April Jones: Kay Burley makes them weep as troll-faced Amanda Platell spots paedos everywhere
APRIL Jones: The five-year-old went missing from the Bryn Y Gog estate in Machynlleth, Wales. The news round-up:
Daily Mail (front page): “April’s family release poignant new photos as hope for her fades”
Daily Mirror (front page): I saw April driven off”
“Witness says he was the last to see her alive”
Armchair detectives know that the last person to see anyone live is a suspect in that person’s unexplained demise. But April Jones might be alive. We don’t know.
AN OAP saw a car speed away from the spot where April Jones vanished. The distraught 70-year-old said moments earlier he had seen her playing with pals but she suddenly disappeared. As the hunt for April, five, became a murder inquiry yesterday, he added: “I’m kicking myself that I did not raise the alarm.”
Reports are that April Jones got willingly into a car. Why would any alarm be raised?
The man said: “I was home on Monday night as usual and saw little April playing outside with her friends…A driver kept cruising up and down the road where the kids were playing…I noticed the car parked up next to the garages which was strange because no one would park there usually…But suddenly they weren’t there and I noticed the car drive briskly down the road towards the town centre.”
The i (front page): “Search for April becomes hunt for body”
The Times (front pages): “April was almost certainly murdered, parents are told”
Daily Star (front page): “Tragic April: Now it’s murder”
SKY News TV host Kay Burley was slated yesterday after she told volunteers live on screen that police now assume April Jones was murdered. Burley, 51, then asked them: “How do you feel about that?” as the pair, who had been searching for April, collapsed in tears.
They did not collapse. There is no need for the Star to exaggerate the hideousness. You can see it here.
The Express has news on Mark Bridger:
Two of his children, Sophie, nine, and Connor, 13, live in the street and their step-sister Erin, four, was one of April’s best friends. Relatives confirmed former lifeguard Bridger took Sophie and Connor crabbing. Her parents Coral and Paul let April go with her friends. The family’s spokeswoman said: “This summer Mark took his kids on a crabbing trip to the coast north of Machynlleth and April went with them in the LandRover. He was taking Sophie and Connor so Erin and April went along too. Nobody in the family thought anything of it at the time.”
Bridger’s ex-girlfriend Elaine Dafydd, who is Sophie and Connor’s mother, is also a close friend of April’s family.
The Telegraph has news of why April Jones was playing outside:
The five-year-old would not normally have been outside as late as 7pm, when dusk was falling in her home of Machynlleth, Powys, but her mother and father wanted to reward her for working so hard at school.
Over in the Daily Mail, Amanda Platell is revolting:
Two words to haunt any mum: ‘If only . . . There can be no mother in Britain more moved by the plight of little April Jones than Kate McCann.
It’s a competition? For Platell, Our Maddie as the benchmark of all missing children. This is Platell, who once opined:
I hesitate to use such a phrase, but it seems, at times, as if we are witnessing “competitive grieving”, with the McCanns? private agony becoming a public sport… the real problem now for the McCanns is that the public at large will grow weary of these orchestrated photo opportunities…
Today, Platell notes:
Like April’s mother, Coral, Kate knows the searing pain of losing a young daughter she thought was safe. And she knows the torment of that constant nagging thought, ‘If only…’
If only she hadn’t left her outside. If only she’d been with her family.
April Jones was not “left” outside. She was allowed outside to play with her mates by her family home on a quite road in a quite village. Her parents were in the family house close by.
When Madeleine McCann went missing five years ago, the beautiful little girl was almost four years old — a year younger than April. Over the ensuing weeks, Gerry and Kate suffered the cruel vilification of strangers who accused them of parental neglect.
Looks matter?
How could any loving parents leave Maddie and their young twins alone in an apartment in an Algarve resort while they and their friends wined and dined nearby, the critics asked.
Indeed. Get this from Platell on 25 July 2008:
It wasn’t just their precious daughter that was missing at Monday’s press conference, but also any reference to their own behaviour on that dreadful night when they went out wining and dining and left their beloved children untended in an unlocked holiday flat…If the couple were now to spend as much time campaigning against the dangers of parents leaving children alone as they are apparently spending trying to seek financial recompense, then the nightmare of Madeleine’s disappearance might have one positive legacy.
Platell now says:
Mercifully, Coral Jones has not been subjected to similar accusations. Yet.
April Jones is missing. A man is in police custody, arrested for her alleged kidnap and murder. The man is Mark Bridger. No-one has ever been arrested in connection with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. Some, like the McCanns and Robert Murat, have been libelled. We do not know what happened to the child. The police do have a pretty good idea what happened to April Jones.
Platell:
For what parent does not have a tale of the moment they thought they had lost their child — whether in a supermarket, on holiday, or in the park.
Is she really equating the disappearance of a child – the thought that a young girl has been murdered – with getting separated for a few moments? April Jones was not “lost”. The police believe she was kidnapped.
The terrible truth is that no child is ultimately safe away from their parents, whether it be a luxury resort in Portugal or a rural idyll in Wales.
Two rare events. And Amanda Platell is here to spread the fear. Only parents can keep a child safe, says Platell. Parents never do any wrong to their children, says Platell. Strangers must be feared, says she. Strangers are all potential paedos, says Platell. She needs to get out more.
But before the trolls take to the internet, let nobody doubt that whatever unfolds in the days ahead, April’s parents will be their own harshest critics…
Only a nutter would think April Jones’s parents have done anything wrong. Only an opportunistic troll with a column to fill would put that idea of paper.
Posted: 6th, October 2012 | In: Key Posts, Madeleine McCann, Reviews Comments (10) | TrackBack | Permalink
