Yikes, they're doing it! This is wrong on so many levels. The money spent building a nuclear power station would be better used in developing solar power. The risk of terrorist attack is high, but the risk of another Chernobyl or Three Mile Island catastrophe is greater (based on past experience of how the power sector in the UAE has performed). It's just too scary for words: I wonder which Northern Emirate will be lucky enough to play host to this baby.
Story here.
Showing posts with label UAE. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UAE. Show all posts
Monday, October 5, 2009
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Carnage On Sheikh Zayed Road
Driving on SZR always used to give me the willies, even in clear weather. Driving on it in fog had me turning religious and hoping there actually was a God who was listening to my prayers. Because the sad fact is that 99% of people on that road have no clue whatsoever about how you should drive in fog. This morning there has been absolute carnage on SZR. Accurate figures are yet to arrive, but we can say at least six dead, 300 injured, and 200 cars trashed. In one out of about five incidents. This is completely insane. Nobody seems to know or understand why this happened. I hate to be a smart-arse, but this is why it happened: they were going too fucking fast.
Simplissimo.
Gulf News gives some tips for driving in fog. Not bad, not wrong, but they missed the absolute crucial point. It's all to do with visibility and stopping distance. The GN article says 'slow down'. This needs to be expanded upon. What it should say is 'slow down so that you are confident that you can stop within the range of your visibility'. In dense fog, this can mean that you are travelling at 10 kmph. Or less. But it means that if you suddenly encounter a pile of 200 blazing wrecks, emerging out of the fog 6 metres ahead of you, you will be able to stop or avoid becoming wreck #201. It also means, of course, that there's a good strong chance of some other moron hitting you from behind. The only consolation is that they might be in the outer lanes while you are sticking to the inside one. If you possibly have the option: don't drive in fog.
Let me get really boring and repeat: if you can only see 10 metres ahead of you, you should not be travelling so fast that you cannot stop within, say, eight metres. Got it? Your car is probably no longer than 2.5 or 3 metres long. To be able to stop in such a short distance, you should be crawling at less than 10 kmph (166 metres per minute). And forget about being late for work. You are going to be late for work. And so is your boss and so are your colleagues. You will not score any Brownie points for beating them. Especially if you are dead.
The point is that in seriously thick fog, you must think like this: can I stop within the bounds of the wall of fog I see before me? If you don't think you can, SLOW DOWN!
Simplissimo.
Gulf News gives some tips for driving in fog. Not bad, not wrong, but they missed the absolute crucial point. It's all to do with visibility and stopping distance. The GN article says 'slow down'. This needs to be expanded upon. What it should say is 'slow down so that you are confident that you can stop within the range of your visibility'. In dense fog, this can mean that you are travelling at 10 kmph. Or less. But it means that if you suddenly encounter a pile of 200 blazing wrecks, emerging out of the fog 6 metres ahead of you, you will be able to stop or avoid becoming wreck #201. It also means, of course, that there's a good strong chance of some other moron hitting you from behind. The only consolation is that they might be in the outer lanes while you are sticking to the inside one. If you possibly have the option: don't drive in fog.
Let me get really boring and repeat: if you can only see 10 metres ahead of you, you should not be travelling so fast that you cannot stop within, say, eight metres. Got it? Your car is probably no longer than 2.5 or 3 metres long. To be able to stop in such a short distance, you should be crawling at less than 10 kmph (166 metres per minute). And forget about being late for work. You are going to be late for work. And so is your boss and so are your colleagues. You will not score any Brownie points for beating them. Especially if you are dead.
The point is that in seriously thick fog, you must think like this: can I stop within the bounds of the wall of fog I see before me? If you don't think you can, SLOW DOWN!
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Demographic Time-Bomb
There's an interesting editorial in today's Gulf News. The piece is written by Abdulkhaleq Abdullah, Professor of Political Science at the Emirates University, Al Ain. He says:
8 out of 10 people living in the UAE were born abroad. If the current double digit annual economic growth continues, the percentage of non-citizen will reach 90 per cent by 2015.
Henceforth, by 2025, the citizens of the UAE will constitute zero per cent of the population.
A county with a zero percentage citizens is unprecedented in modern history and will make a new entry in the Guinness Book of Records.
