To think that if you can't remember to take your 8 year old home from the pub then you can't be trusted to run the country?

[PrettyPrinceofParties]

www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jun/11/david-cameron-daughter-behind-pub?newsfeed=true

They aren't an ordinary family though - can you imagine if she'd been kidnapped? They really really should be so very much more careful than us "mere mortals" to be beyond reproach on anything and everything they do. He stands up as the PM and expects everyone else to listen to what he says and do what he tells us. He is the figurehead for all these campaigns telling us all how to parent and how to run our lives and all the "nanny state" crap they churn out. He chose to do his job, to run for PM, and now he is he should bloody well remember it every second of every day. Incidents like this, while they very well might "just happen to anyone" shouldn't happen to him. He isn't just anyone. He already comes across like a total tosser a lot of the time, without doing things that really could and should be avoided. It's like that time the Blair child was scooped drunk out of the gutter in london that time - it lets people be all smug and holier than thou, and let's face it, lots of people, especially the papers, just love the chance.

Leaving a baby in a car for several hours is a completly different scenario to this. What an odd comparison.

Am I the only person who actually checks to see that all of my children are with me when we leave somewhere? It wouldn't occur to me to get in the car and drive off without knowing exactly where all my children were. It's not rocket science...

Yes! Totally Agree OP! Cameron is a twat, get him out.

Although, i agree with the new law he is proposing about Forced Marriages. I'm quite surprised he is actually going to do something.

Well I've been left at brownies because my parents forgot I wasn't at home so it happens. I was not damaged by it.

But surely, you always check the kids are in the car?

Why? In both cases the parent forgets the child so I think the comparison is perfectly valid.

I was left outside the butchers while my mother went h

Hardly a case for SS she is an 8 year old and the pub was 2 mins down the road, she is almost old enough (IMO) to walk home on her own. Yes it was careless but no one is perfect and the girl was in familiar surroundings and probably knew the staff behind the bar. I have never left one of mine behind but then we travel together and an empty seat would be obvious. I have however lost them on a campsite and in shops which is potentially a far more scary situation

...ome.

I left newborn dd2 at nursery while I proceeded to take dd1 home for her lunch. Luckily didn't get very far!

My mum and dad did this with my brother in the supermarket. Mum thought he went to another shop with Dad and Dad thought he stayed with us.

If DC wasn't prime minister no one would give a shit.

This is why we only have two DC. If we had more than one per parent I just know I'd be doing this all the time.

I don't know about the baby who was left in the car for hours, but unless there are seriously mitigating circumstances, I'm afraid I would blame the parents. Who leaves their baby unattended in a car for hours?

In any case, I agree that this scenario is totally different from that one. But I still think it's weird that both parents left without checking where their daughter was.

It doesn't seem as if she has been traumatised by the experience anyhow. But the press will have a field day! :)

My parents had a car each for work - neither my brother or I was ever left behind because they always bothered to check with each other! It's not that hard. Especially when kids are little and don't have mobiles etc.

Well I don't think it is easily done actually. Anyone on here actually ever done this? I haven't.

The thing is, it's all OK. She wasn't kidnapped or harmed, yes she MIGHT have been, but she wasn't.

A cautionary tale, but not exactly a demonstrable reason why Dave and Sam should be strung up. You can be damn sure they won't do it again.

Talking to my parents and my friends parents when I had DC's they nearly all had a story like this.

Small moving parts, large party - easily done.

I have forgotten my child when heading out. I have lost track of where one of my older children were when on holiday - he stopped to look at a shop and we kept going for several streets.

Turning a simple 'head count' error when the family were travelling in two different cars, a lapse which happens to lots of perfectly attentive and loving parents, into a character issue is really really pathetic.

Honest to god I get depressed at the depths we plumb. The family have lost a much loved child. Is it really necessary to jump at every single cheap shot.

Papers have known about this for 2 months, why is it being released today?

What will irk me though is if some PR tries to spin by saying it was the responsibility of the security officers.

Dave and Sam have only one option here, and that's to say "Shit (or some variation thereof) it was a bloody nightmare, 15 minutes of blind panic, poor Nancy. There won't be a next time."

I don't see what all the fuss is about

If this had happened to a 'normal' parent, most people wouldn't bat an eyelid because it is very easily done.

Well I sort of assumed the OP, like me, loathes the man anyway so will use any excuse to jokily slag him off.

I imagine she was trying to escape!

That is the thing, Elephants, if he as a beloved leader of his people? We'd all be sympathetic and understanding.

But he's not.

I would say it is easily done, and no harm came to her, nor was likely to.

My mother left me parked in my pram outside boots when I was 2 months old.. she was almost home before she remembered she came out with a big bouncy thing on wheels...