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

I have to disagree with those saying its very easily done - I cant imagine I would ever forget my ds......that said its usually just me and him....

Agree Norbertsdad

I'm surprised so many people have done this but I only have two children and one set of car seats so I'd notice if they weren't there.

It is a big deal because any child left alone is vulnerable but a child with the PM as a parent is more vulnerable to kidnapping etc surely? I can't believe security didn't notice?

I imagine they'll be stories coming out now to counter it; 'Ed Milliband allows baby to roll off changing mat while texting an advisor' or 'Harriet Harman once left her 5 year old niece in the car whilst paying for petrol' etc. (Entirley made up situations, please don't sue).

When you have three kids and a group of adults, it's like crowd control. Add in some wine and a relaxed atmosphere...

Wow, what a truly rubbish piece of journalism, more like the Sun. Who cars, she is safe, he is human, such is life.
Better than previous PMs who left their integrity behind and forgot to collect it. People are still dying every day over that little blip.

I am not laid back about my childrens safety either yet I have 'lost' a child while out.

I don't think people who say they would never do it are smug. I just think they lack empathy and imagination.

Do you still have to pay for the loos in Harrods? It's been a while since I was there, probably 15 years, and I was shocked by the £1 charge!

ReelAroundTheFountain - I have three and have never yet lost one for even a small fraction of time. Neither has DH or any of the other family members they have been left with. Neither has the school even on trips out where they have 60 DC and in combined years trips up to 120 DC.

My DN school managed an entire school trip out with no being lost - that was a massive number of DC.

"lack empathy"

Yes indeed.

And enjoy feeling superior?

PrettyPrinceOfParties

I don't remember paying. I will check with DD

No Pag I can imagine how its done and I can certainly empathise, but I can also recognise the lack of care and attention that would cause it too.

Losing a child while out in a busy place/walking through town etc is one thing, leaving a child behind because you are too pissed to adequately do a headcount is another, one if random, the other is negligent.

I like a drink, but I recognise that drinking while supposedly in charge of children is a poor choice

They are free. (Or I would have definitely sent DD in by herself).

oh really, who cares? Nancy was fine, I expect Dave and Sam each blamed the other and they'll all dine out on the story for years.

I think there is the hidden NI agenda as someone else mentioned above.

I think its the sort of mistake we all might make once in a lifetime. I almost did something similar myself once and it still makes me sick to remember it. It has nothing whatsoever to to do with his ability to be PM.

*is random not if random

Hexenbiest I wish I'd done that. She'd been there before and knew where to go. Plus the parking was bad, someone was waiting behind me to pull in and my DS was screaming at the time. So I just dropped her, hugged her, watched her walk in and drove off.

But you do lack imagination because you have assumed it is because he was pissed.

None of us have any real understanding about what happened. I can imagine many ways in which this could happen to me if dh and extended family were out in a couple of cars.

But then I am not desperate for there to be someone to blame

Tbh my first though was that their security team should be in real trouble. What if she had been kidnapped?

An oversight like this should not happen, but it does seem to be yet another case of one rule for them, one for everyone else. If a working class or (heaven forbid) family on benefits had left their child in a pub they would be held up as examples of all that is wrong with Britain today.

And I love that it is his fault.
99% of the time when DH and I go out, I drink and he doesn't. One the one day that he does he could well have three or four glasses of wine at the pub because I would have none.
Would it then be his fault if something went wrong?

TheQueensKnickers
No they wouldn't.
Most people hearing a lost/forgotten child story say 'oh god, poor you'.

I am pretty sure I posted on here about when we packed the car to go out for the day, got half way down the street and realised I had left ds1 sitting on the sofa.
No one was anything other than sympathetic.

None of us have any real understanding about what happened.

That's so true.

If they all left the pub at the same time and the cars were next to each other, I really think, between both parents and the bodyguards, someone would have noticed 1 out of 3 children was missing as they were getting in the cars.

It is tittle tattle that wouldn't have been repeated if the nation had not just been annoyed by the zero tolerance on parenting approach of Dave's party. Just like the tittle tattle about homosexual liaisons in the 80s. Picked up on because a journalist sees a chance to tie it in to a recent party line.

Even so, it is such very minor tittle tattle that I really don't think it deserves the job. We'd need some real bad parenting from Them Above. This ain't it.

Pagwatch
I don't think people who say they would never do it are smug. I just think they lack empathy and imagination.

I do judge people who have lost DC as I assume they haven't being paying attention and should have been or they are the parents who let their DC run riot in cafes,car parks run off streets ahead, which is in my eyes is lax parenting, and judge accordingly.

It's the well I'm alright so it must be their fault they are not thing.

I'm probably going to continue to really think like that till an unfortunate
completely unlikely and highly impossible losing incident actually happens to us.

I would say 'oh god, poor you' but think what the fuck were you playing at.

That was my thoughts queensknickers what were security doing ? there can't be just one of them on the job can there ?

We did this with the dog once thought she was in the boot only to discover 10 minutes later nobody had put her in the car. A kind neighbour took her in