I guess his estimate for 2025 is meant to be a joke, or it might mean 'so close to zero as makes no difference'. Actually it does make a big difference: there could never be a condition where the local population reaches zero (well, there could, but we won't go there). His projections are a bit flawed: the current massive imbalance is a result of the decision to buildeverythingallatonceasfastaswecanquickbeforetheoilmoneyrunsout, rather than the traditional way of spreading it out over, say, a few centuries. In 5 - 10 years the current crop of projects will be finished and the last of the workers will be packing up and going home, having made their fortunes in the Emirates. So unless there's a fresh crop of mega-projects that haven't been announced yet, we can expect a dramatic fall in the population - maybe more than 50%. But, to counterbalance that, we will then have an influx of new residents who have bought into new residential properties and will be planning on staying forever - or at least having a holiday home in the sun forever. And they will be wanting some say in what goes on, some form of extended right to residency (rather than the current debacle whereby if you do not have residency by virtue of working here, the master developer will fix you a visa), and all kinds of things that permanent residents in other countries are entitled to. I'm stopping short of asking for actual citizenship: the Government won't even give that to Bedu who have lived on this land for hundreds of years.
The writer does not mention the tourism and business travel population; the Government is hoping to attract huge numbers of these people and this will endlessly distort the local demographic. But his point is valid. Emirati citizens represent a small minority of the population, and that proportion is going to get even smaller. This is an inevitable result of the Government's dramatic growth strategy, but we are not hearing anything from the Government about how they plan to deal with the problem. I suspect they don't think there is a problem. If that is true then they are mistaken. Property-owning foreigners will not accept a total lack of representation for very long - witness the recent 'rebellion' by property owners at the Green Community when the land-owner tried to raise annual propery maintenance charges by 300%.
When expats came here purely for work, the situation was different. Everyone knew what the deal was: you came. you worked, you left. Admittedly it could be hard on kids born here to expat parents (and there are many thousands of them) because they feel that the UAE is their home. But now we have foreigners who own their own businesses, maybe own their own home (but not the land it is built on) who want to feel a bit more welcomed.
The sad fact is that if every single expat left tomorrow, the UAE would collapse totally. And it would stay collapsed for all eternity. The reliance on cheap foreign labour and highly-skilled foreign labour is so total that it doesn't bear thinking about. The Emiratis need to decide: are we going to be a self-reliant people, or are we going to work in partnership with other people to help us run our country. If it's the latter then the 'other people' are due a bit more recognition than they are currently getting.
8 out of 10 people living in the UAE were born abroad. If the current double digit annual economic growth continues, the percentage of non-citizen will reach 90 per cent by 2015.
Henceforth, by 2025, the citizens of the UAE will constitute zero per cent of the population.
A county with a zero percentage citizens is unprecedented in modern history and will make a new entry in the Guinness Book of Records.
I guess his estimate for 2025 is meant to be a joke, or it might mean 'so close to zero as makes no difference'. Actually it does make a big difference: there could never be a condition where the local population reaches zero (well, there could, but we won't go there). His projections are a bit flawed: the current massive imbalance is a result of the decision to buildeverythingallatonceasfastaswecanquickbeforetheoilmoneyrunsout, rather than the traditional way of spreading it out over, say, a few centuries. In 5 - 10 years the current crop of projects will be finished and the last of the workers will be packing up and going home, having made their fortunes in the Emirates. So unless there's a fresh crop of mega-projects that haven't been announced yet, we can expect a dramatic fall in the population - maybe more than 50%. But, to counterbalance that, we will then have an influx of new residents who have bought into new residential properties and will be planning on staying forever - or at least having a holiday home in the sun forever. And they will be wanting some say in what goes on, some form of extended right to residency (rather than the current debacle whereby if you do not have residency by virtue of working here, the master developer will fix you a visa), and all kinds of things that permanent residents in other countries are entitled to. I'm stopping short of asking for actual citizenship: the Government won't even give that to Bedu who have lived on this land for hundreds of years.
The writer does not mention the tourism and business travel population; the Government is hoping to attract huge numbers of these people and this will endlessly distort the local demographic. But his point is valid. Emirati citizens represent a small minority of the population, and that proportion is going to get even smaller. This is an inevitable result of the Government's dramatic growth strategy, but we are not hearing anything from the Government about how they plan to deal with the problem. I suspect they don't think there is a problem. If that is true then they are mistaken. Property-owning foreigners will not accept a total lack of representation for very long - witness the recent 'rebellion' by property owners at the Green Community when the land-owner tried to raise annual propery maintenance charges by 300%.
