Meant to be moving to Dubai in 4 weeks

I agree, especially about not knowing where Dubai is.

My bigger point is that a lot of people don’t have even a basic understanding of the British Empire. The common narrative is that Britain “helped” its colonies — and that’s a very selective version of history.

It's a topic for another day.

Yes, that was the first thing that struck me, (pardon the lousy pun!)

Just because you met one ignorant person, doesn't mean it's not been "properly taught".
The function of schools isn't to provide the entirety of knowledge a person should have, but to give them the tools to find out and use critical thinking
Someone upthread didn't know where Dubai was, but blamed the teachers for not teaching about maps. How lazy and passive?
It's surely possible to educate yourself. Never in human history has information been so readily and freely available.

Yes but surely no one with any critical thinking ability listens to what the likes of Oakshott and Tice say?

People forget how much of the UK’s wealth was built during its colonial era.

This is exactly why it needs to be properly taught in UK schools. I recently met someone who didn’t even know what the British Raj was.

I agree. Also, need to learn how they treat foreign workers from poorer countries. And law breakers. Hardly a country to take females.

I think Dubai, as a destination, has become very alluring for many. It's seen as very glamorous, new buildings, shiny floors, blue swimming pools, shopping malls with luxury goods. Housekeepers, nannies, drivers. It's a lifestyle that most ordinary people couldn't replicate in the UK.
I think this is probably what drew the OP and her husband, a sort of tax free "influencer" lifestyle which seems tempting.

And millions don’t.

I prefer not to support the economies of homophobic totalitarian regimes.

they are hugely underestimating, but I know many people that wouldn’t know much about Dubai’s stance on human rights but they still
wouldn’t visit, Dubai only appeals to a certain type of person that wants a certain type of holiday, there are a lot of that type of person in England …

My above post was meant to quote this one!

This isn’t a defence of Dubai btw but since it’s being discussed I have to chime in to say Empire and slavery definitely did contribute greatly to Britaim riches. Why else would it have continued for so long? Do you think they were just doing it to pass the time??

It’s a shame this isn’t taught properly in school but yet they want to teach us about US slavery and segregation. Go figure. We need to look closer to home.

There were also individual families who benefited directly from slavery and were compensated greatly when it was abolished. These families and others have lived off their slavery related profits for generations. A lot of old money is very dirty. There is a strong link between classicism and racism.

“The initial research concerned the £20m paid in compensation to slave owners when their human property – enslaved men and women across the British Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape – were emancipated in 1834. Slave owners were paid a proportion of what was deemed to be the market value of these 670,000-plus persons. People who had been bought and sold were now for the last time priced as commodities, and the money went to the owners. They invested their spoils on a whole range of economic, political and cultural activities – from building railways and developing merchant banks to buying artworks, some of which now grace our national collections (helping to refurbish country houses preserved by the National Trust and English Heritage). They also invested their capital, both human and mobile, in the development of the new colonies of white settlement in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Emancipated men and women, meanwhile, struggled with their varied degrees of freedom.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/may/05/so-empire-and-the-slave-trade-contributed-little-to-britains-wealth-pull-the-other-one-kemi-badenoch

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zcss7hv/revision/1

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/23/british-business-slave-trade-university-college-london-slave-owners

It is common nettiqutte to support your (apparently) historically-based arguments with sources.

A Year 7 child is expected to do this.

But if you can't be arsed, then why should anyone engage with your points? They won't know what you're basing your arguments on.

Use Google if you wish. I'm not writing an academic document for you.

Oh, and @Dontgetfooledagain said "grew".

You need to understand the industrial revolution created absolute poverty amongst the working population in the UK and around the world.

Wages collapsed. Workers were so poor average height declined, longevity declined. The former working class aristocrats the weavers were reduced to being paupers. Slavery had no purpose - wages were destroyed - there was no need for slavery in the UK. Consequently it was easier to outlaw it (again) and then for the British Empire to enforce it.

The dark satanic mills of Blake's Jerusalem were perceived as evil job taking businesses that created poverty. Industrialization made workers paupers. Perhaps our modern data centres are the of the equivalent mills for office based jobs.

But you haven't cited any facts, only your assertions.
Some links to reputable sources would be good.

I'm sorry you couldn't be more wrong. The industrial revolution didn't need slavery. Looms in mills and threshing machines collapsed the price of labour and was a reason why the economics of slavery in the UK didn't work and made it possible to outlaw it.

Add to this workers in mills in Lancashire and elsewhere refused to work on cotton produced by slaves in North America.

As for "lovely new markets" through colonialism, the industrial revolution in the UK managed to collapse European competitor industries without conquering them. Free trade killed competitor industries.

The facts don't support your argument.

I would not go. This has the possibility to drag on months, possibly years sporadically. The middle east has always been a place of tension and conflict, we just have had a couple of decades of relative peace.
IMO, there are better and now safer places to go have an experience of living in another country.

The US have told all citizens in the region to evacuate (with no state help) so I guess they would disagree with you.

Iran will be unstable for quite some time even if the USA are successful. It won't all suddenly transition to a nice stable governement there will likely be a lot of unrest. I say this thinking USA/Israel were 100% correct in their actions but to pretend this will all be resolved swiftly I think is a little naive.

I've long decided not to holiday or set foot in any part of the Middle East.

Personally I'd not go. This will likely drag on for months. Schools are shut etc and how will you be insured. I'd also not really trust flights there at present. I know it is massively inconvenient and I know people who live in Dubai who are just getting on with it as best they can but it's kind of nuts to move to an active war zone. Is it possible to get valid insurance even with FO recommends against it?

Thank you for this, there are so many misconceptions.
Indeed, the wool trade made England rich in Tudor times.

Of course it made it rich. The industrial revolution grew on the back of slavery and colonisation- all those lovely cheap raw materials, all those lovely new markets.

I don't think so. The Normans outlawed slavery and didn't believe in it. The UK was sufficiently rich that Lincoln Cathedral was the tallest building in the world for 400 years - well before slavery somehow came back to the UK. Prior to the industrial revolution and colonial times UK GDP per capita was amongst the highest in Europe (4x higher Indian wages at the time) - high UK wages and an abundance of coal (cheap energy) was a driver of the industrial revolution eg automation made sense against high wages (why AI will hurt us a lot). Slavery and empire didn't make the UK rich - it was already rich, technical superiority, innovation and industrialization which via free trade which decimated foreign industries and caused their collapse and made the UK rich (though UK workers suffered the consequences of automation too).