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?