Time Off

The other day I mentioned I was going to take the weekend off - and I am. More or less!

There will be no McCann related posts until Monday, (Sydney time - 9 hours ahead of the UK). There are some posts I am dying to publish but I am putting those on hold for a couple of days. However, I will be answering emails so please don't stop writing. As for responses - I wish I could respond! I had a good run for a while then back to "comment-box meltdown".

As well as having some, "me" time, I will be doing a bit of blog administration - if I can get the bloody thing to work. I would also like to upload more photographs to the photoblog - so if you like photographs, keep checking.

I will also be coordinating and systemising a few things that have been going on in the background, so we can ramp this up to the next level. I hate that phrase, "ramp it up" but everyone else in my profession uses it, so it would look a bit odd if I didn't. I just wish I could throw in the words "empower" and "leverage" somewhere to give me that much more credibility!

In a few hours from now I have a date with a bottle of wine and two women - probably a guy as well just to make it interesting. Calm down Aunty Phil, don't go all Welsh Baptist on me - I am talking Janis Joplin, Dory Previn (who wrote some of the most amazing lyrics I have come across) with either Phil Ochs or Tom Paxton thrown in for gender balanceification. No, it is not a proper word but if Aunt Phil can make them up so can I!

Do you know what I like about the way we are dealing with this issue - and why I believe we have succeeded in turning things around a little - and make no mistake about it - we have.

We are not organised.

We do not need to form an alliance, action group or use other marketable labels. Nor do we need bankrolling, media machines, PR text books, (especially not the ones Julia and Clarence use - dated 1957). We do not need staged photo opportunities, or photos taken from convenient angles. What need do we have for branding, distribution rights, networking or media manipulation?

We just need the truth.

We gather in one place, from all walks of life, all backgrounds, all ages - and speak as one without direction or script - yet we all shout the same message and ask the same questions - wanting the same answers.

There are people here who rarely use computers, many have never visited a blog. Countless others have never written to a newspaper or taken part in any protest.

Yet they are here because something seems terribly wrong. Something that goes against everything they have ever been taught, everything they have taught their own loved ones. All that they know to be right has been turned on it's head and their beliefs used against them as weapons of insult.

Parents who sacrifice all for their children have been told that it's OK to leave young children alone night after night. Well, it is not bloody well all right, and if anyone is stupid enough to insist that it is - then why do they think we are here in the first bloody place?

If The Grubs left three children alone for five nights - that's at least fifteen chances for something to go wrong. Not just one - but at least 15. I would like a journalist to look any mother of three in the face and tell her those are acceptable odds. The McCann's gambled with Madeleine's safety - and lost.

I am sure many of you reading this blog would rather be doing other things. You don't want to sit here on a Saturday morning reading my blog - there are better things to do.

But you are here because you want answers, and to express your feelings. Here because two selfish bastards who betrayed the love and trust of their children have been rewarded with pieces of silver and standing ovations - while you who have struggled to do the right thing, have had all your sacrifices and all your tears, thrown in your face by cardboard heroes who have betrayed parents as much as the McCanns betrayed their children.

This post wasn't supposed to be this long. It was supposed to stop at the part about the bottle of wine. Then as is often the case with this issue, some thoughts jumped in to my head, ran down my arms to my finger tips and said "OK boys - get typing" (my apology for being gender specific!).

Anyway, enough of this - I hear the wine call my name.

Note: I altered a few words after publishing