I've just had an email from Brian Jenner reminding people that the UK Speechwriters' Guild Christmas drinks party will be held from 7.00 p.m. on Thursday 10 December in the Theatre Bar of the Victoria, 10a Strathearn Place, London, W2 (and to which members are invited to bring a guest).
Brain also attached a link to the best presentation he saw this year (below) and asks if anyone else has any other great speeches to which they'd like to draw attention - suggestions to him or in comments below.
Dubai: the beginning of the end of feudalism?
How much of any presentation, speech or lecture ever gets remembered for more than a few minutes, let alone for 45 years?
If all the lectures I attended as a student are anything to go by, the answer is 'not much'. But there was one point made in one of the lectures I heard in 1964 that has occasionally come rushing back into my mind, probably because it seemed so counter-intuitive at the time.
Not gold and diamonds but cheap labour
It was about the economy of South Africa, still three decades away from the end of apartheid, and the surprising news (to me) was that the main resource on which the country depended was not its gold and diamond reserves but it's enormous supply of cheap (i.e. black) manpower. And this, claimed the lecturer, was the achilles heel of apartheid - because, in the long run, societies based on near-slave labour are doomed.
His point first came back to me a few years ago on a visit to Dubai, and it's resurfaced again with this week's news that the emirate's grandiose building schemes are facing financial collapse.
Not oil but cheap labour
What shocked me when I was there was that it wasn't just Dubai's construction industry that depended on cheap labour, but so too did pretty much everything else. From shops and stalls in the souks to hotels, taxis and tour buses, the only people who seemed to be actually doing anything were ex-patriate workers from the Indian sub-continent - with the sole exception of the counter staff in a bank and a post office that I visited a day or two before we left for home.
On one of our tours, we were the only passengers in the back of a 4x4, and it wasn't long before our driver started opening up on the appalling conditions under which ex-pats like him were living - in out of town dormitories, from where they were shipped to and from work on open trucks.
As for health, educational, recreational or any other facilities or rights of a most basic kind, they were at best minimal. And, if any of the ex-pat workers dared to complain, they would be sent home and replaced by a new supply of their compatriots.
Feudalism?
Meanwhile, the hereditary extended families running the various emirates were living in a style reminiscent of Europe's elite in the days of feudalism.
For example, the sheik of neighboring oil-poor Sharjah, where the economy depends on handouts from Saudi Arabia in exchange for a total ban on alcohol, had just bulldozed a Bedouin village to make room for a new palace for himself. He was also building a university on an architectural scale to rival Versailles (see above) - approached along a majestic drive enclosed by ornate iron railings and grass verges that were only kept green by continual watering.
What next?
I came away wondering about the long-term survival prospects of societies that hardly pay lip-service to democratic and human rights, and seem to have no qualms about depending on cheap labour as their primary economic resource.
If recent events in Dubai are a sign that the end may be nigh, the time-scale - based on the prediction I heard about undemocratic-cheap-labour-dependent South Africa in 1964 - is that it will take another 30 years before such places find a firmer fairer footing.
Sounds of silence
When I worked in an Oxford college, a sure fire way to generate silence over coffee or lunch was to give the same one-word answer to either of the following questions: Q1: "Where are you going on holiday?"
Q2: "Where have you been on holiday?"
A1, A2: "Majorca" (or, if you really wanted to get them going, pronounce it with an emphatic 'J' sound in the middle).
Needless to say, none of these experts had ever been anywhere near the Balearic Islands and certainly had no intention of ever doing so.
Having just got back from the Canary Islands, I can report that another word that's guaranteed to be met with an identical silence (even from people who aren't fellows of Oxbridge colleges) is 'Tenerife'.
There are, you see, some places to which you should simply not go. Never mind the fact that you could do with some relief from the gloominess of November in England, or that you don't feel like doing anything more strenuous than sitting in the sun for a few days, reading a book or two or just listening to giant waves from the Atlantic crashing into the piles of lava that spewed out of a volcano not so long ago.
But before taking any notice of the detractors of places like Majorca and Tenerife, it's worth being aware of two rather important things about which their disapproving silences rather miss the point.
One is that there must have been something desirable about popular destinations for them to have become popular destinations in the first place. So, in the case of these two islands, both are blessed with some spectacular mountainous scenery and benign climates that match anything you'll find in the British Isles in the best of summers, let alone in the middle of winter.
And, although I've never been to Benidorm, you only have to look at photographs of the place to see that the masses of tower block hotels and apartments stand on a long curving beach that must have been extremely attractive before the cement and concrete mixers got to work
The second thing that detractors don't take into account is that there is much more to islands like Majorca and Tenerife than the overpopulated mass resorts on which their negative images are presumably based. What they don't know is that you don't have to go very far to find havens of peace and quiet, in areas of outstanding natural beauty, that take some beating anywhere in the world.
Deja in Majorca is one such place. And, on the evidence of the past few days, Garachico in northern Tenerife is another.
My only complaint is not, unfortunately, peculiar to either of these villages, but concerns something that's becoming increasingly difficult to avoid wherever you happen to be, namely the scourge of piped music.
If, like me, you don't much like being forced to listen to music chosen by the proprietors of bars, restaurants and hotels, I'd strongly recommend a visit to the PIPEDOWN website - where you'll find some interesting results from surveys into what people really think about piped music, information on some important victories so far and details of how to join this important organisation.
You may find, as I did when I joined, that friends and relations brand you as 'sad' for doing so.
But 'SAD', as in seasonal affective disorder, is something I don't mind admitting to - any more than I don't mind admitting to visiting places like Tenerife as a way of making the last three weeks before the shortest day of the year that bit easier to bear.
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