This week the Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, accused the press of institutionalised racism. He referred to the terrible case of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman, asking why there was so much media coverage. If you remember the girls were missing for nearly two weeks. The story dominated the headlines, TV, papers, radio during that time. Where were they? Where were they? The nation was so traumatised by the story that the memorial for Holly and Jessica was televised live from Ely Cathedral.
Well, be ye afraid not! For the honourable BBC has the answer to Sir Ian Blair's question as to why the Soham case received such attention.
The answer is... microchipping children.
The BBC put forth the case for microchipping children in an article entitled "Would a microchip keep your child safe?" at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3307471.stm
It contains the following passage:
A month after the bodies of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman were found in a remote ditch, a cybernetics professor known for his headline-grabbing stunts came up with a plan to microchip children to prevent them being abducted.
Professor Kevin Warwick, of Reading University, convinced the Duval family that a microchip implanted in their 11-year-old daughter Danielle's arm would ease their fears.
The youngster was nervous about going out alone, following media coverage of the Soham case.
If she went missing with a chip installed, it would send a signal via mobile phone networks to a computer, which would pinpoint her location on an electronic map.
For good measure, the article also has an image from a CCTV camera of Jamie Bulger being led away by one of the two boys who murdered him.
The article also ends with this telling statement:
Because for all the fear about strangers who may pose a danger, just a fraction of the children murdered each year die at the hands of an unknown assailant.
Kidnaps and murders by strangers are no more common than 20 years ago, according to Home Office figures which show there are, on average, six such deaths a year.
OK, so kidnaps and murders by strangers are no more common tha 20 years ago, but the aformentioned Duvals were so traumatised by the media coverage of the Soham case that they were convinced shortly after the event that a microchip embedded into their child's body would ease their fears (and possibly damage their daughter's body irrepairably).
Since then the BBC and other articles in the mainstream media have tried to push the idea of microchipping children.
So the media coverage of Soham was nothing to do with race or class, just plain old, boring microchipping children for the 24/7 surveillance society. Hence all the CCTV cameras, tracking of car journeys etc.
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