It is a national outrage (depending on which segment of society you hail from) and it is certainly something that impacts all elements of the UK. It is also subject to a strangely twisted world view.

I am talking about oil prices (and petrol prices specifically).

For us poor Brits, the average price of petrol (gasoline for our colonial brethren) is now £1.05 per litre. This is approximately $7.91 a gallon. For some people it makes owning a car financially crippling (to the great joy of some “green” lobbyists), and it also has the knock on effect of making public transport prices increase to the point of stupidity. Given the way modern society works, not having access to affordable transport is fatal. Using plain old me as an example, my “commute” to work leaves me driving at an average of 23 miles per hour which is far from economical with the fuel – however there is no public transport which covers the route, it too far to walk (20 miles) and for various reasons cycling is not an option. I have no choice but to foot the big assed fuel bill each month (best part of a gallon each way…).

As you can imagine, fuel prices annoy me. A few years ago we had all manner of protests over the UK when road haulage firms complained about the high tax rates, but despite this pump prices have been steadily rising every few months. Breaking the £1 per litre mark was once thought to be so outrageous as to never happen. Ha.

The government tax fuel at 65%, pretty high really. I don’t actually have a problem with this in general terms as it provides a phenomenal source of revenue for the country. This is, normally, a GOODTHING™©. However, despite this source of revenue, a tax which is claimed to exist at least partly to encourage people to reduce personal transport usage, is not being used to provide good quality public transport.

Whenever people complain about the monstrous cost of vehicle fuels, the oil companies are always quick to point the finger of blame on the government’s massive fuel tax. And, on the surface, this seems reasonable as 65% tax is high. If you take the oil companies at face value, they are charging the minimum they can get away with to recoup their costs and pay their taxes. Aren’t they all saintly?

Today, one of the headline news items read “Shell sets new UK profits record.”

Wow. How can these two versions of reality be reconciled?

If, as they claim, the high cost of oil is solely dependant on the government imposed tax how is Shell managing to turn £13.9 BILLION in profit? That is in the region of £230 per person in the UK. For that, they could strike off 30p a litre on fuel and still be making a phenomenal profit – not to mention the massive amount of extra sales they would get.

It really makes my head spin to think that Shell (and presumably the other oil companies) are happy to commiserate with the public about the high price of oil while at the same time gouging a monstrous profit. Petrol prices may suffer from high taxes, but the root cause of their bank-balance-busting status is the uncontrolled greed of the oil companies. At least the governments tax makes its way back to the nation…

The Mail on Sunday has a picture of a “Portuguese drifter” who is the “spitting image” of the “Madeleine suspect.” The only response to this is “I spit on your image recognition capacities…” Apart from longish dark hair, there are no points of resemblance between the absurd “sketch” and the photograph of a newspaper-delivery man who lives 80 miles away.

And let’s get back to the “witness” who claims this is the same man.

Well, blow me down with a copy of the Mail folded in a fan shape, who is it but “Witness Gail Cooper”

Witness Gail Cooper, who saw a man lurking near children in Praia da Luz just days before Madeleine vanished, said Mr Agostinho was “the spitting image” of the man she saw.

I must mention that Gail Coper’s holiday was OVER before the McCanns stepped off the plane. She can only be a “witness” to there having been a person in that area that she – with her strangely unparallelled knowledge of the secret hearts of men – regarded as looking disreputable. (He walked in the rain and looked a bit Moroccan – prima facie evidence of guilt to Middle England.)

Gail Cooper’s shady-looking Moroccan doesn’t quite constitute a

latest e-fit of a possible kidnapper.

A “possible kidnapper”,? This must be only in the sense that anyone spotted in Praia da Luz who wasn’t an English holiday-maker somehow fits this role? (Set aside such niceties as how you define kidnapping. Doesn’t that mean capturing someone for ransom?) There is still no evidence of a kidnap.

No matter how many self-serving detectives earn their fees by keeping these unproven theories on the front pages of the tabloids, there is NO EVIDENCE that Madeleine was kidnapped or abducted. There appears to be no convincing evidence of what happened.

Hence, I favour an alien abduction theory. If the press or the McCann machine will pay me, I will willingly go into space and search for the alien abductors. The truth is surely out there.

The Mail on Sunday article suggests that the correct British holiday-maker response to seeing any unkempt Portuguese person speaking is to panic.

Moments later a woman raced out of a nearby villa, shouting and calling to the children, and then scooped them up and took them away from the man.

Harsh as this may sound, Mail readers – if you are frightened of anyone who’s not English, take your vacations in the West Country or the Lake District. Then, you can run to the local police if you accidentally spot anyone who looks vaguely North African….

Just to see how far the hysteria has spread:

Meanwhile a potential sighting of Madeleine in Chile with a man who looked like the Mrs Cooper sketch was ruled out by police.
Detectives were called to the Gabriel Mistral museum in Vicuna after a man spotted a girl who resembled Madeleine, but the girl was revealed to be American Haylee Dreyer, six, who was on holiday in Vicuna with her Chilean grandparents.

Urgent advice to anyone who looks a bit Iberian or Moroccan

Never go to a tourist spot with any young blonde female relatives.

Somebody PLEASE tell me how you can get a job where your employers don’t miss 4.9 billion Euros. ($7,156,009,000 according to http://www.oanda.com/convert/classic)

The Times story is headlined

Jerome Kerviel named in €5bn bank trading fraud
….
The French bank Société Générale stunned financial markets today by revealing that it had been the victim of a near-€5 billion (£3.7 billion) rogue trading fraud,

In the UK, Northern Rock also managed to lose a good few billion pounds without apparently noticing anything amiss. Now the tax payer is making up the shortfall, although for some mysterious financial logic it seems that benefiting Virgin is the appropriate way to sort this out….

