Should Ashya parents have carte blanche to decide?
Summer came late to the Costa del Sol his year they say- but now the humid heat is searing.
Nobody moves inside the white stucco walls and pantiles which is the new-as-old style of the Casares del Mar holiday apartment complex.
Immaculate lawns but no sound of the joyous splashing around the pool, which would denote that the Kings were in residence – neighbours recall the children making a lot of noise around the pool.
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The grey family people carrier seems to have been parked hastily outside the main gate across two parking bays. Piles of family baggage still sit frying in the heat in the back.
The Kings were noted around here for hanging religious posters on their balcony for their Jehovah’s Witness faith, and in the car too. But no sign of anything like that today. Neither in the vehicle nor on any balconies.
There’s no great beach here to speak of. A few anglers perch on the rocks and the odd sunbather is draped out on the shingle in the shimmering noonday haze. 
No sign either of the family sons and daughter, ranging from 23 to two. Danny, the eldest, has been at the university hospital in Malaga a little over an hour’s ride up the empty tolled motorway to the east.
The soundings here are that the British state is looking for a way off the hook it has caught itself on, albeit for the best of reasons. It seems a way may soon be found for both parents to be at the bedside of Ashya.
Of course the natural emotional reaction is for that to happen and for that to be desirable, and that is right. But equally, these parents took a dangerously ill boy from hospital against medical advice. They then subjected him to a car and ferry journey of over 1,300 miles. They then kept him in an apartment bedroom rather than a hospital.
Leaving the emotions aside, those are the facts which govern the actions taken by the state. Should the state give its citizens carte blanche to behave this way?
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