Friday, April 22, 2011

We're alright, Abdul

During my daily trawl through the fug, smut and detritus down the back of the newspapers and internet for scurrilous gossip to flog to newspapers back home, I found this article:

http://www.thenational.ae/news/uae-news/tourism/holidaymakers-switching-to-the-safety-of-the-uae

If you can't be bothered to read it, which would be fair enough, it's about the unrest in the rest of the Middle East being beneficial to the UAE because all the tourists who would be going to Sharm El Sheikh, Tunisia, Libya (that well known tourist destination) and Syria are coming here instead.  Lovely safe, clean, quiet and calm UAE where you're not going to get shot in the head by rebel fighters.  Put in prison for being drunk in public or having sex outside marriage, yes, but not caught up in the cross fire of Government vs people.

The newspapers here aren't against printing the odd good news story directly fed to them from the Government-backed WAM News Agency as after all, it's illegal to criticise the powers that be here.  I just thought this one was a little bit "yes, people are dying on a daily basis while our region implodes around us, but we're ok because we're a happy little island making a bit more cash from the tourist industy thanks to it.  All the senseless killing after years of repression was well worth it because our hotels are full again."

It makes me wonder if the authorities here are a little nervier about similar events occurring here than they would like to let on.  I'm not going to utter my famous last words again on how an uprising will never happen. I suppose in the eyes of the rulers, it's just worth reminding people here of how good they have it compared with elsewhere in the region.   

You can see how they would be keen to promote anything good that happens, even if it as at the expense of those elsewhere, as after all, for a while there wasn't a day that went by when someone in the world's press wasn't expounding on the collapse of the Dubai dream.  That's got to be bad for a morale of an Emirate even if the pages have been ripped out of the magazines and newspapers by self-censoring distributors before the maid picks them up with the rest of the shopping.

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