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Sky Sources: the Home Office has agreed to give Scotland Yard another £154,000 to extend search for Madeleine McCann until the end of March.

And your thoughts on this are?

Why is this even news?

If the police needs the funds, they should have them.

There is an argument that the mccanns could/should pay for any further investigations.

That amount will be gone in a blink of an eye. What happened to their book sales? Surely they must have contributed in some way. Personally a case that she may never be found, I still think she is alive but who knows?

£11 million seems an awful lot to spend on one person, I would bet there are many other missing people whose investigation costs barely got into the thousands.....

I see her dad quite regularly walking round Glenfield hospital, her mum was in the canteen there the other week too.

Its a crazy amount.

Think of the amount of other peoples lives who could have been completely changed for the better with this money.

What exactly is this "search" going to do that all the others haven't done before?

This kind of reminded me of this great thread

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=53067.0 (http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=53067.0)

Getting a bit heated on the BBC FB page for this story. Couple of comments....

‘Scum McCanns, it's a disgrace, didn't spend hardly anything on Ben Needham, oh I forgot his parents weren't middle class doctors, and he went missing from a beach, they didn't neglect him, simply awful to spend our tax paying money on these pair of scum bags 😡😡😡😡’

‘Stop wasting money on this!!! Let her parents pay from the millions they got from their books and interviews. Guess crime does pay.. the doctor family who neglected their kids but never got punished except with money’

How many other kids going missing each year we never hear of?

No idea mate, apparently hundreds go missing every day, not sure what % are never seen again.....

Why?

It's a police investigation. The police need more money because they have reason to continue researching the case.

If they think it's no longer worth investigating, they'll stop and close the case

I’m surprised at the level of outrage, must be 95%+ that side with these comments, albeit maybe not quite as harsh!

It must be horrific to losing a child like this, I don't think it's possible to imagine the pain.

A line has to be draw at some point though.

You do wonder why we have chosen to spend £11 million on one case when hundreds of others get no resources or time.

Surely the best people to decide when to draw that line is the police?

They obviously feel there are further lines worth persuing.

While there are leads that haven't been fully explored, the money should be provided.

She's middle class, white and the People's Little Girl. And she shifts units.

No amount is too much, innit.

Let's find maddie!

What are the chances of anything coming of further investigation though?  It's such a high profile case that, in the event that she wasn't killed at the time or shortly after, then whoever she ended up with will have killed her and disposed of every bit of evidence already to avoid being caught further down the line. Failing that, dying from illness or suicide as a result of her living conditions and probable treatment is also quite likely, and equally, the body will have been disposed of a long time ago if the kidnapper has any brains.

"The best people to decide when to draw that line are the police" - I would argue they're not at this point, given the high profile nature of the case they'll be biased towards solving the case irrespective of cost, purely out of pride. There's more than just the police clamouring for taxpayers' money and they need money for more than one case. If we gave money to everyone on the basis that they get to decide where to draw the line, it just wouldn't be possible to give everyone what they want, or even close to it.

I'd rather see £154k shipped to the NHS (No bus required), or chuck £154k at some crime prevention scheme that benefits more people in the future, or another case with a better prognosis, rather than trying to find one person with a minuscule chance of being alive where the most likely outcome is wasting £154k and going nowhere, and where the most likely 'positive' outcome is confirming Madeleine is dead, and even that is highly unlikely. At this point, it's like calling to try and hit a backdoor straight flush, two hands in a row, once to find her and again for her to be alive.

There's just better uses of money, IMO.

---

In the absolute best case scenario - What if she's been trafficked to some other country, and she is alive and well and being looked after?
- She likely won't remember her biological parents
- She is unlikely to speak much English
- She is likely to have a good relationship with her adoptive family
- It would be traumatic to remove her from her adoptive family, especially as she is unlikely to understand
- It is questionable whether she would want a relationship with her biological parents, given their failure to ensure her safety

Would it even be the right thing to take her out of that environment and return her to the UK in that scenario?

Are you absolutely mad? You think if she is alive she should not be reunited with her parents?

I can't believe more than a tiny fraction of people would agree with you.

You're putting words in my mouth, I didn't state a view one way or the other. Readless, reuniting if found tomorrow would be correct in the vast majority of cases, and should always be an option.

However, there's circumstances where we shouldn't necessarily bring her 'home'. What if she is found, age 21 with a child, in a relationship, happy etc - Surely you wouldn't force her (and by extension, her family) to move back to the UK then? What about 18 and at a university in whatever country she's in? 17 and living with her adoptive parents? What if moving back to the UK is against her will, how does that change things?

Obviously at age 12/13 (I think she'd be 13 now if she's alive?) there's no doubt about it, you take her home, make sure people looking after her are taken into custody, then question the hell out of them and find out wtf happened.

