The Fall of Dubai

0:00So I have some good news. That's good news if you hate Dubai like me and there are many reasons to hate Dubai and before I tell you the good news I want to prime you with hatreds to get the maximum payoff for why it's failing. Why it's going to fall and why that is a good thing. It looks quite nice in all the pictures. That is true but I feel like it is a monument to the worst excesses of the West with none of the positives of it. And also my back garden looked a lot bigger in the pictures that the real estate agents had on file as well. But yeah I feel like there's lots of baubles and showy aesthetics and things like that. But it's sort of like mecha for materialists isn't it? It's like where they go if you love flashy shiny objects you basically got the mind of a magpie and you just like shiny things. Isn't it a tax haven? Yes that too. But it is basically people sacrifice their soul and having a nice way of life. And I think nothing epitomizes this more than the Burj Khalifa.

1:02So it is the tallest building in the world but it has no reason to be because Dubai is built basically on top of an old fishing village arbitrarily picked by the ruling family as the site of this new holiday destination. But it's not like New York where the land was really valuable and so there was an incentive to build upwards. Most of the land around Dubai is not built up on. You know there's no scramble for expensive land here. So there's no reason to build it up and it's entirely artificial. It's just a great big monument to Vanity. It's an empty desert and there's another element to this as well. In that they're so focused on this vain ambition that it doesn't even have proper infrastructure. So the world's tallest building has to have trucks to come and collect the human waste because it doesn't actually have proper plumbing. So they have poo trucks coming in and out. So there's going to be a lot of people at the top

2:10and the lower floors. I mean you're going to get an issue. You don't want to be one of the lower orders, do you? No. But yeah this symbol of the advancement of the UAE in reality is just pure vanity. It's not practical. It doesn't exist for any of the reasons that the western buildings exist like that because if you look at the skyline it's by far the tallest and there's no need for that. But there are other reasons to hate Dubai as well. You have to spend most of your time indoors because it can reach about 52 degrees Celsius or 125 Fahrenheit which is into a crisp. Exactly. And so maybe you can spend some time on the beach but it's very hot and so most people spend their time indoors in air conditioning shopping. So if that's your idea of a nice place just in an eternal shopping mall. It's like just a big sunny Milton Keynes isn't it? Pretty much yeah. It's going to be lost on a lot of people outside of Britain that reference but there's also this weird double standard that makes me feel a bit uncomfortable where obviously it's an Islamic

3:14country but the authorities turn a blind eye to people you know westerners breaking the tenants of Islam. So they they have these convictions but like well for the right price you know if you're going to spend money here we'll let you drink alcohol just as long as it's not on the beach because that's against the law and you'll go to prison or if you're publicly intoxicated prison. But if you're in a hotel or a licensed premises that's okay but don't you dare step outside with that beverage because that's against the law and they're pretty harsh. And of course there is also an elephant in the room here the questionable labour practices that has built the place in the first place and lots of reports of indentured servitude and manipulative contracts to get people to build these buildings. Multiple instances of housemaids throwing themselves out of windows to supposedly willing people receiving a salary coming to the point of throwing themselves out of windows to escape their servitude makes one wonder if perhaps

4:19it's not as consensual as you might imagine. And then also if you want to walk anywhere say you've had a drink in your hotel and you can't drive anymore well too bad because the whole thing is designed around cars and because the whole place is just Milton Keynes. Yeah and because the whole place is designed around cars there are lots of traffic jams in lots of eye traffic areas and so yeah it sounds like my worst nightmare it's just a materialistic you know monument to all of the worst excesses of the west with none of the perks of it it's a sparkling little bobble that stupid people go and live there. But you don't have to pay tax. That's true. But there are also other places that attack savens that are not this basically materialistic and degenerate and that's not even mentioning all the things we hear about the weird sort of open secret that it's a hub of prostitution

5:19in the Islamic world as well. And the worst things I've ever heard about Dubai is when you read about Instagram models being invited over undercover you could say by weird princes to pay them lots and lots of money to do really disgusting things with fish and other assorted wildlife. Yes but you know what's not going to result in you having to do disgusting things with fish. Lotus eaters live which is going on now. And Carl's already sprung the prequel debate on me so who knows what else he's got up his sleeve. This is going on on the 11th of April 7 o'clock till 10 o'clock and we're going to have some fun. It's going to be a blast be there or be square. So first things first I suppose I may as well talk about the attacks on Dubai because that might put a little bit of a damper in their public image the fact that there were drones, Iranian drones

