Reply from Dubai

I recently figured that if British journalists such as Johann Hari (Tuesday, 7 April) who come to Dubai don't send back something sensationalist it won't get printed and they won't get paid. After all, sleaze sells.

I called a British journalist friend of mine and said: "I'm going to write an article about London, the same way your compatriots write about Dubai." By the time I was back at home I had come to my senses, it's not fair to London, a city so dear to my heart, or Londoners to be judged by the actions of a few. It's easy to generalise about a country when figures are manipulated to sensationalise and sell papers.

So says Sultan Sooud Al Qassemi in his rebuttal to the Dubai bashing story in The Independent which caused quite a lot of upheaval. Read the full article here.