The beach romp final word.

The last word on the beach romp - perhaps.

There are what I think are a couple of very good columns, the first by Minette Marrin in the UK Sunday Times.

An extract:

‘Why don’t we do it in the road?” That was the question posed by the Beatles in 1968 in the song of that name....

...Now, 40 years on, we have a couple of well-to-do British expatriates in Dubai shamelessly and drunkenly doing it on the beach...

...I have absolutely no sympathy for them but I do think that given the permissive culture of the country in which they grew up – they were born only a few years after 1968 – it is understandable, if depressing, that they themselves didn’t see much wrong with their behaviour.
From their perspective it is apparently quite normal for two strangers to meet at a hotel brunch, drink themselves silly and proceed to perform sex acts on each other in public. It is normal to insult a policeman who has the effrontery to caution them, regardless of the law, and to carry on.

That is what Britons do at home and abroad. They belch, vomit, copulate, litter and barge their way through public spaces, dressed like hookers and louts, defying the police without shame or modesty. British expatriates are some of the worst: overpaid, oversexed and all over the place.

Palmer and Acors are appealing against their convictions. Yet by Palmer’s own admission, she was drunk and they were kissing and cuddling. “We didn’t have sex together,” she insisted. “I was lying on top of him.” This is rather to miss the point.


See what you think, it's here.

The Times also ran a column on Friday by Ross Clark, along the same lines.

For example:

The Dubai beach-sex couple weren't just stupid, they were irresponsible.

There is no better recruiter for al-Qaeda than Westerners thumbing their noses at the laws of Islamic countries.

It would be very easy for Dubai to turn a blind eye to the behaviour of British tourists and expatriates: to say to themselves, we may not like it, but we like the foreign currency too much to discourage these free-spending Westerners.
That is the Faustian pact into which so many holiday destinations around the world have entered, with inevitable results: Westerners start to behave like outlaws, doing things that they wouldn't dare do at home.

You can read the column here.