But my point is that if you find her, you're not dealing with a young child any more, you're dealing with a person who is becoming more mature, more independent and able to make decisions in life, increasingly so the longer it takes to find her - there's a decent chance she won't want anything to do with them (I wouldn't in her spot), may not want to leave her adoptive family, may not want to move to a 'foreign' country and/or potentially learn a new language if she's forgotten or never learned English - how do you handle that if you have the power to decide her fate? Do you go against her will if it's what her parents want? If you find her in 2/3/5/10 years time, how does that affect your thought process?

Where's the line where you're causing more harm than good by forcing a move back to the UK if she is living a normal life in a healthy environment, particularly considering age when found?

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DK1y-KXW4AAVeMu.jpg)

Excellent post, imo.

Ditto the Post by RickBFA.

Fair or otherwise, at some point a line has to be drawn.

Do the Police make this much effort in every case of missing children?

Why has there got to be a line drawn?

There is very possibily a very dangerous paedophile on the loose in the area where Maddie disappeared

Are you going to explain to parents of the next child abducted that the police were working to catch the criminal but "the line had to be drawn" and funding was withdrawn.

Well possibly, yes, but if so, he appears to have been dormant for over a decade now, & I'm not aware of any other similar cases in the area?

There must be - literally - thousands of similar unsolved cases Europe-wide. Are they all still being investigated, was £11 million spent on each case? The answer is no, as we don't live in an ideal world & resources are finite. I really have no idea how this particular case has been pursued so long.

And as for "Do the Police make this much effort in every case of missing children?"

This is a complete red herring.

Police will work on a case until they have exhausted all leads.

It's obvious that Maddie is a very complex and intricate case with lots of lines of inquiry.

When they have reason to believe they have exhausted all possible leads, that is the time to stop investigating. And they should be ready to re open the case as soon as any new evidence appears.

I would suggest they have exhausted all leads - all credible ones, anyway.

If folks pop up with new information after all this time, I'm not sure that amounts to "credible".

Look at this case:

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/mystery-dead-man-dovestones-saddleworth-11799696

A man died on Saddleworth with no ID.

Police spent a fortune reseaching and investigating a case where no crime had been committed!

I trust the police are only asking for extra money because they believe it is worthwhile. And who are we to question that?

Camel, we don't live in a perfect world where we can put almost unlimited funding into every case.

Don't the Portuguese have a responsibility in that regard if there is a paedophile at loose in their country?

No one can say that the investigation hasn't been more than well funded.

We don't have an endless supply of funds. We have funded this case to the tune of £11m. Given the number of children that disappear, don't you agree this case has been given an unusual level of manpower and funding compared to others?

A lot of money has been exhausted on this case, possibly much more tax payers money than on any other single case. I don't think if someones child is kidnapped in Portugal tomorrow that any rational parents would have been blamed the police for "drawing the line somewhere".

Yes of course I do.

But it is down the police to decide when and if they stop investigating not the media or the public.

They must have a reason they need extra funding.

If it turns out a paedophile has murdered Maddie and he is caught after murdering another child, you don't think there would be outrage that the police had stopped looking into Maddie's case?

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/117793/missing-persons-strategy.pdf

This is an interesting publication. Granted its from 2011 but it shows the average cost of investigation of a missing person is £1,000. The total spend was £500m over 5 years.

There are hundreds of thousands of cases in the UK alone.

It puts into perspective just how much has been spent investigating in one case.

Playing devils advocate, £11 million could have saved many lives in other areas. Maybe some might be outraged at that?

Without any knowledge of what theyre actually working on Id be shocked if the police were truely at a stage where they are inches away from solving the case that they need funds for 6 months to get it done.  From the sounds of it, it seems pretty desperate, like theyve still got some avenues of enquiry but nothing concrete.  If they were so close to solving it then surely they would make a statement to that effect to raise public interest.

Agree with the point made earlier too, after this long Id just be shocked if she is still alive.  Especially with the big campaign to find her, the culprit would have to be so confident that they didnt leave any evidence to keep her alive and not dispose of the body.

I'd be very surprised if she is still alive.

But whoever took her/killed her needs catching.

I can't believe how much apathy about the fact a murdering paedophile is possibly to blame for this and no one seems to care much.

The question for me is:

Was this some of money spent by the police because of the strength of the leads the police had at the time and any leads they have now

or

was it spend because the case caught public interest and was carried so strongly by the media

Are they announcing this extra fund to get to a place where they can stop the search

that apathy is,imo

distaste for the parents actions on the night and (not condoning this) the a widespread view that the parents were culpable if not responsible (and some think they did it)

distaste for the book deals, appointing BBC correspondents as PR agents etc

concern at the £11-15m (depending what you read) spent on the investigation

time lapsed since disappearance

however unfair that is.

