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!

"Large numbers of Indian workers aside"

Don't know about Dubai other than what I 've heard but often the working conditions and rights of maids for example can mean shit all and often these maids, especially new ones are pretty much at the mercy of their employers. Some get sympathetic employers and some unfortunately don't.

"Large numbers of Indian workers aside"

See my head doesn't work like this. I can't leave "Large numbers of Indian workers aside" and admire the health care/working conditions in Dubai. Because it is a system that works at two speeds/on two levels - the haves and the have nots. Quite obviously the system is not good if only certain sectors of the population are treated well by it and others are treated in ways that contravene human rights.

oh that is ok great health care for only those that matter

Ibiza certainly does have a drug culture but again it is not what Ibiza is built on, those involved are the minority and it is not what the government supports

Yes, this debate is going round in circles. I refer back to the post re consturuction workers. It is not equal, certainly not nor have I claimed it was, but it's not unique in the world and large numbers of the Indian workers have better working conditions that they would at home. And they do have the health care too as that is the law. Do you imagine they come from paradise to work in hell?

But still, if one's ethical practice is to avoid all places and practices which are not corresponding to all human rights legislation, then I congratulate you and would assume that you would not travel further than Europe as there are all manner of horrors further afield which are certainly not restricted to Dubai, including the home countries of many of the migrants. And you would of course wear only those clothes the provenance of which has been scrutinised, absolutely decline to wear fakes and seek to ensure that all your associates do the same, in the manner and tone of this debate.

you summed it up in your own post what many dislike about dubai

.... that the world is not perfect? That poor people tend to get a bum deal in the world and have done throughout history, since the beginning of time.

But you are right. Bad bad Arabs - it's all their fault.

no in previous post "Large numbers of Indian workers aside"

it has nothing to do with them being arab ex husband arabic have lived in an arab country some arab culture i love other parts i do not though differs from country to country

it is g

it is going round in circles and you can not justify dubai's ways to many on here you can keep trying

You clearly have not read my posts properly as I have not tried to 'justify' Dubai, but merely to point out that 1) it is not unique in having poor people who are not treated as well as the rich 2) for a young country it is doing far better than other countries, for example, WE and other 'First World' countries did when building their economies.

But you are loving the ride up there on your high horse so I'll let you get on with it.

Sounds fucking awful.

It is not equal, certainly not nor have I claimed it was, but it's not unique in the world and large numbers of the Indian workers have better working conditions that they would at home. And they do have the health care too as that is the law. Do you imagine they come from paradise to work in hell?

But workers are tricked - they are recruited in their home countries with promises of fair wages and the opportunity to send money home. The reality is that their passports are held by their employers and they work as bonded labourers, paying back the 'cost' of the opportunity to work in Dubai. The workers are not able to send money home, they are cut off from their home and familes and often they have sold land or other assets in their home country in order to pay to come to Dubai. Bonded labour is slavery.

And of course these workers come from poor countries which have not been a paradise for them - that is the whole premise of bonded labour, it targets and exploits people in poverty who are desperate to improve their situation.

Who are you to declare that bonded Indian labourers in Dubai are better off than they would be at home? Have you asked them?

Also, starwarslegoboy can you tell me whether the following is true please?

4: There seems to be concept of fairness when working in Dubai; the color of employee's passport tends to decide the level of job for which you can apply. It's the norm, e.g., for your job adverts to stipulate the nationality and gender of candidates

5: Salaries are also differs according to nationalities; e.g. a hotel worker from the Philippines as a waiter with two years experience, she can earned dhs 900/month, on the other hand a Romanian colleague doing the same job, earned dhs 1,300/month.

ezinearticles.com/?Working-Conditions-in-Dubai&id=1248076

Because India is far worse and their concept of H&S is diabolical. And the position of women there is very grim. Might I mention that Dubai is a very safe place to be and a large number of women independently worked there from poor countries and were able to support their families at home. But you insist that Dubai is worse basically because it is rich. Have you asked them what they would prefer? Who are you to declare that they are not better off? We are back to the argument that poor people in poor countries must be better off than poor people in rich countries.

