To think the British people who went out to Dubai to profit from slave labour by "influencing" (i.e. manipulating) made their beds and now should lie cosily in them

[Mightneedencouraged]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/01/uk-citizens-detained-uae-frustrated-government-intervention-iran-conflict

The brass neck of these family members complaining when the boot is finally on the other authoritarian foot

Yes, and part of it being Brits notorious inability to acquire other languages, meaning they severely limit their destinations to emigrate to. That’s to a large extent why Dubai looms so large in British eyes. No one expects you to speak Khaleeji Arabic, no foreign culture to get your head around, just ‘Yay, safe luxury, no income tax, cheap domestic labour!’ Until it’s not.

Agreed.

I felt the same way with Marcus Fakana as well.

I care about our military potentially getting involved and getting killed, as a result of Fart's starting a war and our military to having to rescue the idiots who probably didn't need to go / move there in the first place.

What has really rubbed people up the wrong way is a perfect storm of the deep unpleasantness of these "poor souls" plus their utter lack of any shred of self knowledge.

Dubai resident-only -for-the-money Richard Tice (who lets not forget is a member of parliament in the UK) heads up a political party as unpleasant as him who have made great play out of banging a drum that people who choose to come to the UK should integrate into the UK.

Well, Dicky dear, suck n your own chew toy and integrate into Dubai life. And that means obeying their laws.

Speaking as a person

I think "influencers" should be in prison for actually being influencer 😅

I'm not sure. There is a case to be made that people who follow influencers are the authors of their own misfortune.

So these Brits are happy to turn a blind eye when it's poor immigrants human rights being ignored by the Dubai royal family but not when it's themselves receiving a small dose of a cruel regime. Pathetic.

They went to Dubai in order to be able to lord it over other immigrants in a tax free haven.

Basically it's what they would do in the UK if people would be stupid enough to let them.

Reforms are being done in the UAE to improve conditions for these workers.

“They treat their maid well”

your post echoes what I used to hear from people who moved to South Africa in the 80’s. They built a good life, treated their maid well, had a great and comfortable life.

not forgetting their great life was built on an Apartheid regime and they got their “great life” based on the oppression of others.

Of course they are 😂

Dubai doesn't want (or need) to reform workers rights because the type of people who holiday there do not care enough about immigrants rights. Or perhaps they do care, but not enough to forgo their Winter sun. Please do not insult anyones intelligence by pretending otherwise and regurgitating the UAE's PR that they're planning to stop using slave labour.

They are. And like most UAE ‘reforms’, they are about 95% tokenism and involve rearranging the deckchairs on whatever particular Titanic is under review. No one even checks the deckchairs, usually.

A friend of mine was hired as an environmental consultant to come up with a plan to make a particular sector less environmentally damaging, and resigned again when she realised she was expected to greenwash current practices, not reform them. It’s purely window-dressing, aimed at not destabilising the particular business model masquerading as an emirate that is Dubai.

I wonder if the title of this thread is a bit misleading. The news story is about people being arrested for posting pictures of the Iran conflict - there’s nothing there about profiting from slave labour, inequalities in society in the UAE or influencers.

Bad things happen everywhere. I've lived in London for 44 years and never been a victim of crime.
Ta for the free travel. I got a free Oyster Card at 60. I paid for it for a loooong time.

The article OP posted is separate from the debate around tax and people emigrating to Dubai to avoid paying UK tax. It’s about UK nationals who broke the laws of a country they are living in. Before you visit a country, let alone move there, you should familiarise yourself with the laws and what you might not want to encounter. In a same-sex relationship? You might not want to visit the Middle East. Visiting Morocco? Make sure you take something to cover your shoulders. Don’t like big, scary spiders? Maybe don’t visit Australia.

The influencers in the article broke the law. We might not agree with the law but we don’t have to agree with the law because it’s not our country and not our laws to make. The influencers might not agree with the law and might decide to deliberately break the law. If they chose to do that for freedom of speech, that is their choice but they need to know it carries risk. There are many people across the world that are choosing to take that risk to show what the conditions on the ground are like in those countries, in Gaza, in Iran, in the US. Many have lost their lives for taking that risk. It’s not something that should be done lightly.

It’s obviously a worrying time for their families back home and of course it’s exhausting for them. Their loved ones took that risk though. In certain circumstances, yes you would expect the UK government to condemn it (as they have with other “unfair” arrests in the ME). However, this is a giant clusterfuck of ego and bombs. Condemning actions might take us out of our trying to be neutral stance and bring us more directly into a war we don’t want to be in.

