'Right' Said Fred - by Dr. Martin Roberts - mccannfiles.com

Dr. Martin Roberts' latest (06 May 2014) - his thoughts on the "dig" is available at www.mccannfiles.com

EXCLUSIVE to mccannfiles.com

By Dr Martin Roberts
06 May 2014


'RIGHT' SAID FRED

If you find yourself already in a hole - stop digging! Unless you're the Metropolitan Police, who, pursuant to their intention of discovering the fate of Madeleine McCann, are about to land in Portugal, as the United States CB's once did the Philippines, taking with them sensitive detection equipment and forensic expertise. Oh, and some shovels. The contingent could usefully include certain staff from Leicester University, who have proven experience already in locating significant buried skeletons.

The reality is best summed up in the Guardian announcement of 5 May, that UK police are to 'oversee excavations'.

Decades ago, when some serious civil engineering projects were being undertaken in the City of London, the contractors erected opaque protective screens so that the citizenry could pass to and fro alongside the earthworks without danger of falling in or being felled by an unruly girder. Considerately these shields included 'peep holes', where office workers would park themselves and their sandwiches at lunchtime to watch the proceedings beneath. That is the likely measure of the Met's 'overseeing'.

According to Tracey Kandohla and Russell Myers of the Daily Mirror (4 May):

"Police have assured Kate and Gerry that it does not mean they are specifically searching for her body. They are doing searches as much as to rule scenarios out as much as rule them in. They will be concentrating on several different places at different phases."

Let's get this straight. Officers from Scotland Yard are going to officiate in the excavation of two or three sites in the vicinity of the Ocean Club, Praia da Luz, with the intention of ruling a few things out? As if!

If there is so much as a grain of truth in this story, then one thing it is not is an agricultural experiment with a field marked out in plots chosen at random. (That's random as in a 'random sample' for statistical purposes, not random as in 'on a whim'). To rule out certain scenarios the Mets' contractors would have to excavate virtually the whole of Portugal! ('O.k. so you found nothing this time, but what if there's something buried in that area just over there?' – you get the picture).

We are clearly not being told the 'hole truth' here about Scotland Yard's playing a 'bloke in a bowler' to the PJ's Bernard Cribbins:

"Don't dig there! Dig it elsewhere!

You’re digging it round when it ought to be square,

The shape of it's wrong. It's much too long,

And you can't put a hole where a hole don't belong."

Should an excavation team, be they Portuguese or British, sadly uncover the remains of a female child, I wonder what these might be clothed in? If they were to be pyjamas they could help identify the body.

On the other hand, perhaps not.

Thanks Frenchy.

"Police have assured Kate and Gerry that it does not mean they are specifically searching for her body. They are doing searches as much as to rule scenarios out as much as rule them in. They will be concentrating on several different places at different phases."


I wish someone could interpret this into simple language that we can all understand.

It sounds like PR gobbledy gook and seems to confirm that Andy has been having his lunch on Brighton Beach again.

Lioned wrote:Thanks Frenchy.

"Police have assured Kate and Gerry that it does not mean they are specifically searching for her body. They are doing searches as much as to rule scenarios out as much as rule them in. They will be concentrating on several different places at different phases."


I wish someone could interpret this into simple language that we can all understand.

It sounds like PR gobbledy gook and seems to confirm that Andy has been having his lunch on Brighton Beach again.

Which gives a whole (pun intended) new slant on the Emperor having no clothes.

Police are lying to the McCanns. They cannot rule anything out by not finding anything. The timing is all so strange too with first Redwood admitting that Madeleine might be dead (took him long enough), then Kate admitting the same (took her even longer), and then this excavation exercise. I am not quite sure what to make of everything, though it would seem as if the excavations have nothing to do with an unknown abductor.

jinvta wrote:Police are lying to the McCanns. They cannot rule anything out by not finding anything. The timing is all so strange too with first Redwood admitting that Madeleine might be dead (took him long enough), then Kate admitting the same (took her even longer), and then this excavation exercise. I am not quite sure what to make of everything, though it would seem as if the excavations have nothing to do with an unknown abductor.

Police in Coventry have recently excavated areas of waste land (and not for the first time) following intelligence received in the search for Nicola Payne, but nothing found. It does not mean that its a waste of time and it does not mean that scenarios are ruled in or out, it just means they had good intelligence and followed it up.

Cold case reviews are hard work. New information comes along all the time which can often be linked to historical information already on file.

So supposing SY have had good intelligence and wish to follow it up. Is that so wrong?

LJC wrote:

jinvta wrote:Police are lying to the McCanns. They cannot rule anything out by not finding anything. The timing is all so strange too with first Redwood admitting that Madeleine might be dead (took him long enough), then Kate admitting the same (took her even longer), and then this excavation exercise. I am not quite sure what to make of everything, though it would seem as if the excavations have nothing to do with an unknown abductor.

Police in Coventry have recently excavated areas of waste land (and not for the first time) following intelligence received in the search for Nicola Payne, but nothing found.  It does not mean that its a waste of time and it does not mean that scenarios are ruled in or out, it just means they had good intelligence and followed it up.  

Cold case reviews are hard work.  New information comes along all the time which can often be linked to historical information already on file.

So supposing SY have had good intelligence and wish to follow it up.  Is that so wrong?

I don't think that the excavations are a waste of time. Not sure how you inferred this from what I wrote above. I believe that the excavations are a step in the right direction and that it is about time that the search efforts are focused on looking for a body rather than a live Madeleine. However, if nothing is found we are right where we began, with no theory being ruled out.

I just wonder what prompted SY to ask for this expensive attempt to find Madeleine, they must have had some news from an informant , this is out of the blue .