To not get why people hate Dubai so much?

[Cutitup]

What is there to hate?

I think it's a great place to have a holiday. Great restaurants, great service, fab shopping and spa treatments.

I do understand the problems of domestic and construction staff being exploited but this is not a problem unique to Dubai. I just don't get the vitriol, the 'it has no culture' etc.. I say get out of the bitter farm and play with the hay!

I live in Dubai. Agreed there is an awful lot of tackiness (so what?). However, the crime rate is really low because the punishments are harsh and moral standards (alcohol restrictions, public decency, respect for women etc) are very high in the Gulf Region. There is no fear of walking home at night here, or worrying about your teenage kids getting into trouble, or your little ones playing out safely. There are low paid workers here but in a lot of cases if they don't come here they will literally have to sell their children to avoid starving to death, and this country gives a financial lifeline to whole families (if it didn't they would not come, they're not stupid stop being so patronising mumsnetters). The UK won't accept them. Mumsnetters getting each other all whipped up into a frenzy when you haven't even been here is very annoying. Get off the high moral ground and take a long hard look at some of the truly terrible things that happen in the UK before you judge a different culture so harshly. Back off judgey mumsnetters.

A woman was arrested after reporting a rape to the police. How can you possibly get past that?! I would not go to a place where that is a possibility.

People also get arrested for kissing or drinking alcohol in public. Why would you want to go there?

I fully understand the low pay and why people would move there for work. I fail to understand why these workers can not be treated humanely. Why they have their passports confiscated and live in shit conditions. Why they cannot leave freely. Dubai can afford to offer these people a decent standard of living but chooses not to. It treats them as slaves. Respect for women? Which women? Emirati women, maybe.

Respect for women ?

Are you having a fucking giraffe ?

< crump >

'The fact is that a lot of labourers have great jobs there. They often live in labour camps'

Hahaha! That's the best most stupidly, achingly unintentionally ironic thing I've read for a long time

OP, your privilege is disgusting.

There are low paid workers here but in a lot of cases if they don't come here they will literally have to sell their children to avoid starving to death and this country gives a financial lifeline to whole families

So things have to be dire for them to come.

if it didn't they would not come, they're not stupid stop being so patronising mumsnetters

No they are not stupid, they are desperate as you just outlined.

"Respect for women" in Dubai....yeah, right!

Well, OP, like a lot of people on holiday I guess, I like to hire a car, take myself on a drive around the local area, maybe stopping off at a few sites of stunning natural beauty. I like to keep up my exercise regime, so a run in good weather in vest and shorts to top up my tan is a must too. Or doing some mountain biking.

I mean, France provides all that. But Dubai? Seriously? Unless you are in TOWIE, or paid to be there?

moral standards (alcohol restrictions, public decency, respect for women etc) are very high in the Gulf Region.

You can always get booze if you pay the right person. Black markets are not moral.

Respect for Emirati women, maybe? Not Philippine or Subcontinental women. Not a scrap.

There is no fear of walking home at night here, or worrying about your teenage kids getting into trouble

I have personally been threatened by UAE Nationals and spat at by a taxi driver walking through Satwa at night.

I know plenty of teenage kids who've got into drugs in Dubai.

Mumsnetters getting each other all whipped up into a frenzy when you haven't even been here is very annoying

But I have worked, lived in and visited the region over two decades. I have three relatives who have lived there since the late 1970s.

Two types of shallow taw.

1. Brits in Dubai do seem to lose their sense of perspective and become a cliche colonial monster. I hated living there, mainly pissed leather faced skinny bitches who treat people as commodities. Doha is quite different. So they are twats.

1. The Mumsnet armchair warriors who sit in their surburhan little houses and make themselves feel clever by pontificating on subjects they know nothing about and they do absolutely fuck all to do anything to change things. They also, deep down DO feel they are superior because they think that the UK is more civilized than all of these horrid Muslim places (the richer the more hated of course, nobody gives a flying fuck about Bangladesh) and that is as bad as thinking you are better because of your skin colour or caste.