The point OP is making is that these people have chosen to move to a country that is known to be authoritative and poor on human rights. The UK influencers are now on the wrong side of that but if you choose to ignore that when you move there, you can’t complain when you come down on the wrong side of it. Same as if a woman moved to the US and wasn’t entitled to abortion care or even care for a miscarriage. You can document it, share your stories, try to influence others or law when you’re outside of the situation but when you are in it, the UK government has very little influence.

The Dubai influencer set are part of the Dubai economy. Many of whom receive support via the Influencer Academy, Creator HQ and the gold visa programme to allow them to move there and promote the country. They also get some financial support from the government for it.
This comes with strings attached in the way that taking a job as a teacher/accountant/estate agent out there doesn't.

My husband worked out in the UAE(AD) temporarily some years ago, filling a gap and training some people to cover the shortfall.
The majority of his colleagues were Indian or Pakistani and they were on a medium salary. But in his office there were a couple of Filipino assistants that were on a pittance and living in a shared room between 8-10 people in bunk beds. He said he felt so sorry for then as they were treated appallingly.

I think this has now been outlawed, but when I lived there job ads could still specify the nationality, age and sex they wanted for the vacancy. You would see retail jobs specifying ‘Filipina aged 20-25, smart appearance’. There absolutely was an ethnic hierarchy with Emiratis at the top, white westerners, other Gulf Arabs, Levantine Arabs and North African Arabs, Iranians next, down through people from the Philippines, Indians, Pakistanis, Somalis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans. The best people from the Philippines could hope for then were retail jobs, at worst being housemaids. Higher level clerical and management jobs were nearly all Iranian, lower-level ones might be Indian or Pakistani.

And that was aside entirely from western expat women’s chat about what nationality maids were ‘less trouble’ or ‘less uppity”. It wasn’t unheard of for women having their nails done to specify the nationality of the nail tech.

I can't believe we are on the 6th page of a thread on Dubai + Influencers and no one has mentioned Portable Potty Parties? There.

Again. WPS, increased investigations and prosecutions.

The UAE did the 2025–2027 National Action Plan to tackle human trafficking.

US State Department gives them a tier 2 (funnily enough the same as Ireland) meaning there are issues but they are making improvements.

I remember you making the same point about Ireland on another Dubai thread.

I'm not sure what you think it means, or why you think it's 'funny'' that the UAE has the same ranking as Ireland on human trafficking according to the US State Department.

Referring to the article shared, and speaking as a former Dubai expat, it’s difficult to know which rules in Dubai are actually meant to be followed.

The lifestyle there is so contradictory and far removed from what you read beforehand. Before moving, you study the rules, promising yourself you’ll follow them all and live responsibly. But once you arrive, reality is very different. Alcohol, gambling, prostitution is everywhere, the debt cycle is encouraged, and the supposedly conservative dress code is almost entirely ignored. You quickly find yourself adapting, mingling, networking, and doing what’s needed to fit in, which often means bending the rules.

Many people move there imagining a clean, respectable, disciplined lifestyle where they’ll save money and progress in their careers. Instead, many end up caught in a culture that contradicts the laws on paper.

And when a major issue arises, like the current crisis, authorities suddenly use those laws selectively, choosing who to make an example of for “breaking the law.” The truth is, pretty much everyone breaks the rules there. It just depends on who they decide to target.

I genuinely feel sorry for those being made examples of now. My frustration (and the frustration of many expats I know still living there) is with the braggy, clueless, tone deaf, grifter influencers who have spent months, and years, undermining their home countries, only to turn to those same nations for help when things go wrong.

In response to PP’s comment that expats in other destinations don’t receive as much criticism, people who move abroad generally don’t behave in that ‘influencer’ manner. They’re not incentivised by their host governments to spread propaganda.

And those who get defensive, claiming that any criticism is “Dubai bashing,” I suspect either belong to that army of deception, live there and are deluding themselves, have family or friends they’re trying to justify, or simply don’t understand how harsh life is there outside the privileged bubble.

So OP, I vote, YANBU for your comment about influencers. Still, I can’t help but feel for those now being singled out by Dubai as examples.

I just think anyone going for Get Rich Quick and No Tax Lol lifestyles get what they deserve. Everyone knows about the two tier delivery facto slave labour issues and has done for a long time. Blood brunch.