Spot on......the latter imo. The McCanns were very savvy in keeping this case in the public eye. It hit a sweet spot with the media too, middle class doctors, cute blonde daughter etc....

If any parent lost a child they would do anything to get them back. Or at the very least find out what has happened to them.

Everything the McCann's have done they've judged makes it more likely for them to find out what happened.

So many heartless fuckers around, I hope they never suffer the unspeakable agony of losing a child.

Ofcourse the McCann's must do everything possible, its a parents worst nightmare.

Probably even worse for them as privately they must blame themselves. That would tip many people over the edge.

I don't think its apathy - the authorities have spent a lot of time and money but there comes a point (I'm not being heartless just realistic and pragmatic) where the money is better spent elsewhere, finding others/saving lives etc

Let's accept there is a murdering paedophile getting away with this.. even if we don't know that. Everyone cares, but everyone except a complete nutter recognises if he's got away with it this long then he'll probably get away with it whether you spend £11m , £11,154,000, £12m or £13m so it is an obvious waste of resources.

We personalise cases like this for what reason I can't imagine. If we're apathetic, it's about things like the lack of resources deployed to kill stone dead things like, organised grooming gangs, modern slavery, human trafficking, all damaging more lives under our noses than a paedophile in Portugal and much easier to track and do something about.

In cases like this, it is very much a case of 'the squeaky wheel gets the grease'. If the Mail/Sun/Express keep running the stories then the police will keep spending the money as that potential 'bad story' (wasting money) is a better bad story than 'HEARTLESS COPS ABANDON OUR POOR MADDIE'.

The McCanns are entirely right to do whatever they can to keep the story going because as soon as the stories stop, the investigation stops.

Wise words, good brevity too

It was down to the police to tell us what went wrong at Hillsborough. Perhaps it's just as well we didn't leave them to it and say "They must know what they're doing"

At what point would you stop trying to catch him? What limit would you set to spending on one case? It cannot be that there is no limit.

I often hear people saying that there should be no limit on spending for several things - various aspects of education, healthcare, policing, etc. They also say things like "one case is too many" regarding paedophilia, abuse, some illnesses and so on. This is clearly nonsense. We don't have unlimited funds and we cannot pour all our resources into a single issue, so we satisfice and ration them out. The hard truth is that we make a decision to accept a certain level of all these terrible crimes, diseases, etc, as additional amounts continue to produce declining benefit for each extra pound spent. Not only do we ration out our funds between hard cases, but we reserve some amounts from them entirely and spend them on 'frivalous' activities, as the benefits to general society from that are deemed to be worth more than the marginal benefit of spending still more on the hard cases.

Just because there is a paedophile on the loose doesn't mean we would bankrupt ourselves to find him. There are many other paedophiles and many other calls for our funds. So when would you stop spending on one case? And 'never' is not an option.

It's very simple. I would stop spending when the police officer in charge of the case says, "We have exhausted all avenues of inquiry. Unless new evidence comes to light I think the case should be closed".

We don't listen to experts enough any more.

Unless the authorities are on the brink of a breakthrough, it looks like its gonna be £154k down the toilet. If £11m and many years hasn't unearthed any decent leads, not sure what they hope to achieve with £154k in 6 months.

As sad as it is, you just gotta close the curtains at some point.

The Claudia Lawrence case has been pretty similar; middle class, her father had a very respectable job (escapes me now but maybe a lawyer or similar), they've done plenty to try and keep the case in the public eye despite the lack of leads or fresh evidence. Earlier this year the police said they were 'scaling down' the operation. Not sure what else they can really do, and ditto for the people in charge of the hunt for Maddie.

All our publicly-funded experts are competing for funds from the same pot. If one gets more, another one gets less. There has to be some point where you would take it out of his hands. Otherwise you are misusing resources that should be employed better elsewhere. I would say we are already way past that point. But you must have some point where you cut it off. Would you let him rack it up to £100m?

They would have saved £11 million if they had followed this advice all those years ago.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/2234652/McCanns-friends-anger-as-Portuguese-police-close-Madeleine-case.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/madeleinemccann/2234652/McCanns-friends-anger-as-Portuguese-police-close-Madeleine-case.html)

Once upon a time I read a book called "Hoods" (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hoods-Gangs-Nottingham-Study-Organised-ebook/ - the book review is that it probably started out interesting, but by the time the lawyers said "well, you can't say that, you'll be sued!" there was little of interest left). One of the things I found interesting about it is the idea that the police have lots of cases on the go where they are pretty sure there are some hoodlums who are doing some nefarious activity, but to actually get enough evidence to convict someone takes time and effort and they don't have the budget to look at all of them so they have to prioritise.

My point is that there is usually something else you can do with any case, and the police have lots of cases they are never going to get to the bottom of due to lack of resources. So to say:


means ignoring some other cases that also haven't exhausted all avenues of inquiry.