“I came to Dubai to find out if it really is all it’s cracked up to be, and the answer, if you like sun and fun, glitz and glamour is a resounding ‘yes’. As for the credit crunch, everyone I have met here says the same thing, Dubai won’t just survive, it will thrive and that’s because it’s bursting with ambition and drive all lead by one man’s extraordinary vision and utter determination to turn this place into the biggest and most successful city in the world.”
In January this year the Britain's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan produced a program where instead of interviewing rich but vacuous celebs he went off to meet the rich and vacuous non-celebs of Dubai.
Dubai resembles what Albert Speer might have come up with had he teamed up with Walt Disney to make a New Berlin in the Persian Gulf. Its architecture and interior design is of such monstrous bad taste that it does a lot to reinvigorate the notion of art having a moral dimension.
Piers though gushed about the seven star luxury hotels, he gawped at the huge skyscraper, he marvelled at the artificial archipelago called The World. He missed completely the slave labour camps where the indentured Indian migrant workers lived in squalor. He also missed the censorship of the press, a bit bizarre for a former editor of a couple of British tabloids. Whether or not he also missed the equally dubious sex industry that thrives amongst the pleasure domes we don't know, but it didn't appear in the program anyway. However what's all that when you're having fun in the sun with a lot of ex-pats looking to rake it in tax free.
Well, now the wheels appear to have well and truly come off this bandwagon. It's been quite a week for crashes. We've had Tiger Woods and an Italian Police Lamborghini, but biggest of all has been the Dubai stock exchange, which has just closed after its worst ever day's trading.
In January this year the Britain's Got Talent judge Piers Morgan produced a program where instead of interviewing rich but vacuous celebs he went off to meet the rich and vacuous non-celebs of Dubai.
Dubai resembles what Albert Speer might have come up with had he teamed up with Walt Disney to make a New Berlin in the Persian Gulf. Its architecture and interior design is of such monstrous bad taste that it does a lot to reinvigorate the notion of art having a moral dimension.
Piers though gushed about the seven star luxury hotels, he gawped at the huge skyscraper, he marvelled at the artificial archipelago called The World. He missed completely the slave labour camps where the indentured Indian migrant workers lived in squalor. He also missed the censorship of the press, a bit bizarre for a former editor of a couple of British tabloids. Whether or not he also missed the equally dubious sex industry that thrives amongst the pleasure domes we don't know, but it didn't appear in the program anyway. However what's all that when you're having fun in the sun with a lot of ex-pats looking to rake it in tax free.
Well, now the wheels appear to have well and truly come off this bandwagon. It's been quite a week for crashes. We've had Tiger Woods and an Italian Police Lamborghini, but biggest of all has been the Dubai stock exchange, which has just closed after its worst ever day's trading.
All the signs are that this is the start of an economic shock that will echo around the world. The recently bailed out British banks are trembling at the thought of having even more of their assets wiped out. Other small countries with economic troubles are terrified of what this might mean for them. If the fall of Lehman Brothers showed that no company was too big to fail, Dubai might be about to tell us that even countries can go bankrupt. Other small countries with dreams of wealth above their means must be worried. Ireland must be very scared.
Piers Morgan's views on this are not known, but shortly after Dubai he was gushing over Jordan. Ms Price has just quit the I'm A Former Celebrity jungle after the public voted to make her eat half the bugs in Australia. Piers is apparently back with a new series soon, so anywhere else he lands should perhaps be worried.
Nothing is inevitable until it happens, but with Dubai it always seemed like it was going to be a race to see whether the ecological crunch or credit crunch got them first. Here the neo-liberal dream tried its hardest to defy reality. Artificial islands like The World were build a few inches above sea level as if Climate Change wasn't happening and the ice caps weren't melting. Skyscrapers were built on the never-never as if the economic bubble was going to keep on expanding forever. Each citizen now effectively owes the rest of the world over $400,000. It's going to be hard to see how they can afford to carry on importing fresh water, let alone avoid inundation by the ocean.
Perhaps in years to come an alternative to a tour of the pyramids will be a cruise round the drowned metropolis of Dubai. Inevitably the tour guides, like Simon Jenkins, will be quoting Lord Byron:
In Egypt's sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:
"I am great OZYMANDIAS," saith the stone,
"The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
"The wonders of my hand." The City's gone,
Nought but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.
We wonder, and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro' the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragments huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place
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