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.

I'm sorry you couldn't be more wrong. The industrial revolution didn't need slavery. Looms in mills and threshing machines collapsed the price of labour and was a reason why the economics of slavery in the UK didn't work and made it possible to outlaw it.

Add to this workers in mills in Lancashire and elsewhere refused to work on cotton produced by slaves in North America.

As for "lovely new markets" through colonialism, the industrial revolution in the UK managed to collapse European competitor industries without conquering them. Free trade killed competitor industries.

The facts don't support your argument.

But you haven't cited any facts, only your assertions.
Some links to reputable sources would be good.

You need to understand the industrial revolution created absolute poverty amongst the working population in the UK and around the world.

Wages collapsed. Workers were so poor average height declined, longevity declined. The former working class aristocrats the weavers were reduced to being paupers. Slavery had no purpose - wages were destroyed - there was no need for slavery in the UK. Consequently it was easier to outlaw it (again) and then for the British Empire to enforce it.

The dark satanic mills of Blake's Jerusalem were perceived as evil job taking businesses that created poverty. Industrialization made workers paupers. Perhaps our modern data centres are the of the equivalent mills for office based jobs.

Oh, and @Dontgetfooledagain said "grew".

Use Google if you wish. I'm not writing an academic document for you.

It is common nettiqutte to support your (apparently) historically-based arguments with sources.

A Year 7 child is expected to do this.

But if you can't be arsed, then why should anyone engage with your points? They won't know what you're basing your arguments on.

This isn’t a defence of Dubai btw but since it’s being discussed I have to chime in to say Empire and slavery definitely did contribute greatly to Britaim riches. Why else would it have continued for so long? Do you think they were just doing it to pass the time??

It’s a shame this isn’t taught properly in school but yet they want to teach us about US slavery and segregation. Go figure. We need to look closer to home.

There were also individual families who benefited directly from slavery and were compensated greatly when it was abolished. These families and others have lived off their slavery related profits for generations. A lot of old money is very dirty. There is a strong link between classicism and racism.

“The initial research concerned the £20m paid in compensation to slave owners when their human property – enslaved men and women across the British Caribbean, Mauritius and the Cape – were emancipated in 1834. Slave owners were paid a proportion of what was deemed to be the market value of these 670,000-plus persons. People who had been bought and sold were now for the last time priced as commodities, and the money went to the owners. They invested their spoils on a whole range of economic, political and cultural activities – from building railways and developing merchant banks to buying artworks, some of which now grace our national collections (helping to refurbish country houses preserved by the National Trust and English Heritage). They also invested their capital, both human and mobile, in the development of the new colonies of white settlement in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Emancipated men and women, meanwhile, struggled with their varied degrees of freedom.”

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/may/05/so-empire-and-the-slave-trade-contributed-little-to-britains-wealth-pull-the-other-one-kemi-badenoch

https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/zcss7hv/revision/1

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/23/british-business-slave-trade-university-college-london-slave-owners

My above post was meant to quote this one!

they are hugely underestimating, but I know many people that wouldn’t know much about Dubai’s stance on human rights but they still
wouldn’t visit, Dubai only appeals to a certain type of person that wants a certain type of holiday, there are a lot of that type of person in England …

And millions don’t.

I prefer not to support the economies of homophobic totalitarian regimes.

I think Dubai, as a destination, has become very alluring for many. It's seen as very glamorous, new buildings, shiny floors, blue swimming pools, shopping malls with luxury goods. Housekeepers, nannies, drivers. It's a lifestyle that most ordinary people couldn't replicate in the UK.
I think this is probably what drew the OP and her husband, a sort of tax free "influencer" lifestyle which seems tempting.

I agree. Also, need to learn how they treat foreign workers from poorer countries. And law breakers. Hardly a country to take females.

People forget how much of the UK’s wealth was built during its colonial era.

This is exactly why it needs to be properly taught in UK schools. I recently met someone who didn’t even know what the British Raj was.

Yes but surely no one with any critical thinking ability listens to what the likes of Oakshott and Tice say?

Just because you met one ignorant person, doesn't mean it's not been "properly taught".
The function of schools isn't to provide the entirety of knowledge a person should have, but to give them the tools to find out and use critical thinking
Someone upthread didn't know where Dubai was, but blamed the teachers for not teaching about maps. How lazy and passive?
It's surely possible to educate yourself. Never in human history has information been so readily and freely available.

Yes, that was the first thing that struck me, (pardon the lousy pun!)

I agree, especially about not knowing where Dubai is.

My bigger point is that a lot of people don’t have even a basic understanding of the British Empire. The common narrative is that Britain “helped” its colonies — and that’s a very selective version of history.

It's a topic for another day.

People go and criticise Dubai a lot. They say how there no true free speech and the state is strict. But in return you get to keep all your income, your business thrives and crime is super super low.

You walk around with your phone in London it'll be snatched. If you have a nice watch, a gang with stab you for it.

In Dubai, this does not happen. They do not ignore crime and they actively police it and solve it. They don't just ignore theft.

It is indeed. Especially since I've been teaching the topic for the last 35 years and never have seen it taught in that way.

I think that's somewhat simplistic.
Millions of people walk around London every day with their phones out, and wearing expensive jewellery.
Crimes make the news. If it happened as frequently as you claim, it would hardly be newsworthy.

All I know is if I was sexually assaulted there I wouldn’t be telling the police out of fear. That doesn’t feel like a safer environment to me.

Good point.

Did you learn history from a few soundbites picked up from idiots on social media? Because this is nothing even close to accurate. I'm Irish, we grow up learning extensively about the bad parts of the British Empire, and even still I know that what you're spouting is nonsensical fiction designed to denigrate Britain of the past. There is much about British history that's incredible, flawed yes, but overall a massive positive. This constant bullshit about how awful it was on every level, is nothing but a demoralisation tactic that stops people pointing out atrocities currently being afflicted.

Agreed.

I’ve been going to Dubai regularly since 2018. I’ve never seen women being arrested for wearing bikinis on the beach or Western women dressing normally in public. Yes, laws exist on paper, but there’s a difference between what can be enforced and what is routinely enforced. That’s true in any country.

Police discretion happens everywhere. In the UK, there are countless examples of laws technically being broken but not pursued. My own car was damaged outside a Tesco, CCTV showed exactly what happened, it was reported, and nothing came of it.

Enforcement isn’t automatic just because a law exists.

Sexual assault happens in the UK too, as it does globally. That doesn’t excuse anything anywhere, but it shows the issue isn’t unique to one country.

As for extramarital sex, it has historically been illegal in the UAE. Whether people agree with that or not, it’s a known law. Travelling somewhere and knowingly breaking local laws, then being surprised by consequences is mind boggling.