Why Madeleine McCann?

When the original news broke in 2007 about the disappearance from a holiday apartment in Portugal of a three year old, it wasn't a particularly unusual story.

I mean that in respect of the disturbing and unacceptable fact that children go missing all the time.  Thousands of them disappear every year never to be seen again.  I can't begin to imagine the agony this leaves behind.  There can be nothing worse than the 'not knowing'.

And in writing this, I am not trying to take away that pain or to be demeaning.

But, what has always puzzled me is the complete control of the media the case of Madeleine McCann has always had.  That is not to say it shouldn't, but more to ask why the tens of thousands of parents facing the knotted stomachs and anguish as the weeks, months and then years pass since their child went missing, aren't given the same kind of coverage.

The initial investigation went through many odd twists and turns.  Lots of the statements, lots of the supposed evidence, and, well, just lots of things, didn't add up.

We, the people sitting in our armchairs watching it all, just didn't like the McCanns for leaving tiny children unattended in an apartment whilst they were out getting drunk and partying.  When the McCann's were arrested and treated as suspects, especially the mother, I was convinced the truth was now out.  Yep, the parents had killed the child and the case was solved. Next story please.

The lack of a body and the lack of any relevant evidence meant this was not the answer, despite the number of websites spouting the contradictory 'evidence' for this particular conspiracy theory.

As always, after a while - although in the McCann case it was an extremely long while - the story finally left the front pages of British newspapers.

Every now and again it pops its head up, especially on Madeleine's birthday or the anniversary of her disappearance.

It's just done that yet again with the press full of the story that Scotland Yard has identified some 'persons of interest' that need interviewing.  Or, maybe they were originally interviewed, they aren't so sure, but they need interviewing again.

How many other grieving parents wish they had such media attention to keep their case in the public eye?  All of them.  For nearly all of them, the national press or TV coverage of even the initial disappearance doesn't appear.  Their cases don't make headlines.  Then a handful, especially where it's possible that others might go missing, make it to the local news for a while.

Depending on other factors, including a 'slow news day' only a tiny few make it into our eyeline via national headlines.

And virtually nobody gets mentioned again once the story is 'old' unless there's a body found, or somebody arrested.

Parents and friends will try desperately to keep the public interested, spending a fortune in time and money printing and distributing leaflets and posters.  Tirelessly they will continue their search, but this usually doesn't generate any media interest, not even at a local level.

In complete contrast, something bizarre happened in the case of Madeleine McCann.

Stop me if I'm wrong, but how many other parents of missing children still have, even six years later, the services of a 'spokesman'?  In theatrical terms this is a bit like having an 'agent', through whom all enquiries have to be made.  For anybody else who has a missing child, they are their own 'spokesman', grabbing any opportunity they can.  They will gladly do the interviews, answer questions or get involved in publicity for the search for their missing child, should the media ever bother to contact them.  Meanwhile the McCanns have a 'spokesman' to deal with all that so they don't have to.

Doesn't that seem a little strange?

The other strangeness of the power of the McCanns compared to any other parents with missing children is the people they had access to.  From the then Pope, with whom they got a fast-tracked audience within weeks of Madeleine's disappearance, through to the then Prime Minister Tony Blair.  Heck, maybe it's a Catholic thing, since all parties are devoted to that particular religion, but surely there are hundreds of other Catholic parents who would have wanted the luxury of such access?

The power the McCanns have seems to be out of proportion to who they are.  They are just a couple of middle class doctors, reasonably well off, but not with any particular heritage or connection to the upper echelons of the chattering and controlling classes.

Well, they were.  Now, it seems, they are right in with them.  They even have the power to bend the ear of the current Prime Minister David Cameron such that he went on to ask/command that Scotland Yard start 'Operation Grange' dedicated to re-visiting the case.

In contrast of course, to put this in context, when the 96 families of those football fans killed in the Hillsborough Disaster, kept asking Cameron and predecessors to re-visit the case, their pleas fell on deaf ears.

It seems the parents of a little girl disappearing hold far greater power than a group of 96 families when it comes to calling for justice.  Likewise for any letters than may have arrived at Downing Street concerning any of the tens of thousands of other missing children.  Nothing happens.

