Travelling To Dubai? Don't

,

I felt both sickened and horrified when I read of these latest cases of injustice, inhumanity and downright wickedness that masquerade as an anti drug policy in what is just, despite it's attempts at modernity, another land of darkness with a mind set that is still in the dark ages.

As I have written previously, and the article makes mention, Dubai is an extremely busy transit and refuelling stop and the risks to a traveller are manifold.

And it's not the deliberate carrying of a bit of something to smoke that will get you the mandatory minimum of four years but a speck of dope the size of a grain of sugar on the bottom of your shoe or, are you ready for this one, three poppy seeds that originated on a bun at Heathrow, or for that matter over the counter meds.

I'm running this article first today and out of sequence as it were for the blog but it was reading the first and at the time (the small hours) the only comment on the story that made this article ideally suited to follow on from the previous post about the Archbishop of Canterbury and his nonsense. That comment being:

Can we arrange a visit by the Archbishop of Canterbury to lecture about tolerance?

The comments are worth a read in this rag who's targeted readership are conservative housewives and other such nonentities, some of the commentors haven't got the brains to realise that it could be them doing a four stretch quite easily and quite accidentally.

There are comments that rightly reflect the outrage that people feel when reading about this travesty but pride of place must go to Sean, Swadlingcote, Derbyshire who I have no doubt would have liked to have written nigger instead of "youth worker"

Surely the real question here is how does a "youth worker" from the West Midlands with a family to provide for, afford properties in two different countries and be able to afford to travel back and forth regularly. Is there a house price boom currently going on in Ethiopia? Or am I in the wrong job?
Sean, Swadlingcote, Derbyshire

Briton jailed for four years in Dubai after customs find cannabis weighing less than a grain of sugar under his shoe

A father-of-three who was found with a microscopic speck of cannabis stuck to the bottom of one of his shoes has been sentenced to four years in a Dubai prison.

Keith Brown, a council youth development officer, was travelling through the United Arab Emirates on his way back to England when he was stopped as he walked through Dubai's main airport.

A search by customs officials uncovered a speck of cannabis weighing just 0.003g - so small it would be invisible to the naked eye and weighing less than a grain of sugar - on the tread of one of his shoes.


Dubai International Airport is a major hub for the Middle East and thousands of Britons pass through it every year to holiday in the glamorous beach and shopping haven.

But many of those tourists and business travellers are likely to be unaware of the strict zero-tolerance drugs policy in the UAE.

One man has even been jailed for possession of three poppy seeds left over from a bread roll he ate at Heathrow Airport. Painkiller codeine is also banned.more