I live in Dubai, ask me anything

I've actually not said anything about your life or tax. I don't doubt your life is better in Dubai. I don't doubt you prefer the options it gives you. Or the work life balance.

I do question the financial security stuff if you say though with living abroad. There's lots of hidden costs to this. Including the risk if everything goes tits up in UAE.

My issue is and remains the blinkers you chose and the dismissal of reality because you don't want to engage with it.

I had moments on this thread where I really thought, "just how much choice does she have as the tag along wife and how that removes her freedom of choice from certain things". Notably whether you can leave Dubai if the security issues get too much for you and you disagree with your husband over them.

I even said about giving benefit of the doubt.

But the nasty jealousy name-calling shit has put pay to that.

You've made active choices that a lot of people fundamentally find abhorrent. I've actually gone easy on this point too.

You need to take some ownership of this and accept that on an ask me anything thread you are going to get asked anything and i don't believe you have been completely honest on it.

The overall impression I'm left with is that money is the be all and end all to you and you don't see anything different and of value.

That makes me feel sorry for you in a very different way. Not jealous.

Especially if, it does all come crashing down. Which I hope doesn't happen cos you have a couple of kids in the equation.

I've lived abroad before. I simply couldn't not make the same decision and take the same risks with a couple of kids. If I was financially well off enough to afford multiple properties, I'd wouldn't have gone to Dubai in the first place (cos you are unlikely to have bought them all in the past year which is how long you've been in the Middle East). I wouldnt be moving the kids around like that cos I know what it's like to move about and not feel like you belong to a place. My Mum lived abroad for a while in her teens. She ultimately resented her parents for it. You can't stay 'in touch' with others even if you keep coming back regularly and social media. It still changes relationships because you don't have shared life experiences.

The fact you have such a negative attitude to the UK isn't healthy either. However you cut it. That's not necessary to justify your decision to go to Dubai either.

Honestly, if you want to live in Dubai that's up to you. But don't dress it up as a utopia whilst dumping on the UK and being shitty about people who question it, when you literally invited questions about your life.

Take ownership of it and if you are really being honest you need to address the point about living with such security issues and what the next twelve months realistically could look like given what's being said on media based in the Middle East itself. Noting Al Jareeza is based in Qatar and what the Emir of Qatar himself is saying. There isn't a BBC or Daily Mail filter going on here.

All I see is epic denial and an unwillingness to actually engage with the thread you started.

Which was kinda my point from the very start anyway .

So on this basis, if things do kick off, you don't feel the UK government has any duty to repatriate you or other expats? Is that correct?

Burglary rates in the UK have declined by 72% since the start of the 2000s. Burglaries involving violence have always been a tiny percentage of the whole. You’re most at risk of being attacked in your own home by your DH and you brought him with you to Dubai. I have not heard of a single instance of a child walking a few steps in front of its parent being ‘snatched’.i lived in London for much of my adult life and walked around and used public transport at all hours of the day and night without ever being mugged.

Either you’re inventing straw men to justify your choice to live under an exploitative dictatorship that has paid you off, or else, poor @britindubai, you must have lived in terribly deprived, dangerous crime-ridden areas despite your incredible wealth?

I love these fanciful threads. For a moment I thought it was the poster who claimed to have left university already a millionaire through some savvy property investing and house ‘flipping’, but it looks like it isn’t.

Anyway, I have no problem with people emigrating to earn more money. Why on earth not?

The assumption by some that OP must be materialistic with Chanel bags and the like just because she would rather her husband didn’t pay so much tax is batshit. ‘Normal’ people also want to make and keep more of their money. It’s not about wanting a shallow, materialistic life, it’s about financial security.

Honestly I only lock my front door at night. I regularly go for walks by myself after midnight. I have never been concerned about DS being snatched. And I've left my car unlocked over night accidentally before now with no issues.

The idea this doesn't exist in the UK with the kind of money you suggest you have, is actually ignorant in itself. You didn't need to go to Dubai to escape this. You chose to. It shows a disconnection from reality.

I don't need to worry about 'getting out', flights being cancelled nor the prospect of a full scale war. I can see friends and family easily.

I'm not actively trying to sell a dream lifestyle that's only a shallow veneer of a country that has to uphold this lifestyle ideal.

And actually it's good for DS to sometimes see that life isn't always shiny and not everyone has the same lifestyle as him. He doesn't live in a bubble.

You claim to be absolutely loaded. So my question to you, is really, when you decide to move away from Dubai where do you intend to find your next utopia? Cos you clearly don't think it exists in the UK.

And that does mean we should be asking where the next place in your life plan. Or do you even have one beyond, make as much money for financial security (which you clearly already have). This whole business of chasing a lifestyle whilst simultaneously not quite understanding certain things in life and what's possible in the UK is really bizarre.

Which brings me back to this just being a sales pitch for Dubai The Dream at a time when no ones buying into it anymore rather than it being a reality with substance behind it...

How much does your husband earn OP?

Would you be able to do that if you didn’t live in a gated community? Are poorer workers in Dubai as safe?

It’s nice to earn that money on the back of slavery

I mean, good luck to anyone who chooses to emigrate but don't look down your nose at my, quite frankly, lovely life and community.

I think this is where I am with this thread at this point.

It's almost a weird kind of snobbery.

Dubai already has a reputation for nouveau riche type showiness and a desperation to show off success which I think a lot of posters are perhaps picking up from the OP.

It's hardly dispelling stereotypes which I've actually been trying to avoid and trying to fall foul of.

I can't help but think that actually the OP is possibly actually employed to promote Dubai though. It's selling Dubai the Product Lifestyle as a thread. It isnt honest.

I dunno. I don't think there's been real sincerity from the start and that really my problem rather than an issue with Dubai itself. It's certainly not jealousy. I have no reason to be jealous. I have already have a lot of the things the OP is bragging about and I don't aspire to the rest. They simply aren't on my priority list.

I appreciate and value what I have here. I value freedom of thought and expression. I value our location in terms of global security. I value our shitty democratic system for all its flaws. I like rain. I like the legal rights and protections I have here. I like the legal rights and protections other people have here. I like that there isn't this system of different types of people with different rights.

They are all worth mentioning and valuing and asking the OP about.

It's really not all about the £££ and I just think it's sad thats all the OP seems to truly value when it comes down to it.

I just think it's all really sad.