Palin big in Niue

Well I voted for Barack Obama along with 758,041 others in the world who had no direct stake in the outcome of the US election. That's not quite true since 275,000 of those who voted in this internet poll live in the United States.

But that still leaves nearly 600,000 people in other parts of the world who chipped in their vote. Just over 868,000 voted in total. Of those 110,000 voted for John McCain (12.7 per cent). The rest (87.3 per cent) went for Obama.

In the US 80 per cent went for Obama and 20 per cent for McCain. The big difference between these figures and the contestants' respective shares of the actual popular vote - 53 per cent Obama, 46 per cent McCain - is the internet demographic.

Net generation

I don't have the figures for that but we can assume that a big majority of those who were voting in the online poll were part of the "net generation" - younger people who grew up with the internet.

It was also interesting, looking at the breakdown of national votes, to see the relatively large number of voters in Portugal (as large as that in the UK), a country where English is the second language. Some 118,000 voted in Canada and 60,000 in Australia. This is not a bad way of gauging US influence around the world.

This says some significant things as far as I can see: First, Obama's campaign made a massive impact all around the world; second, young people believe in this man; third what happens in US politics matters to non-Americans.

Statistical aberration

OK, so he may have a few continuing foreign policy issues with Venezuela (41 per cent republican), Albania (51 per cent) and Macedonia (84 per cent) - I will overlook Niue (100 per cent) since I had never heard of the place and the one person who voted may be a statistical aberration (I bet he or she has never been called that before).

Reading up on Niue, it looks as though its inhabits may be best left alone as they were, mostly, for 200 years by passing sailors who called the place "Savage Island."

I have another idea, if Sarah Palin is thinking of running in 2012 she should run in Niue instead, or Macedonia or Albania. She'd be welcome there.....if she can find her way.

Whatever happened to Madeleine?

The story of four-year-old Madeleine McCann and her disappearance while on holiday in Portugal in May has occupied the media all summer long.

In dinner-party chatter it has overshadowed house prices, medical complaints, political issues and sporting events.

First there were the exclamations of sympathy: that poor girl, what must her parents be going through? My heart goes out to them; that kind of thing. Then there was discussion about the wisdom of parents who left their three children in an unlocked apartment so that they could eat and drink with friends at a tapas bar about 100 yards away.

But the public reaction was forgiving. “We’ve all done it,” we said, even if we hadn’t. They were a nice-looking family as well: professional backgrounds, attractive mother, articulate and intelligent in the way they made themselves available to the media. They were middle class totems in a world that belongs to the middle class.

Xenophobic undertones

There were guilt-fuelled xenophobic undertones too, in Portugal as much as in the UK. No-one in either country wanted to imagine their respective societies were capable of producing the kind of people that prey on young innocents such as Madeleine.

And every day there was Madeleine’s photograph: the big eyes, cute eyelashes, even teeth, staring out from newspapers, posters and the badges created to publicise her disappearance.

When the police had no news, the newspapers ran stories anyway, worrying about the lack of developments, speculating about next steps, wondering how long they could sustain interest among their notoriously fickle readerships.

A young boy was shot in the head while kicking a ball around in Liverpool. For three or four days until the end of the funeral, the British nation’s collective shock, grief and incomprehension was transferred to the family of 11-year-old Rhys Jones. “What’s the world coming to?” we asked.

For the media and its readerships, if not for his family and friends, young Rhys can rest in peace. But not Madeleine. The story has changed. Police are saying openly they believe she may be dead. More than that, they are now questioning her parents who they have named as suspects in the disappearance of their child.

More public disbelief; but this time it’s accompanied by some niggling doubts: could they? Emotively, the answer has to be no because we cannot imagine a parent who would dispose of his or her own child and conceal the truth. I covered a story once in my home town of a couple whose children had disappeared. Some of the babies' remains were found in the garden. Yes, it can happen.

"They are doctors," said a friend at the weekend. "So was Harold Shipman," I said. Sometimes I hate my own cynicism. But cynicism is as close as your shadow if you work in the media, as it must be for police officers. Nothing should be discounted.

So we're all playing detectives now that the national outpouring of displaced anguish has dimmed.

Cluedo game

Newspaper writing and the interest of readers has switched to the forensic. Suspending our emotions (guiltily) we are beginning to approach the McCann case as if it was a “whodunit.” Was it Colonel Mustard in the library with the candlestick?

Dispassionately – and, believe me, the media are masters of dispassion – Madeleine’s disappearance has proved the dream story: a story that feeds on itself as the prose adopts ever deeper shades of purple. We all have our opinions and our opinions are changing with every development.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if little Madeleine turned up on the doorstep of a Portuguese police station, confused but unharmed, cared for all these months by a misguided middle-aged Portuguese woman who had lost her own child in infancy?

But that is not going to happen. We refuse to imagine her fate. We may never know. We continue to sympathise with her parents, but no longer unconditionally. Most of all, however, we go to our beds at night and sleep well, relieved that our nightmares, if we have any, will end with a new day. For others, they go on and on.