A GRANDMA has been left fuming after she was charged £75 for her oversized suitcase but ‘younger and good looking’ passengers were let off.

Maxine Haughian, 63, was stopped in the queue for her flight to Alicante by Ryanair staff at Leeds Bradford Airport.

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The mum-of-two claims her luggage fit inside the guidance rack but “stuck out very slightly” by 2cm on one side.

She was told that her suitcase was too big and she’d need to pay to place the luggage into the hold.

However, Maxine, a retired prison governor, noticed other passengers in the queue being let off for oversized bags.

She described one woman as “young and gorgeous” and even took a sneaky snap of her being let off.

Taking to Facebook, Maxine said she was “disgusted” with Ryanair.

“I’ve just been held up for 20 minutes because they said my cabin bag was too big and I must pay an EXTRA £75 for it to go in hold,” she wrote.

“It’s funny (not funny) how other bags that are exactly the same were allowed through without comment.

“It’s a good job I took the photo of this (gorgeous) girl pushing her case into the box and being allowed through.

“I’m obviously not young or good looking enough!” she fumed.

Maxine, who was travelling with her husband Jim, continued: “Eventually (using photographic evidence) I was allowed through. I’m stressed to high-hell and hope I can calm down and get into holiday mode before we land.”

Despite being pleased that she was let off, Maxine told Oxford Mail: “It was almost like letting me go justified what I was saying. I think it’s definitely a money-making exercise.

“I’m a bit older, perhaps he thought I would be compliant. A lot of people just paid the money.”

She added: “Several people had suitcases that looked exactly the same as mine and they were putting them in the rack and it was sticking out a bit, but they were allowed to go through. It was the inconsistency of it all.

The Sun has contacted Ryanair for comment.

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Simplified advice can only be achieved if the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) and the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) work together, according to an industry expert.

Ian McKenna, founder of Financial Technology Research Centre, made the statement today (8 October) at Money Marketing Interactive in London.

The FCA announced proposals to launch a simplified advice model last December to make it easier for firms to provide affordable personal recommendations to those with simpler needs and smaller sums to invest.

McKenna, who was part of a panel discussing the future of advice, said for simplified advice to work, the Ombudsman needs to be part of the process.

However, he queried whether the regulator would be willing to make that decision.

He said: “The reality for simplified advice is the regulator would never bring the Ombudsman along. The argument was always do less, charge more or charge less, but still have the same responsibility at the end.

“This why I’m saying, and you could argue with my response, we don’t need the movement of the [advice/guidance] boundary.”

McKenna added that attempts were made in the past to address the issue of advice gap without much success.

“There’s no example of that happening in the past 20-30 years. Why would it be different now? What worries me is a huge amount of effort will be expended on something that just isn’t economically viable,” he said.

McKenna said the sector needs to tread with caution on the advice/guidance boundary review to avoid the equivalent of PPI in the long-term savings market.

“I think if we just remove the boundary, that’s what we will end up with and that will be devastating to people for long-term confidence.”

Tom Selby, director of policy at AJ Bell, said the advice/guidance boundary review is a test for the Consumer Duty and an opportunity for the regulator to assess how the financial services sector is abiding by the core terms of it.

He said the regulator now has access to huge amounts of data on firms to hold them accountable on their Consumer Duty commitments.

“It’s on them to make sure that firms do ultimately understand their shareholders.

“When they look at the cost benefit analysis of ‘am I going to throw people into an inappropriate product or am I going to follow the Consumer Duty?’

“Besides, if I don’t follow the Consumer Duty, I’m going to end up with a huge fine and a bad reputation.”

A MUM and her lover wheeled a toddler’s body around for three days in her buggy after she died from a “regime of escalating brutality”, a court heard.

Isabella Rose Wheildon suffered horror injuries after she was allegedly kicked or stomped on by 24-year-old Scott Jeff.

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Jurors heard how the two-year-old is believed to have died on June 26 last year in a temporary housing unit in Ipswich.

But Jeff and Isabella’s mum Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, also 24, allegedly kept the girl’s death a secret.

Ipswich Crown Court was told they carried on pushing her body around in a pushchair with the hood pulled up to shield her face.

The couple also allegedly took her corpse on a shopping trip to buy computer gaming equipment.

She was finally discovered on June 30 under blankets in a shower at the housing unit.

The court was told police officers had been greeted by a “very strong smell” when the bathroom was unlocked.

One pulled back the blankets to see the “face of a young child who was not moving”.

Prosecutor Sally Howes KC said: “He was aware of severe bruising on her face. She was cold to the touch.”

The discovery was made when a woman reported to police on June 30 that she had received a Facebook message from a “friend of hers”.

Ms Howes said: “That message disclosed that her friend’s daughter had died in her sleep three days before and was in her pushchair in the bathroom.

“That friend was the first defendant, Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell, and her daughter was Isabella.”

Gleason-Mitchell is accused of allowed her daughter’s death to happen as she “stood back, watched and did nothing”.

A post mortem found she had “extensive external traumatic injuries to the soft tissues of the body including head, neck, torso, limbs” and other areas.

She had also suffered fractures to both wrists and a “complex pelvic fracture involving several bones”.

Her cause of death was given as “bone marrow embolism caused by skeletal trauma”.

‘Regime of escalating brutality’

The court heard this “severe” damage to her pelvis was likely caused by “either kicking or stamping or both”.

Ms Howes said: “It’s the prosecution case that Isabella Wheildon was a healthy, contented, well-cared for little girl until Scott Jeff came into her young life.

