Save the children - From their parents?

Burnt child

First in Austria, one cannot begin to imagine that Josef Fritzl probably conducted a few abortions on his daughter before he decided the products of their incestuous liaisons should come to term as children.

It is sickening that on the death of one of the children, rather than dignify the child with either a proper burial or a cremation, he dumped the child in an incinerator and that was the end of the matter.

Stabbed children

And so in Scotland we read of the discovery of two dead boys in a car near a beauty spot just north of Glasgow. It transpired that the boys aged 2 and 6 were stabbed, apparently by their father estranged from their mother and seemingly had not been successful in killing himself.

It really beggars belief that a relationship which at one time was the joy of all involved that it lead to the birth of those beautiful people could have soured so much as to damage all involved to this extent.

A lot must be to blame for this event, the father, the mother and their inability to keep the relationship going for whatever reasons and the system that accords rights of custody and visitation with scant regard for the emotional strain it can place on parties involved.

The children who were supposed to be at the centre of the matter of care and concern who supposedly would have received the best result of a separation have now become the unfortunate victims of a situation I naively cannot properly understand.

Frozen babies

Then in Germany, a teenage son goes down into the cellar to see if he can find a pizza in the freezer and ends up finding 3 bodies of babies in the freezer that could date back 20 years.

You begin to wonder if those were his brothers and why he decided a pizza would be in that freezer of all the other freezers that might have been on that house from which he might have retrieved a pizza before. The tale reveals all.

His mother seems to be the culprit, this is all looking insane.

Neglected children

Portugal must have had its share of being the place not to take your children on holiday after the disappearance of Madeleine McCann just over a year ago.

But I could not believe my ears when I read that a couple – parents with young children age 1, 2 and 6 – had drunk themselves to a holiday stupor that they collapsed with the result of their children being put into care for a night.

If we have to save the children from their parents, what safety do children have in this world? I do wonder.

This Madeleine McCann thing

Disarray and confusion

I am sickened to the bone as the pendulum of events in Portimao, Portugal swings violently like that of a clock amidst the stormiest seas, if I was on a boat, I would be retching with vomit, my intestines gelatinised and ready to be expectorated.

No fervent prayer has been so silently uttered as the one that desires that the turn of events be a complete farce rather than reality.

Now, I really do not know what to think whilst I want to keep faith that Madeleine McCann was abducted on the 3^rd of May whilst her parents were out eating though checking on the kids every 30 or so minutes.

Evidently, everyone who has been touched by the little girl’s disappearance would want this case resolved, we need some sort of closure and conclusion as to what really happened and what would eventually happen.

Fearful parental conspiracy

I am still beside myself in confusion as to how the parents as accused by the Portuguese police could have accidentally killed their daughter, hid her body, gone on this extraneous cover-up charade then 25 days later taken the body in a hired car to dispose of somewhere in Portugal.

The accidental death must have been too grotesque to countenance if they have had to go through such an elaborate worldwide campaign including an audience with the Pope surreptitiously for absolution.

If there be any truth, even one iota, my faith in humanity and humankind would be seriously compromised and we would have moved up another notch in the cynicism that would make us even more inured to occurrences as this.

There are competing interests in this matter, the parents either sincerely want to find Madeleine if she indeed was abducted or they are a conniving, criminal, devious couple trying to conceal a gross misdeed, we need a Poirot, Colombo and Miss Marple to fish out the clues ever so desperately.

A police policed

The police are under the most intense scrutiny from a global audience who want to know what has been done to resolve this case conclusively. Each country like Portugal have their ways of crime resolution which works well within the confines of the country, but when exposed to external review some methods and processes would have to be adapted accordingly, the Portuguese lawmakers should be thinking up a few reforms.

One cannot say that the Portuguese police have acquitted themselves with any distinction on this case, the handling of the crime scene, the chain of custody of evidence, the management of information and the silence that feeds more speculation sometimes makes it appear they have lost the plot from the onset.

Their reputation is at stake if they have any left and every redeeming measure is at play to close this case including the plea-bargain they offered to Kate McCann to confess to killing her daughter accidentally and receive 2 years incarceration.

This would evidently put the case away though the matter of where the body was disposed of would be the next issue. It would be the height of sacrilegious irresponsibility for the parents to have killed their child and then bury the body in some non-descript foreign place, I cannot join the dots on this matter yet.

The parents however might vicariously offer themselves to any sanction for leaving their children unsupervised, but if Madeleine was abducted, they cannot yield to this convenient sacrifice.

Convenient in that the police have to do nothing more but the parents would have snuffed out any hope of seeing Madeleine again, if she is still alive.

Bad news resorts

Then the resorts in Portugal that offer family-friendly holidays have a stigma that has tourists thinking twice about taking their families there is an abductor is on the prowl. This event is seriously bad news and bad business such that everything would be done to make it go away.

No holiday resort, country or people would like to be tarred with the sobriquet of Kid-napper country and so the boos and jeers when they arrived at the police station because the wrong kind of spotlight on their region is definitely going to affected livelihoods adversely, resorts want publicity that highlights safety, security and comfort, this event does the complete opposite.

Wherefore?

Was Madeleine abducted and by whom?

Was Madeleine killed by her parents?

Is Madeleine still alive if she was abducted?

Do the police have any clues at all?

Questions are many and answers are few.

The World Cup now bores me

No goals for this year anymore

And so the level of concentration regarding World Cup 2006 moves into the realm of disinterest and detachment as the one one main purpose of engagement falls by the wayside. 1966 would remain our greatest moment in football till 2010.

I would suggest that England did acquit themselves well seeing that being reduced to 10 men did not leave us too vulnerable to the Portuguese attack machinery. However, Rooney's red card leaves me wondering how he would have stepped out of that melee without giving the poor guy's crown jewels a bit of a foot massage.

It also brings to mind David Beckham's red card against Argentina in France when being felled he gave an ankle kick to an Argentine, and the absence of the play-maker lost us the match. We need both talent and cool heads in football, that should be a lecture given by Gary Lineker - a man never booked and winner of fair play awards.

Probably the wrong referee selection

I would not question the integrity or vigilance of the referee but I do have my issues with the choice of referee and I think this was wrong.

Much as it is almost a generation since England went to war with Argentina and we have re-established diplomatic ties with the same country, it would be naive to think all is forgotten and forgiven such that no one involved in the World Cup can be compromised.

Add to that the fact that the referee's home country had only been knocked out the day before amidst the hopes and expectations of many - you suddenly have the makings of something that could go awry, I'm only human, so is the referee, you really cannot divorce history for the context of today's events. It did not pass my notice that the dives and gymnastics of the Portuguese went unsanctioned.

Well, the verdict would be left open on that matter.

In the end, I must commend the Portuguese keeper who combined reflex and agility to save a few penalty kicks and intimidated Jamie Garragher well enough that he kicked the ball straight into the keeper's hands.

It is a shame that England have not mastered the game of penalty kicks and we have always fallen at this stage and twice now to Portugal, simply, if our game is not going to improve we need to apply technique and psychology to this problem which will haunt us every championship games we attend.

South Africa is the next call

Now, as I have been jubilant with England's success, I have to find ways of disengaging and detaching myself from the negative pall of defeat as we look forward to 2010 when I hope that both England and Nigeria would be available to display legendary talent.

Meanwhile, as France plays Brazil, let us hope 2006 would be a year of European football in the expectation that all South American influence and football hubris can be put paid to today.

Now, in need of a medium rare steak and Paris is the place to get a decent one.