Poor pets, just disposable to these Dubai residents

[NototerrorismIntheUK]

Reflection of Dubai ' non national residents'. I judge you.

Fleeing and dumping cats and dogs. So basically pets left to die. Another character flaw to add to the vain, awful types that live there. Fake Dubai, modern day slavery loving, artificial, grim, and no conscience so animals are also disposable. 😢

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/mar/11/pets-abandoned-dubai-expat-owners-flee-iran-war

Would your DH also ignore his brother to save a cat?

I suspect that’s true for quite a lot of people, actually. But not many would admit to it.

As for me, I simply can’t imagine feeling that way. Despite having 3 cats I love to bits. I can’t imagine having to abandon them, I would do all I could to avoid that scenario, but ultimately my DDs would obviously come first if I had to choose. I would be devastated, though, and actually my DDs would be, too.

Ffs the uk government will not arrest you for “hurty words online”. Or the rest of it.

where do you get this information?

Friends of mine have lived out in the Middle East (sent by the UK government and not influencer types) and adopted cats from a rescue. They then brought them back to UK when they were posted.

That was a few years ago. Getting flights out of Dubai is not easy now and I imagine securing space for pets would be more difficult. There are undoubtedly some arseholes but others may have to make very difficult choices.

But Dubai is not at war. There is some fallout from a nearby war, which the Dubai authorities have under control.

current uk government advice to those in the area is to “shelter in place”, or in less American terms, stay put.

it advises if your presence in the area is not essential “you may wish to consider” departing.

there doesn’t not seem to be any urgency or any emergency plans to evacuate uk citizens.

there are agencies assisting with pet travel.

from what I can see there is no reason to ditch pets and leave NOW with only the clothes on your back. There is time, and there are ways to arrange safe travel.

it’s not Ukraine where they are being actively bombed.

i wonder how many of those ditching pets are taking suitcases of belongings or arrange transport of their material goods.

I don’t think this is necessarily what posters mean by designating British people living in Dubai as tax-dodgers. A main motivation for the move is frequently avoiding income tax. In fact, Dubai residents are ‘taxed’ in other ways by expensive accommodation and schooling, high utility bills, needing to buy bottled water because tap water quality is poor etc, but this seems less widely known.

No income tax, but there is always a "knowledge fee" 😂

ETA - someone upthread literally suggested people should be made to pay tax they evaded before repatriation. What tax in uk did they evade. Would love answer from these people

Same.

Yes, no tax (though the UAE does have VAT); but multiple ‘fees’ that function effectively the same way.

But this is almost irrelevant to me. People move all over the world for a variety of reasons, including more favourable tax conditions. Only those in the UAE seem to attract this level of opprobrium. It’s very strange.

If you are self employed you may still be liable to pay tax on earnings made abroad, so not declaring it would be evasion (this is a rule for most contries, not just the UK). If you are employed and paying taxes in that country then you declare it, but you wouldn't be charged further taxes. I imagine there are some grey areas between employment and self-employment that makes these rules hard to follow (or easy to exploit).

Its because the people that move to the UAE for tax purposes are very vocal about it. At least online. Now, some may not even be telling the truth. It's very easy for me to lie on a forum about how my husband earns in the high 6 figures and it's just so difficult to cope in the UK on that. Likewise influencers are very fake it till you make it and a good way to humble brag about your "wealth" is to talk about how you want to live somewhere you can wear your 60,000 dollar watch in public or letting people know you are in the highest UK tax bracket. Dubai also wants influencers to sell it as a country. So you have a chorus of voices online and even under unrelated topics (eg COL in the UK etc) Lots of people in Dubai for real aren't like that at all. But they are less visible.

Plus, you have papers like the Telegraph doom mongering about tax rises forcing "high net worth individuals" out of the UK. There may be some truth to this or they may not be. The reason the Telegraph likes to talk about it is because they want to push for lower taxes. But for readers it gives the impression there is a very untethered, "nowhere" class of people who don't have the loyalties most people do to their country. Theresa May and Farage on the right have also called to people's sense of place and resentment of smug elite "citizens of nowhere". This is the more left wing version.

Finally there are high profile political figures like Tice and Oakshot who are very keen to push Dubai as a superior place to the UK because of its tax regime. And to talk down UK crime rate/safety. And to criticise free speech laws in the UK. There's some natural schadenfreude in being able to point out to some of the hypocrisy in that position. Even if it's unfair to tar everyone with the same brush.

Ukrainians mostly fled by train, car, and on foot. Much easier to take pets by land travel than on a plane. Also, only about 10% of the population of UAE are Arabs - the population is 90% immigrants/guest workers, mostly from South Asia.

Your confidence in the UK authorities to respect our freedom of speech is charming but utterly misplaced.

These guys exist because of the growing number of problems here. Check out their news and latest cases. People paying attention will be horrified.

https://freespeechunion.org

They are being advised to shelter because there are no flights out, airspace in the bordering countries has either been completely halted or severely restricted. It's not a simple case of organising pet passports and popping them on a plane.

Shrug, you dont wait for the fire to be at your door before you run from it.

Anyone who wouldn't prioritise their children/own safety over a pet is a bloody idiot. That is of course their business.

Evolution is a fine thing.