Don't get me wrong, I too wish for a satisfactory answer to the mystery of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.  Equally, I wish for a satisfactory answer to the mystery of the disappearance of all the children whose parents don't have the luxury of spokesmen, easy access to the media, the Pope, or the Prime Minister.

But mainly, I'm asking why doesn't anybody else have this level of access to government, media, and the leader of their religion?  Why just the McCanns?

The power of prayer

The EF5 category tornado in Oklahoma was frightening. People were killed.  People were hurt. Possessions were gone.

It was an extremely scary event, and when people are scared whilst facing something over which they have no control they turn to 'magic'.

Watching the social networks and the reactions to the tornado, once again facts and details were surrounded by the noise of 'OMG's and ... prayers.

Prayers.

Mostly these were prayers to the Christian based god, but, to be fair, those from other faiths also seemed to use this natural human culling event as an opportunity to hassle their gods too.

So, here's where it all gets a bit confusing for me.

God is the guy behind everything. Everything that happens is this god's 'will', right? (How humans react to it is their free will, apparently.)

I mean, I'm told, this god caused the EF5 tornado, it didn't just randomly happen outside of his control. Everything he does has its reason. Reasons we are supposed to accept without rational explanation.

Because of his decision, and as part of his design, people died, people were maimed, and people lost everything.

Ok?

So, then what are these people praying to their god for?  Are they praying to say, "Thanks for that mate.  We don't understand why you did that to us, but we apologise."  Or maybe they are praying to say, "Awesome dude!" and make other congratulatory whooping and cheering.  Heck, their god decided to do all that, and they never question his plan or the work he has to do in his random killing, maiming, and frightening of his followers.

A lot of the prayers appear to be for those who the god decided to kill.

Eh?  They're fuckin' dead.  What are the prayers for?  "Thanks god for that nice painful death for Mrs Smith who took four hours to slowly die pinned under the hummer you decided to lift hundreds of meters into the air and slam back down on her body. Far out man."

Or are the prayers telling god to do something to Mrs Smith now she is dead?  Butt out!  If this god has elected to torture Mrs Smith to death, it's his decision, why are humans trying to intervene?  How dare they question his decisions. No wonder he gets cross and keeps pressing the 'smite' button.

So, wtf are the people actually praying to their god for when they are saying a prayer for Mrs Smith?  I mean, right, most of them don't know Mrs Smith, or even the slightest thing about her, yet there they are mumbling away at the god that just murdered her.  Maybe Mrs Smith was a bad person and deserved the hummer falling on top of her.  God, as we are told, has his reasons and his plan.  A plan, it seems, that excludes Mrs Smith from life after hummer. So why keep going on and on and on at him about her?

It must be annoying being a god with all these snivelling little useless creeps praying at him all the damn time.  All that noise in his head. No wonder he lashes out and kills them every now and again.  He probably really loves those who don't keep praying at him and instead try to work out how to make decisions and do the best they can without crying in his ear every couple of hours.

Either that or he has very serious insecurity and confidence issues that he can only deal with by demanding that people keep telling him how wonderful he is.  Personally, I'd feel a little odd telling somebody they were awesome just because they had a tendency to genocide if I didn't.  I certainly wouldn't think they were awesome.  I'd be, well, I'd be god 'fearing' without any real free will.

Anyway.  The logic of praying for Mrs Smith still evades rational explanation.  What are those prayers supposed to achieve?

We all know they actually achieve nothing, change nothing.  So, why do they pray?

Weird things in your toilet

This is like something out of one of those dreams that you can't fully remember, but you know was weird and slightly sinister.

Whoever made it must have been inside my head.  Brilliant!

(It's a 'moving gif', so your display should not be static. Get to a device that displays 'moving gifs' ok, and watch it for 10 or 15 seconds.  Woah!)

Only morons watched the Eurovision Song Contest

My life doesn't include the Eurovision Song Contest.  It hasn't done for about 20 to 25 years.

I have no interest in it whatsoever, it has no relevance to me and my life and my interests.

