How to tell my friend who lives in Saudi to stop bloody patronising me!

[SomeLikeitSnot]

My friend lives in KSA with her family and LOVES it. Loves having a live in maid, pool on site, glitz and glamour. Great- v happy for her! Shes in the UK over summer visiting and we are seeing her a lot and shes driving me INSANE.
Shes taken on this real 'aw poor you stuck in UK its sooo hard here' mentality and I find it so grating. I have no inclination to move to Saudi/the middle east and her acting like Im jealous of her life is becoming so tiresome.
When we are chatting she will keep saying 'sorry I'll stop going on about the sun and lifestyle it must be hard to hear!' when I honestly couldnt care less. Sounds great for her and I love the stories- I also love the UK countryside/weather/culture/all our friends and family. I think she feels me prickling and thinks is jealousy.
I remember from visiting friends in the UAE everyone is v anti-UK and thinks its a shithole and theres a real feeling of people 'escaping' to the ME but I really don't mind it here and I want to say something to cut out the comments.
She is a friend so I wont want to make a sarky comment about womens rights/death penalty etc just a 'please stop feeling sorry for me, I dont want your life'!

How long ago did she live there?

About 12 years ago. From another post, I've seen it's changed a lot very quickly, so my information is outdated as to how women are treated now.

This is an ignorant thing to say - you have no clue on the quality of their degree.

I have three degrees (from very reputable universities) and not one of them taught me cleaning.

You began your interaction with me by making all sorts of false equivalences. Eating in a restaurant or going on holiday are simply not equivalent to employing a vulnerable individual in a country like Saudi Arabia. As I wrote above, capitalism is an inherently exploitative system that is rotten at the core. And it is certainly true that most people in the West benefit unfairly from the labour of workers elsewhere. We can discuss all this from the global economic perspective. But on an individual level, the inequality of the current system doesn't mean we should throw up our hands and say that our choices don't matter or that everything is equivalent to everything else.

In this post you stated that I've "never had the opportunity to actually employ someone." I suppose you meant that as an insult? But it isn't about opportunities, it's about choices. I have lived all over the world. There are some countries I simply refuse to live in (or visit). That's a choice I've made, though I could certainly have earned a lot of money if I hadn't made that choice. Of course, the option to make such choices at all is probably one of the highest levels of privilege available.

I think it's great that you volunteer in a local community (I mean that genuinely, no sarcasm intended). But I still maintain that paying someone a pittance just because you can and "everybody else does" is fundamentally wrong. It doesn't matter whether the employer is a massive corporation or a private individual. It's still wrong IMO.

She sounds like a real.pain.

Tell her to done one as the Scousers day!

Took the words right out of my mouth.