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.

Christmas competition: What did Santa say before 'Ho-ho-ho'?

As we're going away tomorrow in search of some sunshine, I don't expect to be posting much until the end of November.

Needless to say, I'm hoping that regular readers will come back when blogging resumes.

Meanwhile, here are two things to keep you occupied while I'm gone.

The first, and this should be more than enough to keep the keenest anoraks going, is to catch up on the 350+ posts that have so far appeared on the blog - just in case you've missed any. You can access these from the Complete Bloglist Index on the left (under 'recommended websites), or you can type names or topics into the search box at the top and see if there's anything here about whatever it is you might be looking for.

You are also warmly invited to turn your mind to winning the:

2009 CHRISTMAS CREATIVE WRITING COMPETITION

Closing date: Midnight (UK time) on 21 December 2009.

Prizes:

1st: A signed copy of Lend Me Your Ears.

2nd: A signed copy of Speechmaking and Presentation Made Easy.

3rd: A signed copy (by Basil) of Basil's School Antics.

Further incentives:

Authors of the winning entries will be able to enjoy the glory and prestige of seeing their work posted here on Christmas Day.

The judge and jury (i.e. me) undertake to donate £5 to Wateraid for every entry received.

The Challenge:

The competition is based on something posted on this blog just before Christmas last year, which began as follows:

I’ve just received an email with Christmas greetings from the White House Writers Group in Washington D.C., which contains a nice little ditty:

Santa called the other day.
"I need a speech and right away!
It should sound new, but somehow old;
A message sweet, yet still quite bold.
My words must be both short and clear
And memorable throughout the year!"
Our writers worked all through the night
To get each phrase exactly right.
Then one scribe cried, "Ah ha! I know!
Tell Santa to say just, 'Ho, ho, ho!'

Rhetorically speaking, their use of repetition, contrasts, alliteration rhyme and a three-part list can hardly be faulted.

But, having just heard Santa using these very words 3,000 miles away from Washington, I realise that this memorable line raises another intriguing question, namely, what had he been talking about just before saying “ho, ho, ho”?

The reason for asking the question comes from many years ago when I heard the late Gail Jefferson talking about her fascinating and innovative work on transcribing particles of laughter, of which “ho, ho, ho” is one of several possible vowel sounds – such as “ha, ha , ha”, “he, he, he”, “huh, huh, huh”, etc.

The gist of Jefferson’s point was that which one of these gets selected often seems to be triggered by vowel sounds that had come immediately before it. Someone might say “he was stung by a bee – he-he-he!”, “he was locked in the bar – ha-ha-ha” or “she dropped a bottle of gin on her toe – ho-ho-ho”.

I didn’t catch what Santa had been saying just before he used the line that had been supplied to him by the White House Writers Group, so there’s scope here for a pre-Christmas creative competition.

This year, your challenge is to write what Santa was saying that triggered his selection of the "ho-ho-ho" form of laughter.

There is no limit on the number of words and no restriction on the context in which he said whatever it was that he said. However, some of the vowel sounds in some of the words leading into the final three beats of laughter must be consistent with Gail Jefferson's observation as summarised above.

A few more hints about how sounds can trigger subsequent word selection can be found in another post from last December about Gordon Brown's 'saving the world' gaffe.

Entries must reach me by email before midnight (UK time) on 21 December (via email contact in 'view my complete profile' on the left).