Allow me to stray a little off topic, as I am apt to do : I’m troubled by the the number one suspect in the case of missing Madeleine - her mother Mrs. McCann.

It’s reported that Maddie’s DNA was found in a car that the McCanns hired 25 days after their little girl went missing. It’s implied that it got there because the dastardly duo had dug up the body and were taking it somewhere else to hide again.

Ok, I’m no scientist - but I do think it’s all too easy to be blinded by technology which has the aura of being infallible. Experts have caused many miscarriage of justice, particularly where children are involved. Cold science seems to the antidote to the emotions we all feel in such cases. But often it’s very misleading.

The Plod, Portugese or otherwise, will have you believe that the odds are millions against a chance DNA match. But no doubt while they had Mrs. McCann under the harsh angle poise light of interrogation for 11 hours, telling her that they knew she done it, so she had better fess up, they forgot to mention that the odds of a match from a sibling are rather high. In fact, they are one in four. As the McCanns have two other children, that makes a 50% chance of there being an exact DNA match for Maddie in their hire car.

The British Plod have taken an awfully long time to supply their Portuguese friends with this flimsy evidence, but you can get a paternity test done in five days for $260., or over night if you are prepared to stump up $860. The website of the service helpfully explains that everyone has two sets of chromosomes. You inherit one from your father and one from your mother. So there’s a 50% chance that you will inherit the same set from your dad as your brother or sister receives. There’s a further 50% chance that you will inherit the same set from your mother as they do - ergo a 1 in 4 chance of an exact match.

Don’t they have DNA labs in Portugal? Of course they do. I’m pretty sure the British police were called in to convince the British media that the McCanns are guilty, and to get our lovely tabloids off the backs of the Portuguese police. Even if they don’t get Mrs. McCann to confess, they will have achieved a PR coup, and the cloud of suspicion will aways hang over the parents, thanks to the scientific “proof”. There will be no need to continue the investigation with its embarrassing lack of progress.

I’m not saying their police are anymore useless than ours - after all, ours go round shooting innocent people on the tube, and the head cop doesn’t even know about it for days. But I do think they have been worse than useless in this case, and it would perhaps be better if they just gave up trying to solve it.