When expats came here purely for work, the situation was different. Everyone knew what the deal was: you came. you worked, you left. Admittedly it could be hard on kids born here to expat parents (and there are many thousands of them) because they feel that the UAE is their home. But now we have foreigners who own their own businesses, maybe own their own home (but not the land it is built on) who want to feel a bit more welcomed.
The sad fact is that if every single expat left tomorrow, the UAE would collapse totally. And it would stay collapsed for all eternity. The reliance on cheap foreign labour and highly-skilled foreign labour is so total that it doesn't bear thinking about. The Emiratis need to decide: are we going to be a self-reliant people, or are we going to work in partnership with other people to help us run our country. If it's the latter then the 'other people' are due a bit more recognition than they are currently getting.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
OK, I Was Joking
But you knew that really, didn't you? I could no more quit blogging than I could climb Mount Everest. I just wish you could blog without having to sit in front of a computer or any other electronic device - maybe scribble your words on the side of a goat or something, and squeeze it's whatnot to send it through the goatosphere. I mean, I spend virtually all of my working day sitting in front of a computer, so really I'm not that thrilled to spend 'leisure' time doing the same thing.
But I expect that's the case for most of my readers.
Being almost quite old, I can remember black and white TV, white dog poo (because dog food in the olden days comprised mostly bonemeal, according to an article I read recently but can't be bothered to look up right now), and the complete absence of computers in the home. I was aware of these wardrobe-sized machines that could do maths, but they existed only in a few universities and really big businesses.
I actually worked in a Computer Centre for six months during a two-year-long 'gap year'. I could have invented that term, but sadly I didn't - I was too busy wandering round aimlessly trying to 'find myself' - we didn't have a phrase for that either. This place had big blue machines (IBM) and big orange machines (ICL). That period of my life is worth a post of its own, but for now I'll just say that I knew a bit about computers and they were bloody big things and there was no way that an individual could ever want or need or afford anything like it in their home.
How wrong was I? About as wrong as some famous dude who said, on the invention of the IBM Personal Computer 'the global market for PCs is about five, or six if the Pentagon buys one'.
Anyhoo, in our house we now have 2 fully-functional laptops, two semi-functional laptops and one desktop PC. Between 2 people. We have previously recycled defunct PCs to a Sri Lankan friend of ours who can actually be bothered to fix them up and send them to his family back home (warm glow of satisfaction).
But I digress. Yes, I do.
To those of you who commented on my last post, looking forward with baited breath to some kind of cataclysmic anti-UAE diatribe when I finally leave this country, I hate to disappoint you. That is not going to happen. If you have a boat, don't burn it. Salutory lesson here. I will still have some business here in this wonderful, surreal country, and I do expect to come back occasionally. Getting a bit mellow in my old age, aren't I?
But I expect that's the case for most of my readers.
Being almost quite old, I can remember black and white TV, white dog poo (because dog food in the olden days comprised mostly bonemeal, according to an article I read recently but can't be bothered to look up right now), and the complete absence of computers in the home. I was aware of these wardrobe-sized machines that could do maths, but they existed only in a few universities and really big businesses.
I actually worked in a Computer Centre for six months during a two-year-long 'gap year'. I could have invented that term, but sadly I didn't - I was too busy wandering round aimlessly trying to 'find myself' - we didn't have a phrase for that either. This place had big blue machines (IBM) and big orange machines (ICL). That period of my life is worth a post of its own, but for now I'll just say that I knew a bit about computers and they were bloody big things and there was no way that an individual could ever want or need or afford anything like it in their home.
How wrong was I? About as wrong as some famous dude who said, on the invention of the IBM Personal Computer 'the global market for PCs is about five, or six if the Pentagon buys one'.
Anyhoo, in our house we now have 2 fully-functional laptops, two semi-functional laptops and one desktop PC. Between 2 people. We have previously recycled defunct PCs to a Sri Lankan friend of ours who can actually be bothered to fix them up and send them to his family back home (warm glow of satisfaction).
But I digress. Yes, I do.
To those of you who commented on my last post, looking forward with baited breath to some kind of cataclysmic anti-UAE diatribe when I finally leave this country, I hate to disappoint you. That is not going to happen. If you have a boat, don't burn it. Salutory lesson here. I will still have some business here in this wonderful, surreal country, and I do expect to come back occasionally. Getting a bit mellow in my old age, aren't I?
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