The passport holding was always an grey area and it was legal when I was there, although it was rumoured to be stopping. I don't know what the status is now. It was more common for companies to hold the labour card and not the passport but I would think that the passports of large numbers of poor workers would be held if it is still legal, yes. I am not supporting this either btw but many people suffer in order to send money home and improve their grim situtation in life, not least the poor fuckers who cling to the bottom of a truck to enter Europe. There are undoubtedly some who are badly treated, as there as many in their home countries doing jobs there but there is also the opportunity to earn money, send it home and improve the situation of their families. Who else is helping them? It' all very well shouting about the abuses, but who helps them when they are in their home countries? Noone bangs on about their human rights there, because they are just poor and staying poor.

Job were sometimes 'defined' by race, which is what I was referrring to when I wrote about the large number of White South Africans who came in after the Rand was in trouble. They were well educated and white and prepared to work for far less than the First World Whites. It was not popular. Certain jobs tend to be occupied predominantly by certain nationalities, e.g. Sri Lankan maids, and it's is very difficult to get an IT position if you are not Indian and from Bangalore unless you are recruited from outside the UAE. But it's not actually advertised as such, either for gender or race, although you did see adverts in the paper advertising 'Bubbly Young Secretary required'. I was a bit of an exception as a female engineer i the private sector, although a surprising number of Emiratee women were coming up the ranks in techie positions in Government jobs. Politically correct it is not.

starwars I have been making the same point as you just have for days now so I thought I'd summarise what I've learnt on this thread:-

1. The Dubai haters absolutely refuse to acknowledge that Dubai is not the only only place in the world that isn't perfect.

2. they also refuse to acknowledge that the place is younger than many of them and is making changes all the time.

3. the justification for the vitriol is that Dubai is rich and therefore can afford to do better. By definition this means that poor countries can do what they like.

4. if you want to visit Dubai you have to provide a defence for everything the despisers dislike yet they need not provide any such justification for any decision they make which does not 100% comply with the most scrupulous human rights regimes

5. Dubai is the only place in the world that advertises itself as a luxury travel destination- all those travel brochures you see for places other than Dubai are a figment of your imagination.

6. if you try and argue that immigrant workers have better lives than they do in their home countries that is still unacceptable because they do not have standards equal to the rich Arabs

7. if you try and argue that places like India are rich enough to treat people better it turns out that what they do is ok because their badly paid work force are not immigrants and India is not a luxury holiday destination

8. if you ask where these highly principled human rights activists do find acceptable to holiday they fall into 3 camps
   a) they don't say anything leading me to believe they are not actually prepared to disclose this information as they know they are being hypocritical twats
   b) they don't travel outside Europe
   c) they justify travelling to places with less than perfect records by staying away from the bad bits or convincing themselves that because whatever aspect they don't agree with about the place 'is not what it is built on' then it's OK, particularly if it is a poor country as they are actually helping them then.

9. if you live in Dubai you are a sloany, materialistic, money grabbing, leathery, alcoholic scumbag

10. if you holiday in Dubai you are just a scumbag

11. If you talk to people who work in hotels in Dubai about their lives they are all lying for fear of their jobs

12. if you glean your information from the press it is all 100% accurate and never sensationalised

13. if you try and ascertain if people's principles are demonstrated in their everyday consumption of goods they seem to fall into 2 camps
    a) they are allowed to disregard their principles as they are too poor to do otherwise
    b) boycotting goods made in sweat shops ultimately harms the people in those places so it's fine to consume them

14. if you really want to achieve the most dizzying heights of ostentatiousness you have to go to Ibiza for 6 weeks a year

15. don't drive in Qatar unless the laws have changed since the 1980's

I've probably missed some things but i the should concede that we are fighting a losing battle against such superior people who aren't being the least bit hypocritical.

The Qatar driving comment was mine, and it is fact

But the thread is ABOUT Dubai FFS. Dubai can afford to treat its workers properly and it doesn't. It is not India, it is not Bangladesh.

