Brits who moved to Dubai, how's life?

[Southparkt]

I had several friends who moved to Dubai in the last 3 years and they are really loving it and have no plans to come back. We have been considering a move as we have young family and will be very thankful if we can afford to have nannies and driver etc as our friends have. They feel more relaxed in the sun and can afford big house with swimming pool etc. We are high earners here and used to have nanny for our oldest but if we keep spending at that rate, we can never retire here with the Cost of living increases.
I am looking to hear from Brits who moved to Dubai and how life feels like now?

I cannot even be bothered to read the OP or the OP updates , which is something I do religiously, because like what's the f*ng point? It's so obviously goady, ignorant, oblivious, naive and everything in between.
What's so wrong with Trump, Reform, Farage, Hitler? Even if you support, vote , agree with all of these 👆 , you know full well why people don't agree with them, so fk right off with your faux naivety , it's boring.

You need to ditch your self absorbed friends.

dreadful place to live

Isobel Oakshott has moved there, need I say any more…

I worked there and swiftly returned home while pregnant.

It’s a glamorous lifestyle but should your marriage ever end, your kids can be easily be travel banned even if you’re not Muslim. It’s happened to a few friends of mine and they’re stuck there until the kids turn 18.

Labour workers and nannies are treated disgracefully. I’m on a Facebook group for Brits out there and one woman was complaining about having to pay the live in nanny £400 a month to look after a toddler and newborn full time!

I’ve also seen posts how many return to UK once the dc reach y9 (could have been y10) otherwise they can’t get funding for UK universities and are treated the same as international students regarding fees.

Ive never lived there but i travel there regularly for work. Its a soulless, materialistic place full of chavs with lots of money and very few manners or morals.

The fact we have council homes shows what a compassionate place we are. People get free housing if they struggle here. Not really comparable to kids walking miles to get some clean water is it. Adversity? Jesus wept you have no ideal of real poverty. Get out of your bubble and realise how lucky you are. I work in a school teachers don't last, it's stressful but in many countries kids don't even get to go to school especially girls. If you were dying in the steet an ambulance will pick you up and try and save you and you won't be presented with thousands of pounds of medical bills. My daughter has equal rights here and if one of my kids were to be gay they could hold hands in public and wouldn't be thrown off a building. There's plenty of things wrong here and improvements can be made but we are bloody lucky that's why hundreds of thousands emigrate here every year.

I haven’t liked there but used to travel there regularly for work. I couldn’t avoid it and keep my job. I’m so happy I don’t have to go back. I wouldn’t even transit through the airport.

It’s a hotbed of human rights abuses, people trafficking, and organised crime. And even if you could sleep at night knowing all that, don’t be fooled into thinking you’d be immune from trouble as a white Brit.

Along with her partner Richard Tice who is the Reform MP for Skegness! Guess he jets back and forth from Dubai to do his constituency surgeries and show his face in parliament😂. i do wonder if the good people of Skeggy which is somewhat bleak and run down are happy with their choice of MP and his living arrangements

Yes, awful. Let me be extremely clear. By providing an opinion on my lived experience in a country I am by no means suggesting nothing awful has ever happened in that country. It was a short post, genuinely intended to be positive.

This is so true. There is an order of race. Arabs at the top, white europeans next (thrh don't seem to mind British people of different heritage but with british passport) and is goes down to philipino, Indian, African It is very clear in the middle east the pecking order. Unless you are super rich then you can be of any colour. Rich is also very different there. You are atill basically working class unless you have several million in the bank.
I also worked in tech and there were a lot of Indian people and I witnessed the caste system in action between the Inidan guys. The CTO was high caste and he literally screamed blue murder at the lower caste people on his team. And the arabs were the same to philipninos and to all the Indians Everyone has an order of how much respect and humanity they are entitled to based on nationaility and race.
Even different arab countries rank each other differently.
You escape all that if you are white as the arabs put you one below them. Not equal for sure though and you never will be.
Its like upstairs downstairs but with the whole country.

Aaaah, Dubai, one of the homes of neo colonialism .
i would hate myself op but you go ahead and enjoy the fruits of slave labour and exploitation

Abu Dhabi is nicer.

I know a male professional who lived there for years. One night he was slightly drunk and got into a verbal argument with a taxi driver. He ended up beaten, in jail for months and all assets frozen. It's easy to say that wouldn't happen to you but I'm sure he would have thought the same thing too before it did happen to him.