“Towards the end of May 2023, he entered a relationship with Chelsea Gleason-Mitchell.

“From that time up to her death, Isabella was subjected to a regime of escalating brutality which was callous, cruel and ultimately fatal.”

Gleason-Mitchell and Jeff lived together in hotels in Great Yarmouth, a caravan park and “camping in a very small tent on Caister beach” in Norfolk before they ended up in Ipswich.

The mum told Great Yarmouth Borough Council she and her daughter were “homeless” and escaping domestic abuse from her ex.

She also falsely claimed Jeff was Isabella’s biological dad and refused a home by Bedfordshire Council for her and the youngster as she wanted to stay with her partner.

After moving into the unit, CCTV showed the toddler being pushed around in her chair, wearing sunglasses with the hood up, concealing her head, it was said.

The court heard the couple went with Isabella out on June 26, visiting a barber shop so Jeff could get a haircut.

They returned at 3.15pm with CCTV showing the youngster’s legs and feet moving in her pushchair – suggesting she was still alive.

The court was told this is believed to the last image of Isabella and that she had died later that day.

Jeff has denied causing or allowing Isabella’s death and murder.

Gleason-Mitchell has pleaded guilty to causing or allowing the death of a child but denies murder.

The trial continues.

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Good morning and welcome to US Election Countdown! Today let’s dig into:

If Kamala Harris wins the White House, she will enter the Oval Office with one of the least articulated foreign policy visions of any incoming president in modern US history.

But a sketch of her philosophy has started to appear [free to read]. The vice-president is a “realist” or “pragmatist”, according to people familiar with her thinking, though she doesn’t like being pigeonholed.

As tensions in the Middle East escalate, Donald Trump has claimed that Harris would be unprepared to lead the country. Her allies, however, are excited about Harris’s potential to bring in the perspective of a younger generation.

“I don’t think there’s any president that implements the prior president’s foreign policy wholesale,” Democratic senator Chris Murphy told the FT’s Alec Russell and Felicia Schwartz. “It’s likely she has departures from [Joe] Biden’s foreign policy in the Middle East.”

Yesterday, on the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack, Harris reiterated her staunch support for Israel and its right to defend itself, as she did following Iran’s ballistic missile strike on the country last week. But her remarks on the scale of civilian deaths in Gaza have led to speculation that she could be tougher on Israel than Biden.

It’s considered unlikely that Harris would do something such as withhold loan guarantees to Israel, as the then president George HW Bush did in 1991. But one lawmaker said she could turn up the pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or consider sanctioning some of his far-right cabinet members.

If there is a ceasefire in Gaza, Harris’s advisers have suggested she might push to restart talks on a two-state solution — something the Biden administration had largely given up on.

There would be one key continuation of Biden’s worldview, though, according to lawmakers who have worked with Harris: she sees the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as part of a larger regional puzzle that encompasses Arab states — especially Saudi Arabia. “It’s not a two-state solution, it’s a 23-state solution,” said Democratic US senator Chris Coons.

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Behind the scenes

As co-chair of Trump’s transition team, billionaire investor and Republican megadonor Howard Lutnick has put potential administration officials on notice, saying appointees must prove their “loyalty”.

Lutnick, who is the chief executive of investment company Cantor Fitzgerald, is one of two people in charge of finding candidates to fill the roles in a second Trump administration, including key posts such as defence and Treasury secretaries. He is also drafting policy.

The investor told the FT’s Alex Rogers of any future hires:

They’re all going to be on the same side, and they’re all going to understand the policies, and we’re going to give people the role based on their capacity — and their fidelity and loyalty to the policy, as well as to the man.

Trump’s first term was plagued by infighting and staff turnover, including senior advisers who quit and in some cases spoke out against their former boss, but Lutnick said “those people were not pure to his vision”.

Lutnick compared his transition job with overseeing Cantor Fitzgerald’s hiring spree in the aftermath of the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees.

The billionaire, who has raised $75mn for the campaign, including more than $10mn to elect Trump and $500,000 for the transition effort, also called the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 “radioactive”. Harris has made the radical conservative agenda a central part of her attacks against Trump.

Datapoint

Getting swing state voters to turn out on election day is a top priority for both the Harris and Trump campaigns. The issue has come into sharp focus in North Carolina, as it reels from Hurricane Helene. In 2020, Trump took the state by fewer than 75,000 votes.

Voting patterns and turnout in the western part of the state are in question following the devastation wrought in more than two dozen counties. “Communities were wiped off the map,” North Carolina governor Roy Cooper said last week.

Voter relocation, as well as broader perceptions of recovery efforts, could factor into ballot choices — or whether some North Carolina residents vote at all.

Late last month, Biden declared a federal disaster in 25 North Carolina counties. In 2020, Trump won 23 of these counties, suggesting that Republican turnout could take a hit in November. On the other hand, Harris risks being lumped into anger over the Biden administration’s response, especially as misinformation swirls — at times fanned by Trump himself. 

The state received 43,448 requests for absentee ballots from those 25 counties, and only 2,023 have been returned, according to yesterday’s tally from the state board of elections — with so much destruction, it’s possible many of those ballots won’t get filled out.

Plus, the deadline to register to vote in the state is coming up this Friday, though in-person registration is still possible during the early voting period that runs from October 17 to November 2.

Trump is leading Harris in North Carolina by 1.3 percentage points, according to the FT’s poll tracker.

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