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Bonk girl Michelle banged up in Dubai while Abu Qatada roams free

Michelle Palmer has been arrested for going at it hammer-and-tongs on a public beach.

If she'd been caught doing it in a dune in Malaga the worst she could expect is a severe case of morning-after regrets. But because Briton Michelle chose to have sex on a beach in the Muslim emirate of Dubai, she faces a prison sentence of up to six years.

Public sex is not a good look. It's the sort of thing randy teenagers do on Costa del Cop-off holidays. But Michelle is a 36-year-old publishing executive working in a Muslim country who's old and bright enough to know better.

At 36 you can't blame your hormones. I don't have a lot of sympathy for Michelle. She had been warned once to stop carrying on, but according to police reports continued and allegedly became aggressive. If this is true, it's the kind of yobbish behaviour that gives Brits abroad a bad name. That act of madness is worth a serious ticking-off. Michelle, who has lost her job over the incident, should be fined for offending a culture that forbids sex outside marriage let alone sex in a public place. But a prison sentence? Get real.

While Michelle and her one-night stand Vince Ancors nervously await their fate in Dubai, the papers here have been full of pictures of radical Muslim cleric Abu Qatada merrily walking in the sunshine in a busy London street.

This man is said to be al-Qaeda's ambassador in Europe and is one of the world's most notorious terrorist suspects. Since his release on bail from a high-security prison, he's being kept under house-arrest in a £800,000 home living on benefits of £50,000, paid for by you and me.

Why don't we just get shot of him and send him back to Jordan? Because the courts found that would be in breach of his human rights.

So on the one hand a British girl is facing incarceration in a hell-hole prison for getting drunk and having sex on a beach, while a fanatical extremist suspect is being given five-star treatment because he happens to live in the world's most liberal country.

The kid-glove treatment of al-Qaeda's envoy in Europe is an insult to every victim of the Afghan and Iraq wars, and every civilian caught up in the random terror of the London bombings.

That this man is allowed to walk our streets while a British woman faces extreme punishment in a Muslim country is beyond belief. While British law makes concessions for every culture, no matter how fanatical or at odds with our own belief system, Michelle has become the victim of a strict Muslim regime.

Dubai is a strange, soulless place that above all else worships the dollar. For years Dubai authorities have been furiously courting westerners with their gleaming playgrounds in the sun.

Billions of dollars have been poured into vast, vulgar beach palaces designed to part Americans and Europeans from their cash.

They are quite happy to take our money, but won't compromise when it comes to values.

Michelle blatantly flouted Muslim law and for that she should be punished. But unless the Dubai prosecution service makes some concession to Western values, they'll lose expats from that place faster than you can say "one-way ticket home".

My bet is a compromise will be found - not for religious reasons but to satisfy the great god of money.


Budget airlines take the cattle

My hatred of budget airlines is up there with parking fines and duff plumbing. In my experience these so-called cheap airlines never run on time, fleece you with stealth taxes and treat you like cattle off to slaughter.

By the time you get home the only thing you're good for is the knacker's yard. I hate them so much that this year my family is going on an English credit-crunch, bucket-and-spade holiday - probably in the rain - but anything's better than a three-hour wait in a foreign airport with no luggage and just the clothes you're standing in.

One of the most inhuman stories of the week involved a couple who took a Ryanair "flight from hell", yet the story only made a few paragraphs in the papers because we're all suffering from airline-horror fatigue.

But the effort and indignity it took for Jo and Paul Heath to board their Ryanair flight from Luton to Brest in France, really does take the croissant. Jo, 54, is wheelchair-bound, and warned Ryanair she'd need help getting on board the flight. But the Ambulift vehicle never showed up, and the couple were told it was Ryanair "policy" to leave passengers who could not board themselves. In other words, if you're infirm we don't care.

Faced with the prospect of missing the holiday they'd already paid for, Paul, 53, was forced to lift his wife out of her wheelchair, sling her over his shoulders and carry her up dangerously steep steps without any help. It was in Jo's words a totally "scary and embarrassing experience".

Ryanair have since blamed Servisair for the cock-up and they've both blamed health-and-safety laws. Yet it all boils down to the awful truth that airlines can treat us like cattle and get away with it.


You've scored an own goal with married man Sienna

What is it about Sienna Miller and fathers of four? At least when she dated Jude Law she had the decency to wait until he was divorced from wife Sadie Frost before she jumped on his bones.

Not so with oil heir Balthazar Getty. Maneating Sienna has been spotted openly snogging the still married father-of-four on a boat in Italy - photos that will come as an almighty slap in the face for his wife Rosetta, who is still nursing their eight-month-old baby.

Sienna is all smiles now, but she won't be when Hollywood gets wind of this betrayal. Nothing takes the gloss off an image faster in that conservative town than carrying on with a married man. This time Sienna, you've scored an own goal.


Max Mosley's 45 years of bum excuses

Formula One boss Max Mosley has admitted he kept his fondness for sado-masochistic bondage a secret from his wife for 45 years.

So for more than four decades he came home with a spanked botty, yet his wife Jean had no idea. On one occasion Mosley admits he was whipped by a dominatrix until he bled.

How did he manage to wriggle out of that one? I bumped into a lamp-post, darling? Lord knows what passes for excuses in the spanking classes.


David Cameron, the dole Etonian

So, Old Etonian David Cameron has shown his true colours - suggesting the poor, the fat and the unemployed only have themselves to blame.

So that includes pensioners struggling to make ends meet and recently unemployed victims of the recession.

With a comment as stupid and arrogant as his, it won't be long before Cameron finds himself unemployed.

And yes, he'll only have himself to blame.


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