However, a bit like football, which I also have absolutely no interest in, it is a damn hard thing to get away from.  People keep talking about it.

I also don't watch any soaps, so show me a picture of any of the actors and I'd not have a clue who they are or which soap they are from.

That's how disconnected I am from all that kinda stuff.

However, something happened a bit like those awkward moments when a Scouser asks which [football] team I support, my honest answer of 'None' can't register on their radar, so I have to be punched in the face.  I mean, you must support a football team surely?  Nope, not me.

Well, I was asked about the Eurovision Song Contest.  I politely answered saying I'd not watched it.  I was asked why not, had I been working?  Nope, not interested.  Usually this just suffices and they wander off muttering "Gay" under their breath.

Not this particular questioner, who just happened to have been involved in aspects of the British presentation of Eurovision. Instead, I was pinned to the corner of the room with a demand that I explain myself as if I was guilty of insulting their mother, wife, and child.

Nobody has made me have to articulate why before, so I thought about it for a bit before explaining that the Song Contest wasn't relevant to my culture, my interests and my tastes.

Yes, there are younger people from some of the countries, but the UK puts up only the old people like 77 year old Englebert Humperdink or 61 year old Bonnie Tyler.  These are people who may just about be relevant to the old people who listen to Radio 2, but people under 40 have never heard of them.  Well, never heard of unless their parents kept playing the annoying Power Ballard CDs when they were growing up.

So, where once the song contest was about current pop music, and had the current sounds and artists on stage that young people could identify with, the contest is now aimed at old people. Back in the olden days credible current acts were winning on our behalf. These days the old crooners are being wheeled out in order to promote random tracks off their latest albums. Exhibit A - Bonnie Tyler.  How is her music relevant to me or to anybody under the age of 50? Be honest. It really isn't, is it?

I accept that the population is now skewed such that it has far too many old people listening to old people's music, and that tends to dominate 'things', and is why a lot of old people did bother watching the Eurovision Song Contest, and the viewing figures were 'fair' at an average of 7.7 million within the UK.  All a long way off from the figures of the early decades, however.

In more recent times of course, with the political undertones of the point allocations, and the fact that everybody hates the United Kingdom for being America's biatch when it comes to global bullying, swathes of new Eastern European countries and countries nothing to do with Europe but somehow becoming part of the contest, have the power to keep the UK from ever winning again.

The Irish had the right idea when they had Dustin the puppet turkey representing them some years ago.  Treat the joke of the contest as a joke, fine, or put some of our proper pop acts through.   Then I and millions of others might be interested.

That critical Big L review

In a previous article, or, ok, maybe two (here and here), I declared my love of Steve and Suzy, the Sunday morning duo on internet radio station Big L.

I am looking for something from my 'radio' that I just can't get from an iPod.  I also don't believe that 'radio' is about playing the same old tried and tested songs and announcing what they are called.  The value to me is measured in the bits that go on inbetween or instead of the songs.  These are the bits that can distinguish 'music-radio' from 'music-burble'.

However, this doesn't seem to be shared by the evil miscreant (does he have a thick waxed handlebar moustache I wonder?) that is the '2ZY' (pantomime booooo!).  This '2ZY' bounder has a habit of listening to radio shows, writing down the content in a subjective snivelling derisory way, and passing judgement based on his rather odd and old fashioned values about what constitutes a radio show's content. Values that probably date back to 1922.

I have only just discovered this horrendous review of the absolutely wonderful Steve and Suzy here. (Ensure you have up to date anger management certification before clicking on that link!)

So, I have no other option but to declare war on this no mark.  '2ZY', sir, we are at war.

Whoever '2ZY' is, he should not be reviewing radio shows that offer more than the tired cold and objectionable content of playing three or four safe songs in a row and making railway station type announcements in blocks. Boring, tired, old fashioned radio is obviously what he loves.  And this is why we are now at war, facing pistols at dawn.

Expecting a lover and devotee of X Factor to review a precise and very exacting opera is so very wrong.  Expecting '2ZY' to review talking biased music radio is wrong for all the same reasons.  Pah!  It's outside of '2ZY's format remit.