Twats indeed.

I had a stopover in Dubai airport en route to Singapore. I had been travelling for hours, I was exhausted and bleary eyed and very confused by the sudden bright lights! I inadvertently went through to arrivals rather than the onwards flight area and when I asked for help, as my passport had been stamped I was lead off by a group of security who asked me
"Where is your husband"
"I'm unmarried"
"Where is your father? Who will speak for you"
"I am travelling alone, I have got lost in your airport and I would greatly appreciate it if you could direct me back to my joining flight"

I fully appreciate that these men were doing their jobs but they were so aggressive towards me and dismissive when I tried to explain what had happened that I was actually afraid and intimidated.

I refused to sit down when I was told "you sit" and politely replied that I'd just sat all the way from England and appreciated the chance to stretch my legs.

I was 22, frightened and intimidated in an area that's predominantly for tourists. I refuse to go back there and I never left the airport.

1. those who say fuck it and go because it suits them and bugger the consequences for others.

Yeah right, that happens all the time in 2013, the airports are full of imprisoned women who are not accompanied by their husbands. Utter bollocks.

Amber, go check the labels in all your clothes and chuck away all the ones who used slave labour to make them. Check the device you are using to read this thread was made in a factory where people are paid a fair wage and work a 40 hour week. Then get in a lather over a teeny Emirati nation who have absolutely no effect on your life.
I think that means you are a number 2 .

No it doesn't.

Ive said before on here, I am too poor to have such principles about where clothes are made and by who. I buy my children clothes in Primark because that is what I can afford. Id rather someone in bangladesh was working in a clothes factory than selling themselves and that is the difference for many.

I buy clothes like that out of neccesity, going to dubai to get rich on tax free earnings is very different to buying cheap clothes because that is all you can afford.

Mumsnetters getting each other all whipped up into a frenzy when you haven't even been here is very annoying

Well start a thread on "why don't people like" somewhere else then.

I completely disagree. Principles are principles and many people take steps to maintain their principles even when they are poor by, for example buying clothes second hand so you are not directly funding it etc.
It is a bit hypocritical to play the poor card just so you can slag off other people and feel superior.

The women in Bangladesh who sewed your knickers are hideously abused and treated as lower class citizens whose lives are disposable, I lived there for 3 years. But because its shitty and poor, nobody cares about the corruption or abuse. Arab bashing is such a leftist cliche.

I've heard it all now amber. I can't actually believe you are saying that it is fine to treat people in a manner which you find unacceptable if it results in you being able to buy clothes you can afford.

So your santinmonious preaching stops when you get to your front door? That is the ultimate in hypocrisy.

As for the poster who went through immigration rather than to the onward flight area- I don't think you should be travelling alone regardless of your gender- you have to miss an awful lot of signs to get that wrong!

Amber, you say you are poor - if you or your husband got offered a job in Dubai with private schooling for the kids, private health, a chance to pay off your mortgage and have savings etc - would you not be tempted? Also don't think it's fair to stereotype all the expats that live there - that's just ridiculous.

I have formed an unfavourable opinion on Dubai from what I have seen and heard. Have never really wanted to go and did turn it down as a place to live but probably only because we had the choice of another Asian country. I will visit one day and try and look at it with fresh eyes though before I totally condemn everything about it from my armchair in front of the telly.

But this thread is about why people don't like DUBAI. Shitty things go on everywhere in the world. Its not a competition to see who has it hardest.

No-one is bigging up Bangladesh and saying what a wonderful place it is, are they? That is the difference here.

It isn't though portofino it's about why Dubai is singled out for slating when other places aren't.

It isn't though portofino it's about why Dubai is singled out for slating when other places aren't.

No, it's 'Dubai s such a wonderful place, full of spas and good restaurants, I can't understand why people hate it so much'.