The small but loyal group of supporters of this blog and its Thursday Polls might well, after last night’s performance, the night before that and no doubt coming up also in the UK Parliament be expecting me to make an EU-related poll today, but as we have had so much of this now, enough to almost drive a nation and a continental mental, i thought we could think about something else. For tose who want to think about the EU then the question I asked two weeks ago has become more relevant now than it even was then, and that poll is still open and I am watching carefully how the weight of answers is changing as we progress through this process, as indeed can you. That poll is right here.

Beyond that you can shortcut to all the existant polls here, and feel free to add your voice to any of them, as I tend to keep them open for a while in most cases.

For today, we look in fact not for the first time in my content (those who have been following the Play UK talk shows will know that this unhappy family is an inevitable topic of conversation in talk radio, and the Not The Tommy Boyd Show and James Whale show were no exceptions. James Whale in particular has been very supportive of Madeleine’s parents, Gerry and Kate McCann, pictured).

Now it emerges in today’s news that Netflix is going to release a film about Madeleine’s Disappearance called “The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann”.  Gerry and Kate McCann have been critical of the film, saying that it might hiner the police investigation.

I would have thought the stronger argument would be that this tragedy is not supposed to be for the idle entertainment of the masses and the profit of a media organisation, but then really one has to wonder how many newspapers and associated advertising have already been sold on this story over the last 12 years.  Gerry and Kate have been through a lot, not only through the loss of their child but also through being suspected themselves, even formally held as arguidos in the death of their child. Now I have been in a similar position as them, only thankfully for 12 minutes and not for 12 years, but even that was enough to tell you that this is not a pleasant experience, although my joy when the French police found George (who had run away, being autistic and adventurous, a dangerous pairing of traits) safe and well more than made for the evident suspicion of me by the French detective when he spotted the blood on the lintel (which happened to have been left over from George’s nosebleed the previous day – my explanation that it was his, but we thought we had managed to clean it all up was obviously not the best choice of words under the circumstances, as the detective’s “remain in my sight, please” indicated).  For the record I personally believe Gerry and Kate are innocent, not because of my own experiecnes and not because it is impossible for them to have done such a deed in a moment of anger or through self medication and then covered it up through fear, but because deception specialists are really very good and they would be able to pinpoint leakage and would have got to the truth of the issue by now in such a high profile case if Kate and Gerry were not being truthful.  So, despite being very naturally and by dint of being an auditor a rather unpleasantly skeptical person about human nature, I am with the McCanns, be sure of that.

I still wonder if they are right in saying that such a film will hinder the investigation. I am far from sure that the police alone, given all the cuts in manpower and the increasing reliance on technocracy which is not retrospective, is going to be enough to solve this case.  I believe that, tasteless and unsavoury as this film may be, and I probably will not watch it myself, keeping the image of Medeleine and the whole story in the public eye may be exactly what it takes to wring some truth or even a confession out of a person who has managed to keep everything quiet. Or maybe, hopefully, one day a young woman with one bicoloured iris is noticed by a young neighbour who only knows about Madeleine because it was kept in the public eye. These days the police are not resourced but the ordinary public are greatly resourced. That is why I don’t think the McCanns are right to be against the film, even though I fully sympathise with their feelings about it.

What do you think?