Here's what the intellectually challenged bovine has to say in the Daily Mail today:

Sorry, but I blame Scarlett Keeling's mother
Fiona MacKeown, the mother of Scarlett Keeling, the 15-year-old girl who was raped and murdered in Goa, seems less like a grieving mother than an avenging tigress.

With her swishing curtain of grey hair, Fiona is taking on a corrupt local police force which initially denied that her cub had been the victim of foul play.

"If police had taken more interest in previous [suspicious] deaths, then Scarlett might not be dead now," growled Fiona.

Maybe so. But isn't there an even better chance that Scarlett would still be alive if her own mother had not abandoned her for several weeks after an argument and recklessly continued her own holiday?

Instead the blonde teenager, as tempting as a ripe peach, was left in the care of a 25-year-old tour guide - a local man she'd only recently met.

I don't know what they call that in globe-trotting hippy circles. Back here on Planet Parent it's known as dereliction of duty.

Mrs MacKeown is now to be questioned by Goan police for negligence - a tactic she claims is a "disgusting" attempt to "switch the focus" away from their own failings.

If anyone's trying to divert attention away from their own mistakes, I'd say it's Mrs MacKeown.

Scarlett was last seen at 4am in a bar surrounded by several men. Witnesses say she was totally off her head on ecstasy and cocaine.

That kind of behaviour would have made her vulnerable in her home town back in Devon, let alone in a culture where Western girls are all too readily viewed as sexually available.

Forgive me for being a boringly conventional bourgeois mum, but what the hell were Fiona MacKeown and her partner thinking of taking seven kids on a six-month "dream trip" to India - and then leaving one of them to fend for herself? Why wasn't Scarlett in school studying for her GCSEs?

Far be it from me to interrupt such an 'eloquent' rant, but I was under the impression that the children were homeschooled? But then, research isn't Pearson's strong point. Granted, I have yet to find what is.

The loss of any child must be a horror beyond imagining. But there is something about Fiona MacKeown that makes me want to scream at the TV.

Not an ounce of doubt or regret seems to weigh on this laid-back woman. She told reporters that she had counted every mark on Scarlett's body.

"There were almost 50 bruises and abrasions. She has clearly been battered and assaulted. I feel vindicated."

Vindicated? For crying out loud! Any normal person would be tearing out their own hair with grief and remorse.

Mrs MacKeown says her one consolation is that she's "got some photographs of [Scarlett] having a fabulous time".

She still doesn't get it, does she? Fiona MacKeown is an unrepentant member of the Me Generation, one of those people who would rather be a best mate than a parent.

It's more fun being a friend to your kids and, quite frankly, a lot less hassle.

You don't have to fight daily battles over bedtimes and body piercings. And if you have a row with your "mate" you can storm off, unlike an old-fashioned authority figure who has to weather the storm and stay put always and forever.

This week, John Dunford, head of the Association of Schools and College Leaders, warned that schools are the only moral framework in many children's lives.

With the erosion of traditional family life, parents are no longer giving their offspring basic social skills or a sense of right and wrong.

It's a bleak picture that brings to mind W.B. Yeats's great poem about a world where the natural order of things has catastrophically broken down: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;/Mere anarchy is loosed, and everywhere/The ceremony of innocence is drowned."

For parents who are poor and ground down by work, or the lack of it, there may be some excuse. But articulate, middle-class people should know better.

Since Scarlett's brutal killing, Fiona MacKeown has fought for her daughter. Would that she had exercised half that dedication and sense of responsibility while Scarlett was still alive and in need of a mother's care.

Contrast this with the unwavering support she has shown for the McCanns. As an example, I have chosen thisarticle, again from the Daily Mail:

I refuse to believe the McCanns are guilty

[snip lots of guff about how Kate McCann's life is hell, far more so than any other mother who has lost a child]

As if that weren't bad enough, the police and social services have just held a meeting to discuss the future of your two-year-old twins in the light of allegations against you and your husband.

Sean and Amelie McCann taken into care?

My stomach actually churned at the thought that Kate might lose the babies who have given her a reason to get out of bed and generally pretend to go on living since she and Gerry lost Madeleine.

So leaving 18-month-old twins and a 4 year old child alone is fine (actually, I'd call it a 'dereliction of duty'), but trusting guardians with your 15 year old child isn't?

[snip more mindless crap]
Imagine how thrilled those literally clueless Portuguese cops were to be handed some inconclusive DNA evidence they could talk up to scapegoat the British visitors who had become such a pain in the backside.

So Portuguese police are capable of such a ploy, whereas Goan police aren't?

[snip more bollocks that reveals nothing more than Pearson's lack of knowledge of anything about Kafka other than his name]
Gerry is described as controlling and unemotional. As for Kate, she attracts suspicion for the sin of being nicely turned out. I actually heard one man complain that she wore a different, clean T- shirt every day and matching earrings.

In this post-Diana age, people want proof of grief. They don't want dignity or faith or an attempt to keep up appearances, even if you are collapsing inside.

'Not an ounce of doubt or regret seems to weigh on this laid-back woman.''Any normal person would be tearing out their own hair with grief and remorse.' Nuff said.

[snip how Pearson then hypocritically goes on to favourably judge the McCanns on their appearance]
Can anyone really believe that woman killed the child she went through two gruelling years of IVF to conceive?

That she then hid the small body and strolled down with her husband to enjoy dinner with friends?

