Ellee Seymour

One of the most chilling aspects of the Suffolk-based internet paedophile case is   that Timothy Cox looks so normal. In fact, he seems a nice looking, ordinary guy from this pic.

As we know, he was an evil, cunning and vile abuser of children who distributed tens of thousands of indecent images of children, some of them just babies.

And I wonder about those 31 children now in care after British police smashed the paedophile ring, operating in 35 countries, being abused via the web. How long would the horrific abuse continued if they had not been rescued? How many others are suffering the same terrifying fate?

Most worryingly, of the 700 suspects identified worldwide as members of Cox’s chat room, 200 live in Britain and half of those suspects, including teachers and others in positions of trust or with access to children, have already been arrested, charged or convicted. The other 100 are under police investigation. Why were they not  weeded out beforehand?

I have just checked whether all the recommendations of the 2004 Bichard report following the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman have been met in full. Sir Richard Bichard expressed concerns in March, 2005 that there was still a “great deal to be done” in implementing his two main recommendations for the introduction of a national IT intelligence system and the barring system for those working with children were “by no means guaranteed”. He warned:

“If the national intelligence system and the barring scheme are not in place by 2007 then we will still have fallen seriously short.”

I discovered that this was indeed the case, the government has fallen very ”seriously short”. We have to wait until 2010 for the database to be available at a cost of £367 million - six years after the recommendation was made. In the meantime, how many paedophiles will continue to slip the net?

So the answer to my question about how to spot a paedophile is that it is not easy as they can be found in all professions at all levels of society, even holding powerful positions in the community, according to the NSPCC.

This case was a great piece of detective work. It shows that the best way to smash these vile child internet porno chatrooms is to pretend to be one of them and catch them out at their own game. Otherwise, these ordinary looking people with secret depravities will continue to get away with it.

It’s a damning start for Gordon Brown’s premiership. Has any leading politician been mauled so publicly by his own members a week before becoming Prime Minister?

In tomorrow’s Channel 4 documentary, The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair, former ministers Charles Clarke, Alan Milburn, Estelle Morris and Clare Short, as well as key staff and contacts, speak more frankly than ever on the way the relationship between Tony Blair and his chancellor affected the running of smooth government.

Their stunning revelations include how:

· Staff at No 10 felt like “they were children in a dysfunctional relationship”.

· Treasury officials believed it was “the kiss of death” to cooperate with No 10.

· Blair regretted making a compromise with Brown over foundation hospitals in November, 2003.

· The prime minister did not know on the day of the vote on tuition fees in 2004 if  Brown’s supporters would back him.

· Alan Milburn, his party chairman, regarded Blair’s decision to preannounce his own resignation as “mad”.

· Brown rejected an offer in 2001 to take Britain into the euro in return for the premiership, telling his cabinet colleague Clare Short: “It’s improper and anyway he breaks his word”.

· Blair believed the problem with Alastair Campbell was that “he hated the media”.

Estelle Morris and Charles Clarke give explicit accounts of their experiences of working closely with Brown, revealing how he liked to dominate and take control. Will this man really be a prime minister who listens and works as a team? Just read on and decide for yourself from this  Guardian Unlimited extract:

Morris was education secretary at the start of the dispute over tuition fees, and described how “tension between the two of them” left decision-making impossible because the situation “froze”.

Clarke, her successor at education, said of the chancellor’s methods: “What he [Mr Brown] would do is go along, go along, go along. And then when it came to the point he’d then blast out a very, very full and very technically correct documents at enormous length which he had not shared with us at any point before.

“I had a 25-page letter from Gordon coming through our fax machine the morning I was making a statement to the house with a whole string of changes which he thought were necessary at this very last minute.

“I would categorise Tony’s approach to social entrepreneurship … that is to say to give schools, hospitals, universities the resource to get on with it and do it. Whereas Gordon’s view is much more traditional Labour view. Which means that you can pass a law or make an administrative decision in central government and that will change behaviour.”

On the morning of the vote on education top-up fees in January, 2004, it is claimed that the prime minister did not know if the government would get its legislation through the Commons “because we don’t yet know whether Gordon is going to instruct his supporters to vote for the measure or not”.

Former advisers and ministers admit that the tension between the Treasury and Downing Street was ever-present and affected the way Labour governed.

This is all quite extraordinary, a totally haphazard way of running a country. If all these claims are true, why on earth did Tony Blair go along with Brown for so long? I can’t see Brown turning a blind eye to it happening to him.

And with this uncommunicative background, how does Brown plan to transform himself and his party to a “listening government”, which he has pledged to do?

Pic courtesy of www.englandism.com

I learnt about Alex Mexisville after spotting a poster of him, along with other missing young people, while waiting to catch my return flight home from Thessoloniki Airport yesterday. Among them was a poster of Madeleine McCann. I saw no similar posters when I departed from the UK - surely this is an ideal place to display them, as well as at railway and bus stations.

Last February, 11-year-old Alex left his home in Veria Elia, a beauty spot in Macedonia, to go to the central park in his town to play basketball and then planned to go to his art class. He never made it to the class.

A chilling account on Wikipedia says that Alex vanished after revealing to his parents that he had seen “what happens to kids who are not supervised by anyone”. Five local children reportedly confessed to his murder, but the body has never been found, and their story is not universally believed.

When the local Roma clan head, reputed to be the crime boss of Veria was questioned by the mother of the missing child about his possible complicity, he is reputed to have answered: “No. We don’t steal children that old.”

In memory of those who are still missing.