What's the point of it all?

Hi everyone, anyone.... welcome to the blog. We all like a mystery I guess and only time diminishes how personally we view a mysterious disappearance. We may shrug our shoulders at what happened to, say, Glen Miller, Jimmy Hoffa, or Amelia Earhart because they are long gone. Hey, but even when a disappearance is still 'live', where there is the possibility those who vanish might still be found, people like Lord Lucan for instance, then the reaction might still be so what, who cares anyway? They were architects of their own fate, after all, they had a choice in how they lived their future or met their demise.

But let's set famous personages aside for a moment, after all most folk who go missing are, on the surface at least ordinary Joe's. Here we somehow recognise a tragedy, feelings are stirred within us, doubly so when it is a child. In the UK a child is reported missing every 3 minutes, and an article in the Independent Newspaper tells us that between 16,000 and 20,000 people have gone missing from family and friends for more than a year.  Sometimes, though, the public imagination is caught, as in the case of Ben Needham.  A quick look at Wikipedia tells us Ben went missing on 24th July 1991 at just 21 months old from the Greek Island of Kos and despite numerous reported sightings over the years no trace of the British child has ever been found.  But historical context has done it's bit and 1991 is a long time ago and though we are talking about a child who may well still be alive and living his adult years among us, can we still care today in the same way as we still seem to care about Madeleine McCann?  Will she, in her turn, fade away into history the way Ben Needham did, and anyway what's so important about her; why is she any different from the 16-20,000 other unfortunates who leave a trail of desolation in the lives of those who cared for and about them?

An iconic (and occasionally

disputed) image of Madeleine

taken poolside at the Mark 

Warner Holiday Resort in

Praia Da Luz May 2007

What makes Madeleine's disappearance remarkable are the antics of her parents and indeed the holiday group as a whole, their actions and words, in turn bizarre, exasperating, inconsistent, controlling, occasionally seemingly uncaring even, raised the hackles and suspicions of many as to the complicity of the parents themselves in her disappearance.

But what about the Forums?

Having said all of that, there is another prong to this blog, and that is to look at the remarkable world of Madeleine McCann Forums and their part in keeping the mystery alive almost seven years later. Madeleine McCann Forums are curious animals that allow themselves no compromise; there is no half way, no balance in the way they have evolved. There are only pro and anti McCann Forums, and within each Forum is often an internecine battle between members, usually fundamentalists and free thinkers or in other words long term members and transients.  In my view, this bloody and eternal struggle through the length and breadth of the internet has been so bitter the focus has long since shifted from the disappearance of Madeleine Beth McCann and she has become forgotten, an afterthought in the whole saga as the focus of bile or ingratiation (depending on your own personal beliefs) now rages around the parents and the holiday group of which they were a part. Poor little Madeleine I say.

So that's what I am going to do, examine both the mystery itself in as neutral a way as possible, and evaluate just how a typical Forum works, it's organisational structure and ethics.  It matters little whether the Forum is pro or anti McCann for this purpose, the only concern being one of its usefulness and reliability to the general understanding of a student of this mystery. In doing so a little levity will be had along the way.

 As I said at the beginning...What's the point of it all?