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!

Places like Asia and the ME just generally run on a totally diffent mindset though, coming from the west -we just don't get it. Some good some bad, changing all the time just as we are changing and have changed. To try and transpose western ideals, morals and norms won't work. It's a work in progress.

It does annoy me a bit when folk can be so judgemental about whole areas and people when they have never visited that country or got to know the people but know everythng from reading a few aricles or whatever. It's just not that simple.

Make of that what you will, it's not a defence of Dubai.

Sorry Beach
Right - I am really going to hide this thread after this.....
But "The whole story made me sad that she had to be separated from her daughter in order to provide for her. "

Well me too, and her obviously but none of us 't created that situation and neither did Dubai. I reall struggle how you can hang that one on them. Her husband was killed by the Tamils. It's a shit of a place, politically. she fucking HATED the Tamils. Sri Lanka is another up and coming tourist destination too.

By the way, and I am not bloody nitpicking, we did not treat her with 'relative decency'. Seriously, fuck right off. We treated extremely well and as well as we would treat anyone and we also loved her. You are a bit blinded by your anger and disgust and I can get that. But your reaction is a bit broad brush on the 'everyone in Dubai is a cunt' scale. Noone really every reacts well to being told so.... Call the Indians to get the Nukes fired up

I did find it hard meeting maids who had left their families and children behind. Some were fairly happy with their new lives and had family and friends around them in the country they were working with. Some chose not to go home when they could, one I know of preferred to stay and spend the time with her boyfriend rather than go home to visit her young children. A few met husbands and built new lives far removed from the poverty they had left behind. I'm sure many were fairly miserable and badly treated. Most wanted to be employed by expats. Locals generally don't like the expats hiring maids as they think it spoils the market. Some locals treat their maids very well and have even spent their savings or a significant sum on cancer treatment for them or to help out the maids family back home. It's never just black or white.

starwarslegoboy - gosh quite a reaction.

I wasn't blaming the story of the Sri Lankan woman who worked for you on you or Dubai particularly. I was just posting my reaction to your post which was that it made me sad that she had to leave her daughter in order to provide for her.

My relatively decent comment was in reference to the people who do not treat the help quite so well in Dubai.

'everyone in Dubai is a cunt'

Are you quoting me or creating a strawman?

"I knew a lot of people who had maids and I imagine that most decent people were decent employers but you do get fuckers, yes. But not in Dubai only surely? [...] The construction worker case might well be human right abuses in some cases"

Again, you're talking about over 50% of the working population being low paid migrant workers. It's nice that you were a good employer to your maid, but that doesn't blot out the impact of bonded labour operating on a massive scale.

If you think the sponsorship system in the ME is so great, I suggest you read a bit more about the kafala system, as I have done since this thread began.

"To try and transpose western ideals, morals and norms won't work. It's a work in progress."

Eh - you are from the west. We're talking about people from the UK going on luxury holidays. If that doesn't involve 'transposing your values' I don't know what does. Or do you have to leave your values behind at Heathrow?

I think we have really moved on from folk from the west taking luxury holidays. Basically what some seem to be saying is that the west is good and moral and other countries aren't.

I've enjoyed luxury and non luxury holidays to lots of places, not really having a problem sleeping about it - maybe I did leave my values at Heathrow, alas.

I have lived in the ME for two years now and I am completely in agreement with everything Mango just said. Things are not as simple as they seem from your smug armchair in Pinner.

Oh I'm not always that succinct - I'm just a bit tired of going round in circles on these threads with outright hypocrites or just people who pontificate on things they don't necessarily understand, because they once read a highly biased article in the Guardian.

Well said Mango and Fellatio.

If i may add, the very righteous Singapore is still being built on the same blood and sweat.
Curiously never hear anything ill about it?

I have a FB friend who has just posted she is off to Abu Dhabi. I suppose I should post something horrible on her wall if I am true to my principles?

