My Retro Purchases in May 2019

Ok this post is both a little bit late and a little bit short, but to be honest I didn't really buy all that much last month anyways here goes. So last months retro purchases started on the 7th when I got a slim ps2 all wires 2 official pads, a memory card and 4 games goldeneye rogue agent, the lord of the rings the return of the king, star wars battlefront 2 and kingdom hearts (all of them boxed but with kingdom hearts missing its manual) for 10quid.


I didn't get anything else until the 14th when I went to a local Indy game shop and got a loose n64 pilot wings cart for £5 and then the network disc for the ps2 with case and manual for £5. I have had the ps2 network/hardrive adaptor for years but never had the disc, I ended up using a macboot memory card to use it, not sure ill start using it the proper way but its nice to have the option, and to have the adaptor with the proper stuff that would have come with it originally.


I also got a wii for £7.50 with all its wires and 2 nunchucks but no remote, but it did come with wii sports in a paper case and then 4 games all boxed with instructions wii play, the bigs, tna impact and tiger woods pga tour 09 (the last ones still sealed).


On the 29th I went in a charity shop and I got I got Wii sports resort for £1.50 and it also had a Wii sports disc in it behind the manual. Its kind of funny getting two wii sport discs in the space of one month I guess, its not like its something I set out to do though. This was my final purchase of the month.


All in all it was a very no frills month, I don't think I did particularly brilliantly with anything but I think the £24 pounds I spent went a fairly long way. I really seem to investing less time in the retro hunting recently but trust me I still adore my old games and even if I never purchased another single game then id still have more than enough to play till the end of time

Madeline McCann: Funding granted for another year

So unless you have been living under a rock for the past decade then I am sure that you will have heard of Madeleine McCann the little girl who disappeared from a holiday apartment in Portugal in 2007 while on holiday with her parents (while left in the apartment alone while they visited a nearby tapas establishment).

I am not going to go into the minute details if your interested in knowing more I would strongly recommend you check out the decent netflix multi part documentary.

I remember the case well as I was working in a bar at the time and we regularly had the news on the telly, not only that but pretty much every customer who came through the door had an opinion.

Since then the story has never really gone away and even as my life has changed I have followed it. I spent a few years working with children and the topic would often be raised, with plenty of parents giving there own opinions of the whole affair. I think its just become one of those news stories which will never be forgotten. 

In honesty though the truth is for all of the interest and all of the investigations we don't really know anymore now than we did back then and yet more than £11m has been spent on the Met Police inquiry alone which is officially known as Operation Grange, since it began back in 2011. Despite this the UK Home Office has said that it intends to continue funding this operation indicating that from now until march 2020 it will be getting a similar level of funding as it was granted for 2019, when the inquiry was given £300,000.

Now stop for just a minute and try to name 5 other children who have gone missing since Madeline.... I would imagine that right now most people would have either have drawn a complete blank or at best named one or two children.

So whats happened regarding Madeline in the last 6 years? Well Four people were identified as suspects in 2013 but no further action was taken after they were interviewed by both Portuguese officers and the Met Police and on the 10th anniversary of her dissaperance in 2017 detectives said that they were still pursuing a "critical line of inquiry" which from the lack of anything else being said you'd have to assume this line ran cold.

I think the harsh truth is that unfortunately children go missing all of the time and most are not fortunate enough to get 5% of the cash spent on them that Madeline has had spent on her. I think its time to let her go, now I'm sure someone will tell me that's not fair on her parents but is it really fair how much has been spent on her while other cases have practically been ignored?