'2ZY' stole borrowed the name from the call letters of a Manchester based radio station that operated back in 1922.  Yep, there's stuck in the past and there's stuck in the past!  It drives me mad that there's no originality and the internet is full of idiots using the names of famous offshore radio stations for their bedroom streams that nobody listens to. Now I find this '2ZY' is nothing whatsoever to do with the original '2ZY' either. He probably hasn't even got a waxed handlebar moustache, the cad.  Double Pah and Thrice Pah!

Can you imagine '2ZY' being let loose to review early Kenny Everett or Emperor Rosko broadcasts when they were breaking boundaries and making the bits inbetween the songs more compelling?  

'2ZY' would be there saying "It's just not right.  All the stupid juvenile humour and silly voices. Don't like it. Proper radio doesn't do that."

Or

"I bet that awful man's not even an Emperor. Why's he shouting? Radio presenters aren't allowed to shout. He's made my head ache. Tell him to be quiet."

Indeed, had '2ZY' been in charge of radio stations daring to play jingles at times other than after 57 commercials in a row, he would have sacked the presenters.  He'd have had a heart attack when he heard the first wind-up phone call, or somebody daring to interact with a record rather than keep it at arms length as if it stinks or is covered in dog pooh.

Sadly, the radio industry, despite its ever increasing contraction into oblivion is still full of '2ZY's with all their unadventurous hive-thinking.  Radio must be taken seriously, they chant, it is not the place for fun or experimentation.  Most importantly, radio mustn't actually do anything that might make the listeners listen rather than just have it on in the background.

The latest RAJAR audience research figures prove once again that what goes on inbetween the songs is what keeps people listening, and why the boring commercial music radio format obviously favoured by '2ZY' is being listened to less and less.

The radio war via RAJAR was so easily won by the BBC because it provides the value added programming the commercial sector just refuses to, and this is why I will win in my war with this '2ZY' upstart.

What the creeping ice age will look like

Whilst the man-made climate change religion persists in telling us that we are all doomed because it's getting warmer because of the evil human race, in the real world, literally, natural climate evolution flips to a 'cooling period'.

The naturally evolving climate is not doing what the highly financed eco-loonies wanted us to believe.  What is actually happening for the immediate future is the complete opposite to what they want us to believe.

Natural climate evolution is cooling. Fact!

A fairly obvious hint is the relative lack of activity on the Sun.  Whenever our star goes quiet, we have extended periods of cold (the Thames freezes over, yada yada).  And, that's what's coming. Cold. Hence why it is criminal that we are not preparing ourselves to survive the cold by getting ready to produce food and other things under extended periods of snow and ice. Instead, the man-made climate change religion is sending us in completely the opposite direction and costing ordinary people a fortune.

Anyway.  Have you ever wondered what the creeping ice age might look like?  Will a version of this be what awaits our towns and cities over the next few decades?  Why aren't we ready for it?

New comment system from today

Ooooh.  Exciting.  When I tried it before it 'lost' all the existing comments, so I quickly switched it back off again.

Time has elapsed, and I think they've fixed it.

Yay!

So, I've switched to Google+ for commenting on the articles that appear in this fine and wonderful award winning ChristopherEngland.com.

That's what I'm talking about.

It means that any comments anybody makes are nicely copied through to Google+ giving them a much wider distribution and nicely integrating with Google+ as a discussion platform at the same time.

If you try to leave a comment (and you are welcome to use this article to 'test' that you can - please write anything you like just to make sure it works) and you find any problems, please email me at aaaaaargh@christopherengland.com

How's it for you?

A spider is a girl's best friend

Aha.  Now I understand.  I've often wondered why I could here screams of 'Oh My God' and very loud whimpering followed by an explanation from a very flushed looking lady that there was a spider in the room.

Feral cats and feral children, disconnected from humans

When the two 10 year old murderers tortured toddler James Bulger to death, all sensible normal rational thinking people didn't 'get' it.  How could these two boys be so disconnected from morals and a sense of right and wrong?

