which would they prefer now, the McCanns and their ilk, or our football fans ?
I found it particularly bizzare that the Portugese Police were criticised for being insufficiently competent/experienced in this type of crime and for not being media compliant, when in reality this means they are unused to dealing with serious crimes against children, and are unwiling to bend their legal system to comply with the 24 hr “crime porn” reporting style which we sem to have imported from the US, both of which are good things in my view.
Whether you belive that the media reflects or drives public opinion will influence your view of what the “man on the streets” opinion of the case really is. Whatever you believe and whatever has really happened I think it needs to be remembered that there is a real human tradgedy behind the wall of speculation, and a great deal of human suffering.

On a lighter note -I’m not sure whether to be flattered or outraged to be accused of political correctness on this blog !

Exactly! So we are not in a position to form a proper opinion. So we shouldn’t go around shouting “guilty”, when we know perfectly well we’re not in a position to judge.

without being personally involved in the case, I, like everyone else, on practically every issue, am forced to rely on the media for the raw material from which opinions are formed.

If you acknowledge this fact, MM, then perhaps you ought to be a little more circumspect. If you know your opinion is founded on incomplete or unreliable evidence, then doesn’t that give you pause for thought? When one is, by one’s own admission, not in full possession of the facts, one is not actually in a position to form an opinion on anything other than the reporting itself.

And that, I believe, is the only sane/rational position to take. Anything else is dangerous hearsay, and that’s no way to run a country, or a legal system.

compare the way the McCann case has been covered with the “dope smoking pill popping vodka drinking benefit claiming chav grandmother”

Indeed, and she was accquitted.

More seriously I would ask why there is so much incredulity about the possibility that the parents are guilty. I think there is something horribly snobbish about public and media attitudes to this case. Because the Mc Canns are attractive, articulate, affluent, media friendly and middle class they are seen by the UK press and the Islington mafia as victims of conspiracy or incomepence from a provincial foreign police force

Here, Matt, I think you’re missing a trick. It may be that some people in the media are incredulous for the reasons you describe, but I see no evidence of a similar attitude within the public at large. Have there been opinion polls on this that I’ve missed? Rather, in all the conversations I have had, I have heard people express doubt in the McGanns precisely because they are very astute in front of the camera. If anything, I would say that people think that the McGann’s polished efficiency works against them. There is a feeling that Kate should be wailing more, breaking down a bit more.

That is, however, just my own personal reading, based on conversations I have had. The attitudes might be very different elsewhere.

However, I have to say that your “attractive, articulate, affluent” has a whiff of cliché about it… and a Guardian cliché to boot. It is exactly what the first wave of “meta” commentary said (i.e. reporting on the reporting). The McGann’s class might be a factor in their own ability to drive the media on this story, but to accuse everyone else of class prejudice sounds very politically correct to me.

The reality is, that this case is so extraordinary, both in the details of the abduction, and the media frenzy that followed (they met the Pope) that it doesn’t fit into any conventional narratve in a way that the gang crimes in London and (most recently) Liverpool would do. This makes it a far more attractive story to opine upon in the newspapers, and discuss down the pub. Psychology, society, xenophobia, paedophiles, the EU, the media, class, the detective story, legal systems, even feminism are all appproached that can be crowbarred into this story. And if the McGann’s did have something to do with the death it would be even more extraordinary, not least because of the sheer size and duration of the charade.

It would be more defensible, MM, to have a go at media reports which prejudge and prejudice the cases of non-middle-class people than to complain when the media are finally showing some little constraint and regard for the rule of law.

By Chav Justice, I mean when members of the public jump to a conclusion based on what they have or haven’t read in the media, without (seemingly) being sufficiently capable of logical thought to a) consider alternative explanations for the “known” facts, b) question anything they read in the newspaper, c) consider the source of what they read in the newspaper and d) to see the dangers of jumping to conclusions when one is not in full possession of the facts.

What hope is there for democracy, when people amongst the electorate are willing to jump to such rash, prejudiced and ill-informed conclusions like this? People who are incapable of rational thought shouldn’t be allowed to vote, that’s what I say.