Is a child really worth £3.5 milion pounds?/Thepottingshedder

http://thepottingshedder.blogspot.com/2011/05/35-million.html

£3.5 million...
Is a child really worth £3.5 milion pounds?

"A special £3.5 million grant is being given to Scotland Yard to fund the Madeleine McCann inquiry. The Home Office cash will fund a team, led by an experienced detective, which is being set up in the next few days to carry out a review of the entire investigation. It will cover the cost of man hours, flights to Portugal, hotels, consultation fees from forensic firms and any other expenses. There will also be a hefty cost for translation work on the thousands of documents requested from Portuguese authorities."

What about all the other missing children? Every year in the UK, 140,000 children go missing - 383 children per day. A staggering amount, which includes parental abductions, runaways, criminal abductions and children who are lost and injured. Are the government willing to stump up £3.5 million to cases similar to the McCanns or do only special ones warrant the attention?
Kerry Needham thinks the government should help. I'm sure she would dearly love such an injection of cash into the search for her missing son, Ben.
"After the breaking news today I am happy to see the government's involvement with reviewing missing people cases abroad. I am pleased for the McCann family and look forward to the government offering the same support to all families with loved ones missing abroad." Kerry Needham, May 2011
What makes this case so special? Has anyone taken any notice of the police files and are they really up to speed with Portuguese law? The McCanns could have prevented the case being shelved in the first place and they could request the case be reopened today. This could be done for free, thereby saving the UK taxpayer a bucketload.
"If they wanted the case to be reviewed, they would ask for the crime process and the investigation to be reopened, and they would supply all of the reports from the various private detectives that they have hired. To ask for the process to be reopened, all it would take is a letter to the Prosecutor, as it has already happened in so many other cases. It costs them nothing, just the stamp on the letter." Goncalo Amaral May 2011

Amongst other things, the £3.5 million will be used for hotels, travel costs and the translation of documents requested from Portugal. Forgive me, I have deja vu... although I suppose it's heartwarming that the money won't be used for mortgage payments and that ever growing mountain of legal debts.


Instead of being cockahoop and jumping for joy at the news, Mr and Mrs McCann appeared to find it difficult to summon up much enthusiasm, but thought it was 'a step in the right direction'...


So, is a child worth £3.5 million? I would say yes, but so are all the other children. In this case though, just who is running the show because I don't believe the parents are worth it.

Please take a moment to visit the official campaign website to help find Ben Needham by clicking: http://www.helpfindben.co.uk/index.html

Annabel

Thank you for this article.

How many missing children - 140,000 times £3.5 million - - DC can't possibly refuse - he has set a precedent.

All the money's worth it for justice to be done. Without this money being spent on the abduction more people across the world will be taken in by their marketing scams and donate to the fund. Justice is priceeless; it doesn't matter how much it costs.

Loopdaloop wrote:All the money's worth it for justice to be done. Without this money being spent on the abduction more people across the world will be taken in by their marketing scams and donate to the fund. Justice is priceeless; it doesn't matter how much it costs.

Certainly if the review means that Scotland Yard will be doing a real review, in collaboration with their Portuguese counterparts, and all theories are looked at with close attention, then yes, I agree, it may in the end turn out to have been worth it.

The real problem though is that now the prime minister has authorised this level of spending on one missing person, he can hardly turn down a request for equally high resources from another family where a member has gone missing. What could he possibly say - no, you can't have it, it's for no one other than Madeleine McCann? There can't be any difference made between one family and another. There's no point in saying Madeleine is a special case, just because she disappeared when abroad, or because she was only 3, or because her family have hogged the limelight practically non-stop for the last 4 years. To another family, it would simply be like saying their child or other missing person just isn't important enough because they had the bad luck to disappear in Britain, or because they were older, or because their family hadn't the resources or the contacts to demand non-stop media attention. I really don't know what David Cameron will do when another family requests the same level of help, because he has now boxed himself neatly into a hard-to-get-out-of corner.

I imagine there's much disquiet in his own party on this point, but publicly nothing will be said for the simple reason that no one wants to be seen to be the party pooper.

Dimsie wrote: There can't be any difference made between one family and another.

Unfortunately we have quite a Historical precedent for inequality and unjust differences in this country, hence the Royal Family still being in existence and the British Tax Payer having to pay for a wedding. Its not what you know, or what you've done but who you know!
I think the mccans are definitly an exception; abusing their contacts list got them out of the trouble in the first place with Gordon Brown backing them but I think with Cameron its different. The Mccans may be respected members of the community in the eyes of lots of people but to Mr Brown who went from heathdown prep, to eton, to oxford and was part of the Bulllington club they are just 'new money' and commoners in comparison to anyone else he hangs around with so any deferential behaviour would have been lost!

£3.5million plus the £2.6 million already donated to 'the fund'. Plus the proceeds from the book. It's a lot of money.

children are not a commodity- every child is priceless and beyond this price tag.

what is the suggestion here?

Madeleine McCann is worth everthing and so is every other missing and abused child.

how much are our children worth to us?

Maddie seems to be worth what the tabloids will pay for her story.

Do our children need to be a story, a commodity, before we value them?

have McCanns said one single thing about the other missing children in the UK ?


Is Madeleine the only one we need to bother about?

This is so selfish and so typical of them, they dont care about any others and evidently Cameron only cares about the kid whose parents make him look bad.
How Can he be so stupid? This is so blatently PR -

If the investigation is thorough and examines every aspect of the case, the McCanns will rue the day they made the
demand. Are they really obnoxious people who think they deserve all the help they have had which ordinary people
in the same situation could only dream of, or are they innocent of no more crime than neglect and their guilt makes them use every avenue to assuage this guilt.?