It hypes itself as a luxury travel destination and is packed with enslaved workers and trafficked women. No-one is going to tell me that this is not true. The best anyone can say is that things are improving.

Sorry badlad I don't doubt it is true and i didnt mean to make it sound like i disbeleived it. I keep thinking about how insurance claims would look if that law was in force everywhere and it makes me chuckle!

No-one is trying make out that everywhere else in the world is perfect. The big issue is that Dubai is trying to make out it is - when it certainly isn't.

But even now (and leaving aside human rights issues for a moment), it's still not clear, why choose to visit Dubai if you don't have to.

To be fair, there are other parts of the world that I would be equally 'meh' about (not limited to Benidorm, Monaco and Blackpool), but as Portofino said, this is a thread about Dubai.

I suspect many people on this thread go months without Dubai even crossing their mind, but the OP did ask...

It's about Dubai yes but it was also about why Dubai is singled out for hatred, presumably on other threads I have not read. So why is Dubai such a target when India is so innocent of the crime of their society? - it is more established and, I hate to bang on about this, but they have the bloody Nuke! That' a far more criminal waste of money than spas and marble malls. And there are plenty of extremely rich people in India who care fuck all about the plight of their countrymen. And we give them aid.

I think it's fair enough to say that Dubai is not your cup of tea, is tacky, not for you etc. Each to their own. The prospect of gun toting America fills me with horror. It's the shrieking of charges of moral turpitude against Dubai as though it was the recent inventor of shoddy behaviour against poor people that I find disingenuous.

It is most definately not perfect, but it is a developing society and I witnessed, met and worked with many people who were building decent lives and hope for the future, and they were not just the rich white bling lot. Room for improvement, absolutely.

I think you will find that I have clearly stated on this thread that I would not visit India as a tourist either, due to the high incidence of sex selective abortion and the neglect and killing of female children within the culture.

If this thread were a thread about India (or anywhere else) I would be discussing the issues relevant to those cultures and geographical areas.

But this thread is about UAE, specifically Dubai so I am talking about the issue of bonded labour AKA slavery and indeed human trafficking which is one of the reasons I don't want to go to the place as a tourist. I also don't want to go due to the status of women and the hypocritical attitude to prostitution.

I agree that the reason UAE is able to exploit bonded labourers is because those labourers are in pretty desperate situations in their home countries. I don't think that makes it OK though. Quite the contrary. I think it makes it cynical and inhumane.

India being poor and having a caste system which keeps people poor is not a reason for Dubai to exploit slave labour. I repeat the majority of the labourers are tricked into coming - do you think they would have chosen to leave their homes if they knew they were going to be paid a lot less than promised, work a lot more than they were told, have their passports taken and work as bonded labourers housed in labour camps?

I haven't asked labourers personally as I have never been to Dubai but I have read interviews from them and the answer is clearly 'no' they would not have come but they cannot go back until they pay off their debt.

We are back to the argument that poor people in poor countries must be better off than poor people in rich countries.

That isn't my argument actually (although I'm failing to see why it is an unreasonable expectation for rich countries to provide an acceptable level of freedom and standard of living for all their residents).

My argument is that bonded labour AKA slavery is wrong. Enslaving and trafficking poor people from poor countries in order to provide a luxury lifestyle for nationals and tourists is wrong.

If you do boycott all the countries in the world which exploit the poor, then, while I fear you are not often in similar company in life, I nevertheless applaud your conviction.

I don't boycott all countries which exploit the poor - indeed very few (if any) countries (including the one I live in) do not exploit the poor to some extent. I do try to be careful about what I consume and where I go on holiday however. I find the second easy, the first much harder due to globalization.

My issue with UAE is not only exploitation of the poor - it is bonded labour . Which is a particular manner of exploiting the poor isn't it?

I don't want to go and stay in a hotel built by bonded labourers and it is easy for me to not do that - I avoid places that use bonded labour and Dubai is one of them.