h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

kea, I agree absolutely with that.

Also I can imagine not being happy to trust the available baby sitting service and thinking they had made suitable alternative arrangements. In the majority of cases it probably would have been OK. Unfortunately life isn't perfect & there are always exceptions where things go wrong. It's a matter of assessing risk to attempt to minimise any potential danger.

What I do find irritating is the McCanns' apparent failure to acknowledge that they may have made a poor judgement. Hearing Gerry McCann on TV making the statement 'We played no part in the disappearance of our beautiful daughter..' made me want to say 'Yes, you did, you left her alone'.

However, I do deplore this trial by media - petitions & the like. Speculation in a forum like this is one thing, but rabble rousing is quite another.

"One thing to consider is if this was a one off situation, and nothing had gone wrong, would you want them to be criminally charged for neglect?"

Yes.

Next bit sounds off topic, but stick with it. I paraglide. It's a risky activity. I read a brilliant article the other day about decision making. If you think that it's OK for 99% of your decisions to be good ones, you won't last long paragliding. Flying requires, conservatively, perhaps fifty critical decisions per hour. So every two hours, you're going to make a bad decision. And if a bad decision has no consequence, it may go unrecognised and be repeated. So perhaps your rate goes down to 98%. So every single hour you're in the air, you make a bad decision. And still it doesn't bite you - yet. And your rate goes down again. Sooner or later - and most likely sooner - one of your bad decisions will NOT be free of consequence.

The author's point was to examine EVERY decision, to recognise the bad ones, EVEN IF they don't result in a bad consequence, and to resolve not to repeat them. To aim, basically, for 100% good decision making, because even a 99% rate could kill you in an average flying year.



Back to parenting. Bad decisions there don't affect you directly, they affect a defenseless child. And some bad decisions may be hard to spot - is it a bad decision to send them to school A rather than school B? But some bad decisions are, it must be said, a no-brainer. Do I leave my small children unattended for a significant amount of time while I go out for dinner? NO, DUMBASS, YOU DON'T!

My point is, these bad decisions should be *punished*, because if they're not, they encourage more bad decisions. "It was OK last time" is a terrible thing to think. Going back to aviation - if you were on a plane going on holiday (to Portugal, say), and the pilot came on and said "Right, we're in a hurry this morning, ladies and gentlemen, so we've not bothered with the preflight checks, but it should be OK, they were alright last time...". And the plane gets there OK... Should that pilot be resting easy? Or should he be fired? Again - a no brainer.

Nobody asks to be born, nobody is forced to be a parent. And if anyone chooses to be a parent, they damn well better take the responsibility seriously.

"I would hate to see them criminally charged because they were struggling to manage being a parent."

Deliberately and with forethought deciding not to pay for a childminding service is not "struggling to manage" anything.

SoRB

I agree that putting children at risk should not be ignored, but even so, I'm not sure that criminal charges would be the best course of action. Depends what the outcome was. Parenting classes? A fine? Imprisonment?

Generally parents need information & support to do better rather than be criminalised.

Gosh - there's a lot of posts here that would previously been modded.

I don't think criminalising every parent who leaves their child alone is the answer - however I would question their suitability for care of their two other children.

I think social services should be talking to every parent in that group, and asking "why ?" Couldn't one parent have stayed behind if there was a problem with the baby sitting service ?

They had the whole holiday to take turns in child care - but chose to do this instead - that is so far beyond a bad decision its untrue.

>>>>I think social services should be talking to every parent in that group, and asking "why ?" Couldn't one parent have stayed behind if there was a problem with the baby sitting service ?

They had the whole holiday to take turns in child care - but chose to do this instead - that is so far beyond a bad decision its untrue. <<<<


I agree. Had this happened in the UK, this is what would have happened, surely? Not to preempt the outcome, of course, but the questions need to be asked.

Kea, I don't believe this was an isolated incident. The children had all been left like this previously during the holiday. Also, there is a discrepancy in the timing that. All this has been reported by the good ole Beeb... Why should they not be charged with wilful neglect? I am not certain they would be convicted but surely due process should take place?

