The Mikaeel Kular Investigation.

With the US' Rihanna operation turning into a bit of a ghost town the UK has decided that it is now their moment in the spotlight. For this the UK has been relying on its favourite topic- child sex abuse. So in the past week we've had a frankly less then earth shattering BBC News investigation that British paedophiles use Internet web-cams to sexually abuse children in specifically the Philippines and by implication Thailand and Cambodia.

This past week has also seen the start of several high-profile celebrity child sex abuse trials stemming from the Jimmy Savile investigation. The most notable of these has been the trial of William Roache. Through a very bizarre interview about child-sex abuse given to New Zealand television Roache was of course used to lay out the UK's objectives for Rihanna's concerts in Australia and New Zealand.

The problem is that the UK seems to be constantly going on about child sex abuse as if it were one of its favourite hobbies. Therefore all these trials and news investigations have somewhat faded into the general background noise. So in an effort to add an element of interest stirring drama to the issue we've had the search for Mikaeel Kular a three year old boy who was reported missing from his bed in Scotland by his mother at around 07:15 on Thursday (16/1/14). As it has always seemed unlikely that a three year old would be able to get dressed and leave the family apartment building on his own the suspicion has always been that he was kidnapped by paedophiles.

With no evidence to prove otherwise though the police began by treating this as a missing persons case and appealed to the local and national media for help. This led to the case getting almost wall to wall coverage with Sky News in particular seeming to cover no other news story. The police search operation seems to have been pretty standard with the police setting up a cordoned off search area and then bringing lots of extra officers to methodically search this large cordoned area. On Friday (17/1/14) the police set up search teams made up of members of the public supervised by the police. This was extremely similar to the scenes that followed the disappearance of April Jones in October 2012.

Despite all these well intentioned search efforts the thing that has been at the back of everybody's mind is that Mikaeel mother's claim that she put him to bed at around 21:00 on Wednesday (15/1/14) and then overnight he either voluntarily left or was kidnapped from the family home without her noticing is a little difficult to believe. That draws comparisons between this case and the Madeline McCann case whose parents claim was abducted by Saudi Arabian, paedophile, gypsy people smugglers from their holiday villa in Portugal in 2007. Everyone else though thinks that the McCanns simply killed their daughter and were then forced to make up increasingly elaborate lies to cover up that fact.

Since then the McCann case has become a device for the UK to discuss a whole range of things will a whole range of people but has always been focused on the UK's difficult relationship with the European Union (EU). For example there is currently a UK led police investigation into the McCann case going on in Portugal which is rumoured to be on the brink of yielding fresh breakthroughs and the Portuguese detective originally in charge of the case is currently on trial for liable over a book in which he claimed Madeline McCann was killed by her parents.

At around 00:00 today (when I'm normally looking at porn) the police announced that they had discovered a body in a house far outside the search area. Pending formal identification the police believe the body to be that of Mikaeel Kular. It has since emerged that the house in which the body was found belongs to Mikaeel's aunt, used to be his family home and his mother has been detained by the police. Due to a small foible with the Scottish legal system "detained" in Scotland means basically the same as "arrested" does in the rest of the UK and in Scotland "arrested" means basically the same as "charged" does in the rest of the UK. This is actually quite similar to the aguido system used in Portugal.

So while I think the primary purpose is to cause confusion within the EU and beyond the UK's position does seem to have shifted from criticising Portugal for claiming that Madeline McCann was killed by her parents to criticising Portugal for conducting too sloppy an investigation to prove that Madeline McCann was killed by her parents.

Finally along with the Glasgow helicopter crash this seems intended to give the impression of stoking up anti-UK feeling within Scotland ahead of the 2014 referendum on independence which at the moment is pretty much a done deal for the "No" campaign.


11:35 on 18/1/14 (UK date).