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Saturday, March 6, 2010

Madeleine McCann: How much more is hidden from view?


It was revealed recently that the inefficient Portuguese Police Department decided that the vast majority of the reports coming in to them claiming sightings of little Madeleine McCann were probably false and so not worth even bothering to investigate.

I draw a parallel here with the question of whether to give to the beggar in the street. Of course, there are a huge number of people on the streets begging for enough to get them through the day who, if you investigated them, may well have a greater income than you do yourself, for begging can be extremely lucrative. However, if you give to fifty beggars and only one or two are genuinely in dire need then, particularly if you have given in good heart, it's worthwhile. The alternative is to ignore them all as though they are irrelevant, but this means that ultimately the lives of those one or two will probably be lost to malnutrition, hypothermia or disease, or a combination of any or all of those dreadful things.

In the same way, what would it matter if there were a hundred reported sightings of Madeleine which, when investigated, proved to be false, yet the one hundred and first proved to be genuine and perhaps was even responsible for returning her to her family.

The more revelations that come to light regarding the Portuguese Police Department, the more I cannot help feeling that even Inspector Clousseau would be better at directing their operations. At least he would have followed every lead dogmatically!

Perhaps there has been too much of a rush for those members of the PPD involved in the investigation to write books in order to endeavour to enrich themselves as a result of their bumbling, fumbling and downright tardiness at doing their job properly.

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