Indeed, during questioning, the horror and enormity of what they'd done seemed to pass them by as they shrugged their shoulders about it.  Some onlookers called this 'pure evil'.  However, it wasn't 'evil', but was the rule of feral existence.  It was a throw back to a very basic stage in our evolution, and was no different to how a cat will typically 'play' with and torture a mouse or a bird to death to relieve the boredom and possibly not even eat the prey once it is finally dead.

They do it because it's fun.

Cats are a very good example of what is happening in the dregs of society right now.  The domesticated cat knows how to interact with humans.  It is cute, and it will exchange apparent affection with the humans it co-habits with.  It will enjoy moments of close contact, and will adopt humans as part of its pride, enjoying their company and respecting them.

The feral cat, on the other hand, having lived its entire life hiding from humans, and without any direct interaction with them, has a very different approach.  It remains as distant and as secretive as the rats, mice or other rodents that live around us.  As with these rodents, the feral cat will have no loyalty to humans, no respect, regardless of how hard a human might try.  The feral cat literally has no interactive 'language' (the cute mewings that domesticated cats will make at humans don't exist within feral cat behaviour) and certainly no actual affection to exchange with humans.  It exists in a state of disconnect from humans, living its own life according to its own rules and the ways of the pride into which it was born.  In fact, it can be quite violent towards humans.

Despite looking cute and friendly, and exactly the same, feral cats are a completely different creature to domesticated cats.

The primary difference between the learning experiences of feral cats and domesticated cats is that the latter are brought-up from birth sharing affection, 'language' and interaction.  There's a natural form of co-dependence.

Affection, 'language' and interaction are what is NOT happening between humans and the recent generations of feral street-wankers and scum kids.  These kids are being allowed to grow-up on their own without proper guidance, away from the important domestic human contact.  This is why they have built their moral grounding from other kids and the school playground and the immature 'street' rule of law.

The school playground and 'street' rule of law goes right the way back to the primal instincts of survival of the fittest, and taking whatever you want when you want, with the weak missing out to the strong.

Normal humans were shocked by the video from the riots of the hurt and bleeding teenager surrounded by other teenagers who appeared to be helping him to his feet.  Within moments and without a real care they were helping themselves to the contents of his back-pack and just strolling away leaving him on his own. It's a video that made some people cry.  That's because they don't understand the rules of the street.

He was an innocent and frightened victim, not a looter or a rioter, but had he been part of one of the gangs he would have been treated in exactly the same way.  In the feral gang world he will be considered a 'fallen soldier'.  His property is to be distributed to those who hurt him or within his own gang.  After all, a 'fallen soldier' has no use for his stuff any more, has he?

Yes, it is the way of the street kids.  They form into postcode or estate based 'gangs', or 'packs', and will regularly roam about attacking the weakest from other packs.  They actually consider that it is a right to have anything somebody else might have, and so taking it is to them 'normal'.  Even in their own pack there will be the regular mugging of the weakest.  Most of their lives are spent growing in an environment where the stronger within them will take from the weaker.  It's all they know.  It's how life at school works, and it's how post-school life works.

Nobody is immune, and virtually all kids will have been mugged by others, and most will have mugged.  That is how they live.  It's their way.

The reason why large numbers of teenagers have rolled back to this very basic stage of evolution is because nobody has given them any form of guidance or boundaries.  Usually, this is because of the culture of no consequence born of the climate of fear of punishment for taking any stand.

The madness of legislation, the madness of the liberal wet do-gooders, the madness of political correctness, the madness of stupid trends and ignorance of the results, and the resultant state of fear, have given us a society in which parents are not allowed to properly discipline or try to control their children.  Teachers are not allowed to discipline or try to control their pupils and students.  The police are not allowed to do anything beyond a very basic level of intervention for fear of repercussions. 

Courts, worrying about the human rights of the criminals rather than the human rights of their victims, don't impose any form of deterrent sentencing, or do anything to protect normal people by keeping offenders out of society.  Neighbours are not allowed to complain or to object to damage done, and all too quickly even self-defence inside one's own home is unacceptable and likely to be rewarded by a prison sentence whilst the robber gets to go free to enjoy a huge pay-out for being hurt.

