pap

Possibly because you've never been accorded any. I've heard that word used as a verb ​in certain parts of Southampton.

I've seen you use the "I'm sure" argument tons of times, hypo. On what are you basing your certainty?

Has anyone got a good tactic for FM2014 beta? I just want something that I can use to steamroller teams. I only really care about the end of season praise. MLG - perhaps you should suggest that. Football Manager Climax. A game featuring nothing but season platitudes for the time poor.

Wouldn't know about that, but there are plenty of unofficial clubs out there that look out for each other.

I think that's reasonable, which is why the Portuguese were smeared and prevented from doing their job. Genuinely think there was a lot of behind-the-scenes wrangling to make sure that never happened - to have the case viewed on purely British terms. ottery's claims that Gerry McCann is well connected are not new to me. I find it very strange that the OB denied the PJ access to their phone records and financial statements.

Something I've seen suggested, but the will to follow that line of inquiry has to be there in the first place. I've seen conflicting reports from those who claim to be, or to know someone in the OB on this. It's one of the reasons that I'm having trouble reconciling JackFrost's fair-play-to-them line of argument. If someone had failed to be co-operative on the scale that Kate McCann was during her PJ session here, I'd imagine that'd set the spider-sense of most coppers off immediately. It's not conclusive by any means, but it's another episode of very odd behaviour in a time when priorities should never have been in question. Inexplicably (according to abduction theory anyway), so many priorities were.

I don't know who it is that gets so upset about this stuff. It's all about context, anyway. I could call anyone of you a c**t and depending on context, it's either the worst thing ever or a sign of blokey respect.

Would have been even worse in the US, Bear. Trainers as we know them are called sneakers. They would likely have unloaded a gun into your butt or something.

There is no evidence for an abduction, hypo - which is why the JP didn't treat it seriously. Add it all up. Kate McCann refuses to answer 48 questions, many of which could assist in locating Madeleine. The Portuguese authorities took a completely different approach to the incident. They considered the wildly conflicting accounts they received and assumed they were not being told the whole truth. The focus of the parents has been muddled, and is as much about protecting their own reputations as anything else. I hope they are looking into it. The amount of public money that has now been spent on at best, two highly negligent parents, is staggering.

Broadly I'd agree with your opening statement. There is no substitute for being there. However, the Crimewatch reconstruction was predicated entirely off the abduction thesis, which is starting with a point of truth. If the OB were seriously considering the McCanns as suspects, would it not be prejudicial to allow them to cement the idea that they were off having snacks with their friends when it all went down?

#ifthatwereremotelytrue .... He'd be out whacking people in real life instead of being a reaction (chemical or otherwise) on here.

Ninety nine times out of a hundred; you'd be right. However, think about the implications of anything other than an abduction scenario and remember, the police are going to investigate the crime they're told to. Half the reason that the Portuguese nick got into so much hot water was because they weren't treating the case as an abduction. The British OB never treated it as anything but. There's more politics in this than policework.

Does a permanent intent to abandon trump a pattern of regularly leaving young children unsupervised? I can well accept that the charges are technically different, but the capacity for harm is there, as Madeleine's case clearly shows. We may not be able to prove that the McCanns were away for longer than 35 minutes on the night in question (although that is disputed), but the night of Madeleine's alleged abduction was not the only time that the McCann children were left alone. Pamela Fenn, a British expatriate who lived above the McCann's rented apartment, gave a statement to the police stating that on 1st May, she heard a child crying for over an hour, repeatedly calling for her Daddy. This was between 22:30 and 23:45 local time. The noise abated when the McCanns arrived home. That's at least 1h 15minutes of the kids being left alone, according to Mrs Fenn's statement. This video is interesting. The woman, who doesn't know she is being filmed, says the McCanns were at Chaplins, a venue a lot further than 50 metres away. Some interesting post-scripts; despite her initial and fairly clear statement about the events of May 1st, Mrs Fenn later claimed to have no knowledge. Given the way that the McCanns have operated since 2007, I can't say I find that particularly surprising. People have lost their jobs, four newspapers have had to settle libel suits (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7303801.stm) and there is presently a defamation suit in the works. Are these the actions of people who are more concerned with finding their daughter or simply ensuring that the abduction theory is the only game in town?

I'm still livid from cap park, mate.

This thread is a f**king dog's breakfast that has been spewed on by a cat. Spudders, hang your head in shame. Bletch - good work. Tokes - Shazbat.

You don't have to a conspiracy theorist to recognise that even in an age of 24 hour news, we're still playing to the half-hour format. Editorial discretion should therefore be taken as read. That being the case, there is always some kind of agenda, and the phrase "good day to bury bad news" has been with us for over a decade. The practice has been around a lot longer.

Your support is appreciated, and I'm humble enough to accept the hobbit charge.

This whole "professional" angle stinks of Plan B from the late 1970s. Donald Rumsfeld and co were tasked with providing an alternate take on what was thought to be the diminishing power of Russia. Their agenda from the start was hawkish, so when they couldn't find something, they started making sh!t up. "We can't see many Russian submarines so they must have super stealthy submarines". Same thing applies here. No credible abductor has ever been identified so it has to be a professional or ninja or something. Anything that points the blame away from the McCanns.

Chalk another idiot up to Verbal's "it had to be murder" brigade. Fk sake, JackFrost. I expect it from persistent contrarians like aintforever and Gemmel. I would expect a more balanced appraisal from someone who is presumably trained in aspects of law, and should be able to distinguish between the various charges that can be brought when someone is adjudged to have been responsible for another's death. The only people talking about murder here are the McCann apologists, usually to get an emotional response which defies the logic and evidence at hand. Seems to me that the Portuguese police looked at the evidence and found the McCann's and their cohorts' statements to be wildly inaccurate. They were not treating it as an abduction, with exactly the same justification British plod would use in similar circumstances. You talk about lack of evidence, but just like the rest of your mob, are ignoring the evidence your own dog handlers presented. Reacted to both the apartment and their car. The dog hasn't been wrong before or since, as I understand. They were never treated as suspects by British OB. They're not even up on charges of child abandonment in Portugal, which carries a maximum ten year jail sentence. Whatever else they may be, they are certainly guilty of that.

Don't forget the other siblings post-event either. Their childhoods have been wrecked by the grim circus their parents created.

Firefly was well worth the time, even when I didn't know we'd get Serenity to finish it all off. With Serenity, it's almost perfect. Just ignore the first ten minutes of "hey kids, we gotta introduce all these characters to the newbs" dialogue and you'll be fine.

She had a solicitor present. Don't agree with your assessment, professionally inclined as it may be. We used our own dogs in the forensic investigation. The bumbling Portuguese argument doesn't stack with me. All the things you have said, Gerry McCann has said. Ad nauseum.

Nope, but I think they operate in a hierarchical manner. If they're told that they're only investigating an abduction, that's what they'll investigate. The sniffer/cadaver dog evidence was never really in question (apart from the expert Gerry McCann, of course). The scope of the investigation was narrowed so that it was no longer relevant.

Not if they're not being investigated for the crime, and the only reason that they're not being investigated for a crime is that they keep on appearing on TV in the guise of concerned parents. I expect the PJ are "fruit loops" as well, as is this Former Prosecutor. She has some interesting comments about the timing of this.

Read the thread. Fairly clear what I'm considering. Don't expect me to regurgitate my argument for your sake alone.