Yes portofino, you should as it would be the perfect opportunity to demonstrate that your conviction in your principles extends further than criticising strangers on an Internet forum - but I bet you don't.

beachcomber you said it made you sad that someone had to be parted from their daughter in order to provide for them- that is often part of any migrant workers decision to go to another country to work and is certainly not exclusive to Dubai.

I know an Eastern European lady who has left her husband and young son at home and come to work in the UK. She has a higher earning potential than her husband and, as a couple, they truly believe her only seeing their son every few months because it allows her to earn enough money to pay for the best possible education for him, is the best thing they can do.

It might not be the decision we would make but it is incredibly arrogant to think that our generally held beliefs that being there for your children all the time is the best thing for all concerned is a principle that should be aspired to by everyone.

Migrant workers are not generally forced to move to another country- they do so because it provides a better life for them and their family. We might think it is sad but they have decided it is better than any alternative.

I did mention Singapore earlier, as I imagine that more people who would avoid Dubai might have had a stop over or two in Singapore (doesn't it also have the highest capital punishment rate per capita).

Again, people don't have to like or want to go to Dubai, it's the hipocracy and basically calling anyone who does shallow and cunts who,leave their morals at Heathrow I object to.

In the news today

How bizarre regarding the British guy. You'd think they would just want him gone. What have they got to gain by holding him other than bad press and the expense it must cost. Hope he gets home soon, his poor kids.

"I used to work in the hospitality industry in Asia and also did a lot of recruiting for the ME."

Eh, ok, I'll take your views at face value then. You obviously have no vested emotional interests.

It's nice that you say that things are changing. Slowly. But that's the best that you can say. As others have pointed out the UAE could easily do more to make sure that migrant workers get a better deal across the board. They choose not to. You can't tell me why I should feel happy about going on a luxury holiday in an environmentally unsustainable manmade superhotel, in the middle of a desert, built by exploited migrant labourers. Just call me a cunt. Nice.

Just as I thought when I clicked on; a whole load of shariah-bashing by ignorant fools who have no further knowledge than 'death penalty'.

Read some books and educate yourselves.

I'm still interested in any comments on the video from Ben Anderson. Other than this comment BTW, I couldn't get the link to work. Could see the front page and some stills but it was not working as a video. Bit intrigued as to how someone called Ben, I'm assuming it's him by the stills, a clearly handsome, designer stubbled, well nourished European can 'integrate' himself into a group of construction workers from the Indian subcontinent.

The link works fine for me and Ben didn't 'integrate' - as you say being white would have made that impossible for him. The descrition of the video doesn't say that he 'integrated' - it says that he 'hung around'.

It is in several parts so you need to click on parts 2, 3, etc.

I haven't called anyone a 'cunt' or 'shallow' on this thread and I would appreciate it if I wasn't called a smug Pinner living Guardian reading hypocritical armchair activist.

My point about housemaids in Dubai on this thread is not to accuse anyone here who employed one of being a cunt. My point is that the employment system in UAE is open to horrific abuse and that many of the maids are also bonded labourers. Many of the maids are raped and sexually harassed by the men in the family and they have no legal recourse - they will be imprisoned for 'sex outside marriage' if they try to complain that an Emirati man raped them.

That posters here treated everyone who worked for them as an equal and with respect and affection is good. Thankfully there are people who do not abuse the system - it is great that the people you employed were able to send so much money home and improve the lives of their families.

But surely you must see that this is far from the case for hundreds of thousands of workers in Dubai. You treating your staff well does not negate that fact and I'm perturbed that no-one on this thread seems willing to admit that. There has been much brushing off of the conditions of the people who actually make up the majority of the population in Dubai.

How can you 'love Dubai' whilst knowing of the human trafficking, bonded labour, abused maids, passport holding, imprisoning of labourers who try to escape their conditions, illegality of striking, the prostitution, the environmental impact of the desalination process, etc, etc.

Are you reading the same thread?

(to teajunky)