It's not limited to Dubai. Israel and Iran are also seeing the same thing.

greatergood.com/blogs/news/iran-war-pets

"Animal welfare organizations in Israel say the war has triggered a surge in abandoned pets.Since the fighting escalated, shelters have received many calls from people trying to surrender animals they can no longer care for, Haaretz reports.“Instead of people calling about animals needing medical help – a lot of calls were people trying to get rid of their pets,” said Yael Arkin, CEO of Let the Animals Live."

While it’s certainly not ideal I think getting your children out of a war zone is often more important to people than their pets. And I don’t judge that.

It’s very easy to sit in judgement from the sidelines.

That phrase you use ‘some fallout from a nearby war’ is doing some heavy lifting, and yes they are being actively bombed - what do you think a ‘drone strike’ is? There have been multiple drone strikes in Dubai. Are they supposed to sit and wait until the heavy bombings start? Or the airport is disabled?

Maybe you could set up a volunteer group to go over and help the abandoned pets?

Why do you care what the ‘influencers’ say though?

If you don’t want to move to Dubai, don’t - they are not forcing you.

Finally there are high profile political figures like Tice and Oakshot who are very keen to push Dubai as a superior place to the UK because of its tax regime. And to talk down UK crime rate/safety. And to criticise free speech laws in the UK. There's some natural schadenfreude in being able to point out to some of the hypocrisy in that position.

And they are right about a favourable tax regime - the Labour government are determined to tax entire industries into oblivion and have increased the burden on people at all income levels and we get less and less for our money - you’re surely not claiming they are doh g a good job? Our crime rates are bad - just look at the huge leap in theft and robberies in London - it’s so bad that other countries are issuing earnings about it.

How is that hypocrisy? Surely you’re not weaponising a WAR to ‘own the expats’??

No empathy for those caught up in conflict, just ‘schadenfreude’. You’re not showing yourself up well here.

A quick Google gave me this....

Daily Trend: Police are making over 30 arrests daily for what they consider offensive online posts, retweets, or cartoons.
Annual Estimate: This activity amounts to roughly 12,000 arrests annually, based on data cited in this YouTube video.
Context: Arrests include actions related to WhatsApp messages, social media posts, and public behavior, with high-profile cases involving significant prison sentences.

I actually think @persephonia makes a fair point. The situation is exacerbated because the most vocal ‘face’ of Dubai - if your judgement comes from what you see on social media - are materialistic influencers. (The fact that these people were cultivated in the UK and exported to the UAE, seems to be conveniently overlooked by many.)

But there are scores of people like me who live in a normal house, have no maids, nannies or drivers, and are just raising their families quietly - and have been, for decades. (Inclusive of one cat, with passport, that I would do everything in my power to take with us if we had to leave.) That so much of the commentary lacks any nuance, is so vitriolic and simply wrong, is frustrating.

@Usernamenotfound1 take a minute to look up the number of missiles and drones Iran is directing to the UAE. It outstrips the number being targeted at Israel; and also the rest of the GCC states put together. This is not ‘nothing’.
America is actively evacuating its citizens. I had 3 colleagues go this week. (Fun fact: they don’t take you back to the States but just out of the region. My colleague was dropped in Istanbul with two children under 3, and left to make her way onwards. I did not know this was how it worked.)

The UK embassy has asked us to register for evacuation flights (you pay for them; but they run them as commercial travel is so limited right now.) I haven’t yet but they absolutely are offering routes out.

And I can tell you personally that my phone alerts multiple times a day to tell me missiles are overhead. My house shakes with the intercepts. My child is out of school. Someone died in the road near us the other day from falling debris. It’s very real to those of us who are here.

@Usernamenotfound1 you are speaking from a point of ignorance I'm afraid. I'm a pet lover but do you think for a minute officials are thinking about allowing people to take up space on evacuation flights with pets? In normal times it is expensive and there are many stages to go through. They ARE being attacked. The UAE are doing well to intercept much of it but yes attacks are getting through. Dubai Financial Centre was also hit recently. Maybe read more about it.

You do realise the uk stats for “offensive online posts” include cases such as domestic violence and coercive control.

so we should let Dave continue to harass poor Susie and threaten her and her family on Facebook, even when she has a restraining order after he broke her arm. It’s only some “hurty words online”

or when Johnny sells a car on fb marketplace, and the buyer sends him a message with a picture of a gun saying the car’s no good and he’s going to come round and deliver justice.

this is the sort of thing you trivialise with “hurty words online”

maybe if you’ve ever been stalked or in a DV relationship you’d have more empathy for other women.

also google and YouTube aren’t reliable sources.

Yes thanks gnus that was sort of my point. There are lots of ordinary non-attention seeking people in Dubai but for obvious reasons the attention seeking very materialistic types are the ones posting on social media. I don't wish them any ill either TBH. But I think there's a reaction against it because it always felt quite fake and the current situation is allowing people to who though it looked fake to feel vindicated. But I don't think being somewhat annoying on the internet means one deserves to be afraid either. Let alone all of the non-annoying ordinary people we don't think about.

Tice and Oakshot are free to criticise the UK. There are plenty of things to criticise and I complain all the time. But someone from outside the country criticising it will always rile people up more than someone inside a country criticising (rightly or wrongly). Especially if (eg) they are getting very angry at free speech laws in the UK but not commenting on the laws in Dubai.