There are many many women and parents who struggle desperately to raise their children at the very least safely. Can there be an excuse for parents with the full education, a large and very supportive family, a wide network of friends and enough money to pay for a collective nanny, presumably, to be excused the responsibility of keeping their children safe? It is not permissible to leave toddlers at home in the UK and go out. Why would anyone consider doing this in a foreign country?

Think of it, if I had left my three under fours at home in the UK and gone down the high street for a drink and a meal with friends, and something had happened to a child while I was away - what legal repercussions would there be for me? Would people be saying that I had a Master's degree, was widely travelled and privately educated? What on earth has that to do with anything?? Would they be saying that maybe I had a hard time raising kids? Would people be saying that they don't have all the information? Is that not precisely why an action should be brought against me - to investigate further and make a judgement with due legal process as to the consequences I should bear for my utter carelessness and stupidity?? Should I then be allowed to continue to have responsibility for two infants?

There are significant differences between pilots and parents though. Not everyone is cut out the be a pilot. Not everyone is cut out to be a parent either but the percentage of the population fit for parenting is going to be way higher than those that could be a pilot.

Secondly, pilots receive *extensive training and flight experience before being put in the situations of highest responsibility. Parents generally don't have any training at all.

It doesn't surprise me SoRB that you came up with that comparison, but it doesn't seem to be based on anything real in terms of children and parenting.

If you want to prosecute every parent who's made a mistake when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of their child, then you'd be prosecuting most parents.


>>
Deliberately and with forethought deciding not to pay for a childminding service is not "struggling to manage" anything.<<

You don't know all the factors involved though, none of us here do.

So, hypothetically - if a parent chose to go with the childminding service and their child had gone missing because the childminding service was incompetent, then should the parents still be prosecuted? Because according to your rules they made a bad decision in chosing that service. In real life though, raising children is never that black and white.


I think a better analogy would be comparing parenting to medical practice (although the point about training still stands). If I am a surgeon and a patient dies, how do we determine if it was murder, manslaughter, malpractice, negligence, accident, or otherwise out of my control?

"You don't know all the factors involved though, none of us here do."

There was a babysitting service available.
The parents could afford to use the babysitting service.
They made a CHOICE not to use the babysitting service multiple times while they went out on the lash.

Just what other factors do we need to consider Kea? Because I really can't think of why you keep trotting out that "we don't know all the factors" soundbyte.

Wilma, I understand where you are coming from, and I do think that where parents neglect or put their children at risk there needs to be intervention from outside of the family.

I just think that in this case there is no way to know what really happened from reading the media.

Even with the facts that you lay out, I want to say but hang on, they didn't go out for the evening and leave their kids alone. They went across the road*, and had a system for regularly checking in on the kids. There is quite a difference between those two scenarios (not that I think the latter is necessarily ok, but it is different).

*I'm not that clear about how far away they really were.


In terms of the class issue, I agree there are problems. It's part of why I'm avoiding the media coverage - I find the whole money backed campaign stuff really horrible, and I know that if the family were poor and non-white, there'd be all sorts of different things going on.

For the most part my comments are general ones, rather than about the McCanns. But I don't think any of us here are in a position to be the jury on that case. We simply don't have enough information.

>>>>>>I think social services should be talking to every parent in that group, and asking "why ?" Couldn't one parent have stayed behind if there was a problem with the baby sitting service ?

They had the whole holiday to take turns in child care - but chose to do this instead - that is so far beyond a bad decision its untrue. <<<<
<<

Presumably the children were in different hotel rooms so you couldn't have one parent staying with them all?

>>
"You don't know all the factors involved though, none of us here do."

There was a babysitting service available.
The parents could afford to use the babysitting service.
They made a CHOICE not to use the babysitting service multiple times while they went out on the lash.

Just what other factors do we need to consider Kea? Because I really can't think of why you keep trotting out that "we don't know all the factors" soundbyte.
<<

Ok, then answer these:

Why did all those parents make the choice they did?

