Bring Maddie home - then lose the damn parents

I haven't written about Madeleine McCann, because like many people I find the out of control, "Bring Maddie Home" bandwagon rather obscene.

Madeleine McCann is the four year old girl, who due to her parents negligence and stupidity, has gone missing in Portugal. She is believed to have been snatched by a paedophile, while she and her two younger siblings were alone in a hotel room. Their parents were eating in a bar 50 yards away.

Recently I saw three comments about her parents that made me decide to break my silence. One author wrote, "My heart goes out to the poor parents". Mine doesn't. They left three young children alone in a hotel room in a foreign country. I realise the British abroad are notoriously careless with their children, but their logic, (which I will look at shortly) defies belief.

One British newspaper described them as, "impeccable parents", while a blog author noted their intelligence. Just to show you how intelligent these impeccable parents are, two of the excuses they gave for leaving three children under four alone were (1) other parents do it (2) we had a clear line of sight to the room. Well, the whole world now knows how effective that security strategy was.

Why are the parents getting so much support and sympathy? I will tell you. Both are middle-class professionals and devout Catholics. The fact that they are regular church goers has been well publicised and they themselves make sure they are photographed praying at every opportunity.

Can you imagine the outcry if an unemployed single mum, had left three kids alone while she popped across the road to a shop and a child had gone missing? The media and public would have crucified her and child welfare agencies would have descended upon her like a swarm of locusts. I am damn sure the Pope wouldn't go out of his way to meet her.

Another thing, as far as I can recall, in Britiain it is illegal to leave children under a certain age alone.

Soon the McCanns will be off on a tour of Europe and apparently an audience with the Pope. They still have other children they can leave alone in hotel rooms all around Europe, so they should be OK. Unless of course they leave the children back in Britain while they go off on a European media circus. They have also appointed a campaign manager and a press officer. It goes without saying that a fund has been set up in her cause.

If they can afford to hire two media managers, surely they could have afforded a baby-sitter for a few hours.

About eighteen months ago a little girl in Sydney was snatched from her home while she and her family slept. The police are baffled as to how it happened as the parents - unlike the McCanns -had taken every precaution. None of the family is under suspicion. Yet no one knows her story. Money can't buy you love - but apparently it can buy you undeserved sympathy.

Yes, it is sad that a little girl has gone missing but you will have a hard job convincing me that it wasn't preventable. I do not like the parents one little bit, and I hope that every day for the rest of their lives, they look in the mirror and see who was largely responsible for their child's plight. I hope the thought haunts them every second of every day.

But judging from their webiste - I doubt that will happen