Thefts of that order beggar belief. The CIA factbook puts the UK GDP per person at 318,000 US Dollar i.e 217,760 Euros, according to Wikipedia (yeah, yeah, this isn’t a University paper, ok?) That means, if I am interpreting a billion Euros correctly that the French bank lost the annual income of about 22,502 UK citizens. Or, alternatively, an amount that the average UK citizen would expect to pass through their hands if they lived 22,502 years.

US citizens are better off than UK citizens. The lost/stolen sum would only cover the annual income of 155,565 US citizens. According to Wikipedia, the world’s richest country, is Luxembourg. It would only cover the annual income of 88,564 Luxembourg residents. But then again, it would cover the annual income of 11,926,682 Malawi citizens….

So tell me again, please, how do I get a job where I can make off with this sort of money..

The newspaper shop displayed dozens of front pages showing what seemed to be a huge sketch of more malevolent George Harrison (ca 1970) . No, I finally realised it looked like an IRA hunger striker (same era.).

I looked more closely. My bad. The sketch clearly doesn’t show Posh & Becks, Britney Spears or Paris Hilton. It’s a UK tabloid. Ergo, it must have to do with the Madeleine McCann story. What a surprise! So it does.

This week’s McCann coverage has risen slightly above even its normal Alpine level. (IMAO. I have no statistics.) There have been stories about a planned film about the McCanns, denial of said film, suggestions that Madeleine has had eye surgery or got contact lenses to disguise her unusual eye. And so on.

However, the crime sketch-artist story is just pushing the envelope of preposterousness (No, I don’t know what “pushing the envelope” means either. I’m just using it to annoy, really.)

In the News of the World version, the most repellent themes of the media extravaganza are so perfectly expressed that the story deserves its own personalised kicking rant.

Some quotes from the NOW article:

A British woman who came face to face with the suspected Maddie McCann kidnapper revealed last night: “He made my blood run cold and gave me the creeps.”…
She said: “He was wandering about on the beach alone even though it was pouring down with rain. There wasn’t another soul about. …..
She added: “This man was very unpleasant and creepy. I’d put his age at 38 to 45. He was very scruffy and had a 70s-style black Mexican moustache. He wasn’t Portuguese—I think he was North African, either Tunisian or Moroccan.” (Source: News of the World)

Let’s temporarily ignore the fact that these “creepy man” sightings took place before the McCanns were even in the resort. And that it’s really hard to see why a sketch of something observed ten months ago can constitute new evidence.

Instead, consider some of the assumptions inside this guff.

• A woman from the UK can see into the souls of complete strangers on a brief sighting. (I also tend to act as if I can do this. I have even run out of local market on the grounds people looked so horrible. I put this down to projection and prejudice.)
• She can memorise individual details so well that a man seen in the rain can be instantly recognised days later, months later. She even claims that she can recall them today. (I stand shamed. I can barely remember enough details about people I’ve known all my life to give a sketch artist a decent start.)
• An attempted doorstep fraud instantly implies that the perpetrator is a kidnapper.(I usually just say “No, I definitely haven’t had a recent accident at work” or “No, I definitely haven’t welcomed Jesus Christ into my life.” I will now start saying “I believe you kidnapped Madeleine McCann and I claim my £500”)
• A sketch based on the memory of a nine-months-ago glimpse of said doorstep beggar constitutes evidence that would be seriously investigated were it not for the Clouseau-style incompetence of Johnny Foreigner’s police. (I plan to go to my local police station and inform them that the sketch chap is the missing Lord Lucan. As they are British rather than Euro Police, I assume they will cancel all overtime and set up a task force to follow up my lead.)

I could go on for pages. What really offends me is the innate prejudices that just ooze through this piece. It says: A North African is, by definition, creepy.

Mrs Cooper, a community healthcare co-ordinator from Newark, Notts, added: “In my job I have to assess people and make a judgement. My judgement is that this man was very suspicious and could have been the kidnapper everyone is searching for.

So, we might accept her character assessment expertise as valid, if this man was applying for a home careworker. However, I would even dispute this. Given that looking a bit unkempt and walking in the rain – Arrgh, that would often describe me – make her so instantly suspicious that I fear for her clients. If her employer provides “diversity awareness training,” maybe they should consider whether a refresher course is not overdue.

But what she is basiically saying, echoed by the McCann industry, the News of the World and uncritically reported even on the BBC site – “There was a potential Muslim there. A poor and probably criminal Muslim. You need look no further.”

The preposterous detective investigations, carried out on behalf of the McCanns, are determined to put the focus on Morocco and Algeria. You can’t really blame them for not wanting to pass up on the opportunity for exotic holidays on expenses.

Whenever a tourist spots a blonde Berber child (far from rare) anywhere in North Africa, they are identified as Madeleine.

Oddly, the idea that hair colour iis immutable seems to have penetrated the discourse. The People talks about disguising the child’s eye feature. But none of the media has thought for a moment how insanely simple it is to change blonde hair in a certain style to brown, black or red hair in a different style…. Dying, perms, hair cutting.. The UK now has many times more hairdressers than independent greengrocers. Surely someone has made the connection.

The iconic newspaper-selling power of the McCann story rests partly on the stereotypical “little blonde girl” image? This image is increasingly contrasted with alien enemies: the non-English speaking Portuguese police force and menacing exotic North Africans.

The coverage expresses the inherent xenophobia and outright racism of sections of the UK population much more blatantly than a dozen Big-Brother-spats.

If you can read Portuguese, Spanish and/or French – or at least use Babelfish – the continental European press has a much wider and more sceptical coverage of aspects of the story, including many points about the financing of the McCann campaign that would never get on to UK websites or into UK papers.