What factors were involved?

How does the childminding service work?

Have there been any problems with that particular service, or similar ones?

Have any of those families has problems with childminding services in the past?


*

You do understand of course that I'm not saying they made the right decision.

Kea, I won't speak for the others but in my own defence, I am not looking to be the jury. I want the questions posed in a court of law and not the media circus we now have. Let the law decide, not the Daily Hate readers...

You might want to include a word in this one -

Have any of those families had problems with [Portuguese] childminding services in the past?

They left their kids alone in a foreign country they hardly know.

kea said: <>

May I direct you in the backlog to McKay's posting 120:
F135418?thread=4466213&skip=100&show=20

Quote: I actually stayed in that resort - and know where they are talking about. The photos in the paper give the impression that the room and the tapas bar are fairly close together - I would estimate the distance at about 75 yards. I can't say any closer than that because that 75 yards involves walking across a swimming pool, scaling an 8 foot high wall then climbing the vertical wall of the apartments. The way I would have travelled is at least 200 yards, then up however many flights of stairs. Every 15 minutes.
End Quote

"There are significant differences between pilots and parents though."

Duh.

"Not everyone is cut out the be a pilot. Not everyone is cut out to be a parent either"

Which is another way in which they're similar.

"but the percentage of the population fit for parenting is going to be way higher than those that could be a pilot."

You know what? I think you're wrong. Not that it matters. But if I ruled the world, the tests you'd have to pass before being allowed to be a parent would be harder than the ones for pilots...

"It doesn't surprise me SoRB that you came up with that comparison"

Pedantic point, but it wasn't a comparison. It was an analogy. Obviously being a pilot doesn't compare to being a parent. But there are useful parallels, and the one about getting away with bad decisions leading to more bad decisions is, I think, a useful one.

"but it doesn't seem to be based on anything real in terms of children and parenting."

See above.

"If you want to prosecute every parent who's made a mistake when it comes to the safety and wellbeing of their child, then you'd be prosecuting most parents."

Show me where I mentioned prosecuting anyone? I don't think the McCanns should necessarily be prosecuted for leaving their kids alone. What I do think, however, is that their two remaining children should be placed in responsible institutional care *immediately*, as would likely have already happened if Kate McCann's name was Sharon and she had tattoos.

"You don't know all the factors involved though, none of us here do. "

Blah blah. Change the record. We don't know all the factors. We know ENOUGH factors. Maybe not for you, but most people here seem satisfied, based on the UNDISPUTED facts of the case, that some shockingly poor parenting decisions were made, and more to the point, have been got away with. Nobody even seems to have bothered to defend them.

SoRB

Doctors are more academically intelligent than alot of other people. When it comes to common sense and decision-making they are no different.

'We do not know all the factors...' we know enough:

Nine parents,
Some Doctors (i.e. not short of a shilling)
Cheap-skate decision not to pay for regular checks on their children.
Go for cheap option of checking themselves...while they are out enjoying themselves.
This checking occurs over a number of nights.
A child goes missing.

No other facts/factors are relevant - they were on holiday - there were no other pressing matters to attend to etc etc etc

From the official Mark Warner Ocean club site, this is what they say about their childcare facilities:

<>

zdt

Not necessarily cheapskate. That's a judgement made without knowing their reasoning. We don't know enough about the service on offer.

I wouldn't rely on a unfamiliar babysitters or a service that e.g. didn't have someone in the chalet with the children all the time/didn't have satisfactory childcare qualifications/didn't speak good english.

Do we know how many children were inolved? Did each check involve one parent visiting all the different bedrooms?

Sorry, simulpost there.

Even so, doesn't sound the sort of facility I'd want to use. But then, I wouldn't do what the McCanns did either.

Some independent reviews of the resort, some mention the childcare facilities.

http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g189117-d229314-r5835313-Ocean_Club_Luz-Lagos_Algarve.html

zdt

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