Yep. Got to factor in other countries aren't as tolerant to foreigners as the British. Qatar for instance is known for this.

Sheer coincidence re timing, I am listening to this, and have made the now conscious decision to not give any child of mine my blessing to live there.

www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w27vqsjt

I’m all up for moving, but fuck Dubai.

People all over the world are desperate for a better life. The poorest and most desperate go to Dubai (and are taken advantage of), the middle class or those with ability get visas to come to work or study in countries like ours and pay higher fees (to subsidise our students who still complain about their existence) or accept our lower wages (so many UK trained doctors skip to Australia for triple the money).

To me it's just a sliding scale of exploitation. But also, I mean you do know human trafficking happens in the UK too?

With over half the country supporting reform it definitely feels a quiet majority would quite like to bus those of the wrong colour to a camp at night. After all... It's all fine and dandy if you contribute but look at what's happening to our communities. The people of colour live among us now!!!

My opinions on previous Prime Ministers:-

David Cameron - Annoying, smug, irritating and fucked us all with Brexit
Theresa May - Competent, wanted the best for Britain, she and I have different beliefs but I do think she was sincere
Boris Johnson - awful, amoral, didn’t give a shit about Britain just about getting power
Liz Truss - completely incompetent
Rishi Sunak - competent, dull, different beliefs to me
Keir Starmer - I voted for him but he has been rather a disappointment.

And tomorrow I will post a load of drivel on mumsnet - maybe on the Neighbours thread - because I will not be arrested for sharing these views. I can’t imagine happily living somewhere where I could be arrested for giving my (fairly mild) views on the government

My partner’s brother lives there - they really like it, they earn much more than they would in the uk. They quite like designer things and the nicer things in life. His brother would not be the type to think too much about human rights issues or women’s rights.

They do talk about moving back but worry as the salaries would be much lower in the UK, they say their UK friends are constantly moving back home so friendships are always changing. Schools are super expensive but they like the quality of the education their kids get. They are mainly staying there now until their kids finish school. It does sound like a nice lifestyle and their friends do sound nice but they hate that people are always leaving.

You spend a lot of time indoors with the hot weather so kids don’t have the same access to nature though they do seem to go on a lot of nice holidays. I remember when visiting one kid explaining to the other that some trees lose leaves in the winter - it hits you that they are mostly in an artificial aircon environment. Kids are upset they can’t have a dog because they can only be walked at night with the heat - some people do have them but they decided it would be cruel to have them locked up all day.

My partner has visited and said it’s really lacking the art and culture you would get in a normal city, it’s glitzy and rich but boring. He hated having to be inside with the heat - they like it there. I worked with a girl who went to an American school there and loved it, had a great childhood. I guess visit and see? Personally it would not be for me.

It’s just horrible, really. One thing I really hated about it was the complete and utter lack of culture or history or art or anything that makes life worth living. Just huge shopping malls and air conditioning. Crap. Western chains.

Plus for somewhere that is so low tax EVERYTHING is expensive. Insanely expensive. Idk why.
I did like some of the food though! Although that was mostly Lebanese inspired….

As so often happens, the first comment absolutely nails it. It’s a place built by slaves. Read Johann Hari’s account for the Observer.

Would you not be hiring your nanny through a British agency ? as surely you would want a qualified and trained nanny with a dbs / paediatric first aid etc.

The agency Kensington Nannies does nannies both in the UK and abroad.

Might be a silly question but have you been there before? Of course a holiday is a lot different to living there but you can get a feel for it.
It has been presented as a glamorous place to be, biggest shopping centre in the world, Ferrari world etc. all man made, very materialistic. On the surface it does come across as a very showy, "look at me" culture.
Having said that I know of someone who moved to Abu Dhabi and loves it, lots of things to do, better weather.
It does seem to work on two levels dividing the rich and the poor and I would be looking more into women's rights.

Human trafficking will probably happen in every country in the world but it is relatively rare, illegal and the majority of the population are horrified by it. In the UAE it is commonplace and done very openly. They're not ashamed of it. Quite the opposite, they seem to relish in having poor people running around after the rich. Comparing the UK to Dubai on human rights is utterly, utterly ridiculous.

God that's horrific 😢