That Gerry and Kate, devoted parents by all accounts, loaded Madeleine's decaying body into the boot of a hire car four weeks later while they were busy courting the international media to help find their child?

Can you credit it? Of course not. The allegation is not just revolting. It is surreal.

Whatever you may think about the error they made in leaving their children alone that night, these people are not Fred and Rose West.

So they made an 'error' in leaving their helpless children alone? Whereas Fiona MacKeown showed a 'dereliction of duty' in trying to allow her child to grow up. Similarly, Pearson has howled about how Shannon Matthews' mother didn't raise the alarm until 7pm when her 9 year old daughter failed to return from school.

I'm obviously at a disadvantage, since I'm not a 'boringly conventional bourgeois mum', but I can easily imagine how both of these parents ended up in the positions they were in. When I was a very naive 19 year old (far more naive than 15 year old Scarlett), I went around France on my own, getting into all sorts of scrapes. My mother let that happen - and it was good she did. She also let me go on school holidays to France at 11 and Germany at 14, in the care of teachers she barely knew. When I was 9, I walked home alone from school. Had I gone missing, I fully expect my mother would have checked around my friends' houses and gone looking for me herself before calling the Police. Being a parent is about gradually allowing your children more freedom, gradually letting them learn how to grow up.

What neither I nor my mother would ever in a million years have done is leave our tiny children alone, only being checked on every half hour (if they actually were). Not because of abduction fears, but because I would worry that for all I knew, my precious children could be crying for half an hour before I came to them. That thought obviously never bothered the McCanns.

Too late, they come over all concerned for their missing child, and are constantly in the news doing all they can to find her. The dullard Pearson's last comment on Ms MacKeown is far more applicable to the McCanns: 'Would that [they] had exercised half that dedication and sense of responsibility while [Madeleine] was still alive and in need of a [parent]'s care'

Couples by John Updike

I couldn’t get into this book at first, and I’m still not sure of the reason for the first section, except for introducing us to Piet Hanema, the horrible main character of this novel, a colourless and motiveless man. But I’m glad I stuck with it.

With the second section we get to know more about the other four Tarbox couples, who socialise and commit adultery in a seemingly endless round. The other characters are far more engaging than Piet, and the most interesting of all is Foxy, who has just moved to Tarbox with her husband Ken.

Whilst Piet would seem to be the character we are meant to sympathise with, Foxy is far more complex and becomes the prime mover in the novel. Where Piet is passive, she is proactive.

The relationships between all the couples are complex, and the story is captivating once you are fully in it. Updike likes his descriptions, of weather, scenery, houses, interiors even. The scenic and weather descriptions are effective, they draw you in further, but I found myself becoming annoyed to read yet more about someone else’s wallpaper and sofa when I want to know who’s going to flirt with who, and who’s going to find out. But on the whole a really worthwhile read, and this is a writer who at least credits his readers with being able to see what he’s getting at without spelling it out.
(81/100)

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

Kim Edwards would seem to be the wordier sister of Sue Monk Kidd, and that’s saying something. It’s an interesting story of an panicky decision taken by a doctor that affects him and his family for the rest of his life. But it’s ruined by unsympathetic characterisation, over explanation and being dragged out too long. It’s also annoying when phrases that are initially strikingly beautiful are repeated throughout the novel until the become cliché; for instance ‘the silverfish’ of vision when someone is feeling faint.
(68/100)

The Risk of Darkness by Susan Hill

I’d read ‘Air and Angels’ by Susan Hill many years ago, and remembered it as being a thought provoking, well-written novel. I picked this up in the ‘crime’ section of the library whilst checking for some Ian Rankin, and wondered if it was the same author. According to the list at the front of the book, it was. You’d never guess from the writing.

It is written in the style of a workmanlike crime thriller. But the crime is incidental, and the thrills are pretty few and far between. Apparently (according to Susan Hill’s fans), this isn’t meant to be a crime thriller at all, but some kind of family saga, centring around Simon Serrailler, who happens to be a detective. Yet the characters are made of cardboard, and though the family is the only link between the two main strands of the book, I didn’t care enough about any of them for it to make a difference. So in effect, the storylines were disparate and not interesting enough in themselves to make reading the book worthwhile.

There was one interesting and surprising twist, but where we could have had an interesting insight into the mind of a serial killer, or the policeman in charge of the case, or the effect on the families and friends of any of these, or even some kind of examination into the nature of death, we just have a pointless meandering pair of tales, haphazardly dragging in multiple poorly-delineated characters.

I never did find out the relevance of the woman who died of CJD, her husband, and the whole of that storyline, except to give Hill something to do with Simon’s tediously virtuous sister.

The serial killer is found due to chance and the bodies needed for a successful prosecution are discovered by (cliché alert) a dog. Simon Serrailler might as well not have bothered to go to work for the whole of the book. I really wish I hadn’t bothered reading it.
(35/100)

Foundation by Isaac Asimov

More philosophy than sci-fi in a way, especially as the technology is pretty 50s-inspired. Although it’s set way in the future, in a time when the origins of the human race are forgotten, it’s actually an examination of the nature of empires, and what happens when they decay. It introduces the concept of psychohistory, and looks at how one man used this to shape the future. We witness, over the span of almost a thousand years, several crises of the Foundation he creates, and how these are resolved. On the way, the book examines the role of religion, trade, heredity, science and politics on shaping society. Each section takes the form of a short story, interlinked with the others. Really interesting, even if you’re not into sci-fi usually.
(79/100)