Instead of parents, teachers, society and authority giving the children any form of leadership, structure, feeling of 'point' and 'worth', and role-modelling to grow towards, they only get this from the leaders of the gangs they are forced to be part of.

And, as with all things feral, the gangs are usually controlled by the most vicious, most disruptive, most frightening and psycho teenagers from the estate or postcode.

That's why, like the killers of James Bulger, they just can't see the bigger picture or the moral perspective of how it's wrong to attack and hurt people and their property, and, as they know there's never any real consequence for them doing what they want when they want, they just do it and laugh about doing it.

Unfortunately, we now have multiple generations of feral families that have only ever lived this way, and so even today's feral parents just think it's fun and exciting that their kids are out burning and looting, such is their lack of moral values or care about other humans or consequences.

The culture of no consequence

People seem to have been surprised at the tactics used by the scum kids (the feral street-wankers) as they destroyed people's homes, people's cars, people's jobs and people's businesses during the civil unrest of a few years ago.

It was an outrage of destruction which will be repeating itself this coming Autumn.

But, the tactics the used are nothing new.

The basic principle of 'swarming' (or 'steaming') has been in regular use for a few decades or so by the scum kids.  Indeed, I have encountered it twice personally; Once when they decided to swarm over me in the street as part of my own personalised mugging experience, and once when I just happened to be in a late night shop as they decided to run in and steal booze and cigarettes but not do anything to the customers or shop workers.

Until recently, they used 'swarming' for quite a low level of crime.  They would usually build their group up to about 20, swarm and attack and then quickly disperse, leaving the victims dazed and confused.  Victims were most usually children and teenagers from other postcodes or the wrong gang, next came random people in the street who were worth stripping of money and mobiles, and lastly came off-licences or convenience stores.

Then, for some strange reason, the penny dropped and the scum kids realised that they could up their game.  Gangs put aside their postcode rivalry, a bit like feral tomcats in sniffing range of a female cat on heat, and massed together to do what they've always done, but to do it bigger.

Hence why hundreds and hundreds of scum kids were able to gather, swarm and attack far greater prey than usual.  Smashing into shops and instantly stripping them of their goods, grabbing people out of their cars so they can set fire to them, and completely outnumbering and outsmarting any resistance from police or innocent members of the public.

Everything became excitingly possible, and the adrenalin rush was far greater than when running innocent people over and killing them in Grand Theft Auto.

Just as it is impossible to protect oneself or one's property from a swarm of locusts or wasps, so too is it impossible for society to protect itself from swarming scum kids.  They know how long they've got before they need to dissolve into the background again, they know how long they've got before anybody even knows what they are currently wrecking.

Most importantly, and this truly is the main point I'm making, they know that they can do what they want and nothing will be done to inconvenience them.  They live completely in a culture of no consequence.

Just as with any swarm, like the locusts blighting a farmer's crop, the farmer might be able to beat off or stamp on a few, but the numbers stopped are completely insignificant compared to the whole swarm and the damage being done.  So too with the swarm of scum kids.  A few might get caught or arrested.  This won't stop the remaining swarm going about its business of destroying everything.  Nothing can stop that.

This is especially the case when the scum kids also know that nothing will ever happen to them, even if they are actually caught and arrested.

Firstly, if they are actually arrested, they are not removed from the streets for more than a few hours.  They are back out again, carrying on with the crimes, the very next day, no problem. Usually this is after a pointless 'caution', but sometimes (very rarely) they still have to go to court and will be sentenced to an hour of hand-wringing or something equally ludicrous and then let back out to carry on where they left off.

This is the culture of no consequence.  The scum kids know that the chances of getting caught are tiny, the chances of then going to court are even smaller, and certainly the chances of getting any meaningful sentence are nil.  They can do what they like because there is never a consequence.

The culture of no consequence was slowly introduced by the middle-class mamby pamby liberal wets and millionaire socialists who ruled the judicial system whilst Blair and Brown were in power.

The Labour Government-sponsored culture of no consequence is what the scum kids grew up with, and it has now exploded like the timebomb it was intended to be, maiming all of us normal people forever.