Meant to be moving to Dubai in 4 weeks

[Medesres]

We've been planning a move to Dubai for a while now. Dh's work has an office out there and it seemed like great opportunity to live abroad and experience sth different. I've got a couple of friends out there already too who love the lifestyle.

Watching the news for the past 24 hours and I'm really starting to question things. I had no idea how close to Iran it was and who knows what might happen next. Part of me is hoping it will all be resolved soon but hard to believe.

My friend who already lives there has spent the night sleeping in one room with her dh and kids scared of all the missile noises.

Its always baffled me how so many people want to live there. I went there once as my children’s father was working in Iraq, and I did not like what I saw. The workers treated like second class citizens. Behind the glitz and glamour, workers are treated so badly. Once you start to notice, it becomes a totally different place. I couldn’t wait to leave and would never go back.

No way! 😅 She should use all the money she saved to find her own way home, but yeah I’d rather she stayed over there too.

I definitely don’t want to live there. I prefer being out in the woods!

Regardless of what you think of Dubai as a place the GCC is extremely stable. Once this is over Dubai will go back to being like it usually is. This is a very exceptional situation. So OP if you are worried about safety then if the IRCG falls it should be absolutely fine.

YANBU to be worried. Can you cancel? I'm not sure it will all calm down even within a couple of weeks, and surely this is a situation that wasn't anticipated; maybe opting out would be easier than you think?

There is a concept in business called ‘due diligence’ where you do some research into something before making any decisions.

It can be used in life too when making big decisions. One area of research may be ‘what is the area I’m planning on moving to like geopolitically?How safe is it? ’

If you did some due diligence prior to moving to Dubai, you may even have discovered that your wonderful lifestyle would be built on the backs of slavery and human rights atrocities.

I knew a woman who worked in the ME. Her car broke down and she got a lift from a colleague, he came from there. They got stopped by the police and were given the option of prison or getting married. Took her a few years to get home and she brought her baby back with her.

It won't always happen like that but it did.

YANBU to be worried and I would at the very least wait a month before going. The only thing you can really do is wait it out, but equally, I am not sure I would want to move there either after the recent developments. How important is the move? Have you got a job there?

I’m not sure it’s a pile on. I hope not for OP, I feel for her and hope she can stay put for now with her DH’s work.

I think the thread really just represents what some of us feel is naivety or wilful ignorance about what UAE actually is but just listening to absolute shits like Isabel Oakeshott.

But then they stopped. A long time ago.

I daresay she’ll be out of there on a private jet.

But I’m not happy my hard-earned taxes might be used to arrange evacuation of gloating tax evaders/avoiders. They should be billed for it if it comes to it.

It’s always saddened me to see Brits lording it up like latter day colonialists off the back of other people’s slave labour. There’s no such thing as a free lunch. Or a cheap luxury holiday.

Like people who buy holiday homes in northern Cyprus 🙄

Is this serious? I cant fathom how people contemplate moving somewhere they cant place on a map, genuinely crazy!

Reports that Fujairah power station and desalination plant have been very badly hit this morning. Desalination the UAE's only internal source of drinking water, with supply problems from the closure/attempted closure of the Strait of Hormuz, people in the UAE could be in serious trouble if this war is in anyway prolonged.

Even if sea supply becomes safe again in the next few weeks, repairing/rebuilding Fujairah for both power and water, will be far from instant.

Memory isn't the same thing as intelligence.

They're still alive though aren't they?

The reality is, this can happen anywhere. In the UK, children were attacked at a Taylor Swift–themed dance and yoga class in Southport, a class meant for young kids. Three children were killed and others were seriously injured.

And that’s alongside attacks like the Manchester Arena bombing.

Statistically, whether people like it or not, Dubai is safer than the UK.

Move. I spent 3 years there. The issues with Iran will be over in a few weeks or months tops. It works in your favour salaries will be better due to less competition (they are falling and have been for 3 years - so many people want to move there plus AI) and rent/housing costs will be down.

Not at the moment.

Being alive is a pretty low bar, particularly on your honeymoon. There are plenty of people alive in Gaza.

And if you look at all circumstances properly such as civil liberties and habeus corpus the UK is much safer anyway.

No-one will be flying to Dubai any time soon.

I don't think so. The Normans outlawed slavery and didn't believe in it. The UK was sufficiently rich that Lincoln Cathedral was the tallest building in the world for 400 years - well before slavery somehow came back to the UK. Prior to the industrial revolution and colonial times UK GDP per capita was amongst the highest in Europe (4x higher Indian wages at the time) - high UK wages and an abundance of coal (cheap energy) was a driver of the industrial revolution eg automation made sense against high wages (why AI will hurt us a lot). Slavery and empire didn't make the UK rich - it was already rich, technical superiority, innovation and industrialization which via free trade which decimated foreign industries and caused their collapse and made the UK rich (though UK workers suffered the consequences of automation too).

Of course it made it rich. The industrial revolution grew on the back of slavery and colonisation- all those lovely cheap raw materials, all those lovely new markets.

Thank you for this, there are so many misconceptions.
Indeed, the wool trade made England rich in Tudor times.

Personally I'd not go. This will likely drag on for months. Schools are shut etc and how will you be insured. I'd also not really trust flights there at present. I know it is massively inconvenient and I know people who live in Dubai who are just getting on with it as best they can but it's kind of nuts to move to an active war zone. Is it possible to get valid insurance even with FO recommends against it?

I've long decided not to holiday or set foot in any part of the Middle East.

Iran will be unstable for quite some time even if the USA are successful. It won't all suddenly transition to a nice stable governement there will likely be a lot of unrest. I say this thinking USA/Israel were 100% correct in their actions but to pretend this will all be resolved swiftly I think is a little naive.

The US have told all citizens in the region to evacuate (with no state help) so I guess they would disagree with you.

I would not go. This has the possibility to drag on months, possibly years sporadically. The middle east has always been a place of tension and conflict, we just have had a couple of decades of relative peace.
IMO, there are better and now safer places to go have an experience of living in another country.