Update

8.10pm - BBC News 24 repeats that the description by the Portugese Police may match that "of suspect Robert Murat": "The police do not yet have the evidence to charge Robert Murat...", etc. What do the BBC know?

BBC News 24 puts a big foot in it

The Portugese police have this evening described a suspect. BBC News 24's correspondent in Portugal has, during a live broadcast this evening (around 7.00pm), named checked (at least 4 or 5 times) Robert Murat as the suspect.

If he is not charged the BBC will have to dig deep.

Objectivity or insensitivity?

A very modern melodrama and our shrine to Madeleine - David Aaronovitch in The Times:

"But why put a picture of Madeleine in your window, 500 miles from the Algarve? “If I thought it would help show solidarity”, writes one contributor to the BBC website, “why not? I wear a poppy on Remembrance Day, a lapel badge for breast cancer awareness, why not a ribbon for Mad-die? So what?” Those who question this are described as “miserable devils”....There are many ways of being “overly helpful”, but all suggest the possibility of guilt. In our case it may be that the abduction of Madeleine McCann has become, essentially, a bad form of entertainment and that, deep down, we know it."

In chatrooms and message boards, Madeleine hysteria grips the world - Emma Brockes in the Guardian.

"It was the point at which big business started to get involved, however - BAA, the British airports operator, is carrying the "help find Madeleine" message on its website - and yellow ribbons began appearing on all benches in the House of Commons, that people started to feel a little uneasy. While the BBC flew out Huw Edwards to look apocalyptic, live from Praia Da Luz, people started to ask how much of this was actually helping, and why people were doing it...Of course, at root, people only want to help. But their exaggerated responses look from some angles like self-gratification. "Help us," wrote one group of people who had never met the McCanns, to another group equally remote from them. "Missing for two weeks now please forward to anyone abroad - she may be as far away as Bolivia or Colombia or the USA," wrote someone else, hyperbolically, and lots of people pondered and responded to the indefensible posting "imagine what she's feeling?""

Sanity?

On the 'Official Website to find Madeleine McCann': 'Website Update at 19:00PM on 18th of May 2007 Over 65 Million hits!'

This is really not feeling right. The website includes a news section, with links to newspaper and online news reports. Given the speculation and detail in such reports. how does that help with the search?

This blog does not allow comments (because I cannot guarantee the time to check them), but by all means slag me off on your blog if you think I am out of order.

Sanity...at last: Madeleine McCann

It is not healthy, proportionate or even helpful. Indeed, the media's obsessive coverage is now verging on the scary. We may not have seen coverage and responses like this since the week following the death of Diana in 1997.

The Guardian website has buried a much needed article by Simon Jenkins, but here it is:

"The media coverage of the missing McCann child has largely escaped censure. This is because it concerns an ongoing tragedy and because the grief of those directly involved is so real. Neither justifies freedom from comment. The coverage has been absurdly over the top and cannot have served the interests of the family, or the eventual cause of justice."

The British media does not do responsibility. It does stories

Votes for babies?

It is good that England has a Children's Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green. But who knows what he does?

This week the Office of the Children's Commissioner relaunched. It is now called '11 million'. There has been some criticism of the relaunch which cost £93,000. The Commissioner receives £3 million a year from the government, but given the problems many children and young people face that is small beer. But the question still stands: what does the Commissioner do?

Well, according to his 5 year plan he will: "Gather the views of children from birth to adulthood". That sounds laudable as...no, hang on, does it really say "from birth"! Bizarrely it does and he seems to mean it: "We will gather the views of babies by observing their interaction and using parents or carers as representatives [emphasis added]."

What the hell will the report on the views of babies say? Someone pinch me.

Brown already PM?

Um, perhaps a bit presumptuous? Today Brown accepted the nomination by MPs for the leadership of the Labour Party and there is no opponent, but does this mean that there will not be a vote by the party membership?

Brown is deservedly a shoe-in but doesn't he still have to be formally elected? He will be PM but isn't there a process to go through? Seems not. Brown said today: "I am honoured that the Party has chosen me...I will lead a new government with new priorities..." Etc.

The Independent has called for Tony Blair to go now.

To those commentators who claim that Brown never says 'New Labour' he said it today.

Sunday cinema

OK, it was a wet Sunday afternoon and the after-effect of last night's Eurovision Song Contest had yet to wear off, but Blades of Glory was not that bad a film. Very silly but quite funny, if entirely predictable; but then wasn't Titanic - were you surprised when the ship sank? Exactly.

It's the economy...

Well this is a tad depressing: Gloomy Greenspan warns of recession for US economy

'New figures showed retail sales in the US unexpectedly tumbled last month, hit by a double whammy of higher petrol prices and a crumbling housing market.'

As they say: when America sneezes, shares in Kleenex go through the roof.

Blue nun?

This made me chuckle on the bus to Oxford Street this morning - from Simon Hoggart's week in today's Guardian:

Dreadful but funny joke number 872: The mother superior gathers the nuns into the refectory. "I have to tell you," she says gravely, "that there is a case of gonorrhoea in the convent." A voice at the back pipes up: "Yippee! I am so fed up with Chardonnay!"

Well, it made me laugh.

A truly great Prime Minister?

David Cameron may be chocking on his Weetabix after reading Peter Oborne in today's Daily Mail:

"For the first time in his life, Gordon Brown was obliged to
perform gracefully. He was forced to present himself not just as a finance minister, but as a national leader.

He needed to present himself not only as a desiccated calculating machine, but also as a fully paid-up member of the human race.

And he didn't do badly at all! He smiled a great deal more than usual, and some of these smiles seemed natural. His speech contained a number of daring and interesting ideas."

But, in an interesting article, Oborne goes on to describe the 'two sides' of Brown based on interviews for a Dispatches programme on Monday:

"As our research progressed, one fact became utterly clear: there are two Gordon Browns. On the one side there is a man of overwhelming private charm and kindness...Again and again, we were told how charming and engaging Gordon Brown is in private, of his concern and engagement with others....

And yet there were others who offered us equally convincing accounts of a contradictory side of Gordon Brown. They told us how he could regularly snub and humiliate those who threatened or crossed him in any way. He was a man capable of showing an incredible indifference to people...

And yet, at the same, we heard accounts of the Chancellor's receptiveness to ideas and great warmth to outsiders, which contradicted the numerous and authoritative accounts of his rudeness."

Brown is a complex character, but tellingly its the 'private' side which is so overwhelmingly positive, the side so few people know of. You can't be Chancellor for 10 years and not make political enemies - the people he has upset have not been backward in contributing to the picture of a dour vengeful politician. The surprising thing, given Brown's reputation as a 'tough' Chancellor, is not that there are civil servants and career politicians he has fallen out with (or who have fallen out with him), but that there are not more of them.

Underbelly IV

14 and counting. Blimey.

Update: 19.