6:20flying into buildings. That might be enough to put you off I think. Got the best videos I'll admit but yeah that's not good. That is an Indian guy sums it up. I forgot about that to be fair. There's lots of Indians saying very dangerous not drawn because lots of the workers there are Indian of course. So yes it's very dangerous at the minute to be there and lots of people understandably a bit worried and I'm just going to play this video from the mail because it's accumulated all of the videos of the attacks much better than anywhere else to their credit. So you can see lots of things on fire. The airport was temporarily closed after there was a drone strike on a fuel tanker which if I

7:20were flying to Dubai the main airport getting hit by a drone attack would be enough to put me off. I don't know about you guys but I don't like to live quite that dangerously. A number of my friends were on holiday right as the Iran war started and they all had to have delayed or redirected flights because of what was going on in Dubai. I mean if you're going around Southeast Asia or across the eastern hemisphere like all of the east like Australia and Indochina etc. You do eventually have to go through the Middle East and Dubai for connecting flights and it's really common for layovers isn't it? So you can see here this video shows lots of people fleeing. I've got another video of that as well. I've just waves of people just fleeing for their lives. This isn't the best demonstration I could find but we'll get on to why there's not very good videos of what's going on at the minute in a second. But if you did want to get out there

8:26British Airways has cancelled all flights into Dubai until the summer which is quite a long time to be cut off and particularly around a popular tourist time and in fact I was able to find quite a long list of all of the airlines that cancelled their flights to Dubai. Some of these are also other areas in the Middle East to be fair but they're still going to have knock-on effects to Dubai because it connects. It's a major hub. I mean loads of times I've stopped to Dubai. I've never been to Dubai but I've stopped in Dubai because it's a hub to everywhere else. So you've got Aegean Airlines, Air Baltic, Air Canada, Air Europa, Air France, KLM. They've directly suspended them to Dubai specifically. Cathay Pacific which is Hong Kong, Delta is rarely airlines which are not surprised. Emirates, Etihad, you get the idea. There's a long list. I'm not going to carry on reading all of them but it's looking pretty difficult to get a flight in and out of Dubai at the minute.

9:30So that's probably going to harm their tourist industry I would say. I mean I feel bad for anyone who was laid over while all of this started happening. They caught in the middle of it a little bit. I think people were able to get out in the end. I think a lot of the people who did try get out from Britain. Those are the people that I've followed with this story have been able to. I don't think too many people are trapped from what I've been able to see. I mean still it would be a terrifying situation and probably being massively expensive to get. I also wouldn't want to be stuck in the airport because as we saw it's a target. So you're in a dangerous place if you're stuck there and I think people are well aware of that and I think also if you were flying to Dubai one of the limited flights that might still be going there I wasn't able to find any myself then they're probably going to warn you. Listen this is dangerous. I mean I do also feel a bit bad for all of the expats over there who really as much as I wouldn't do it myself have gone to a place that's been advertised as this land of wonder and opportunity where you barely have to pay tax on anything and they've

10:32gone great. I won't have to pay taxes for a load of government policies that actually despise me and make my life worse and they go over there and then this happens. Yeah well I don't want people to be drawn striked because they live in a place I disagree with obviously. I'm not that mean don't worry. No obviously I want everyone to be safe and I want everyone to get out safely but my problem is with the premise of the place and the first place right. Oh yeah. So now everyone's fled. This is the situation in the airport in Dubai. By the way if you've ever been to any major airport anywhere in the world at any time it's always busy. I've never seen an airport that looks like that. Yeah it's completely empty isn't it. I mean it's to be expected considering that all the flights are cancelled but I've never seen an airport this empty in my entire life. I've done a fair amount of flying in my time and in fact it's not just the

11:33airports that are empty from some of the limited flights that are going on. Yeah there's no one on them. I'm amazed that flight still going ahead to be honest with one person there but this isn't really getting much attention to be honest that the entirety of their tourism industry which they rely on very heavily has basically completely vanished to zero. It's not like cornwall in Britain where it relies on tourism to a significant degree and sometimes there might be a year where slightly fewer people go. I don't know whether many industries can weather an entire year without any tourists whatsoever. I think that's enough to put a business that is leveraged as many of them probably are under too much strain for them to bear. Well it's probably more like Iceland where the entire country's economy relies on tourism. The entire country's economy is based on tourism and if all of a sudden it's oil in tourism in the UAE's case. Yeah but oil's not doing

12:35great over there. I don't know. Yeah so like if Iceland suddenly you couldn't get flights or boats over there all of a sudden would probably collapse within a year. And I saw this video which I found quite endearing over an old Yorkshireman who's still in his hotel still braving it out just narrating the lack of people there. So obviously this is one of the most famous beach fronts and hotel areas in all of Dubai and it's ten in the morning as this gentleman points out and there's no one there. Well good morning. Just out of another day. It's going up 10 o'clock in morning now and I think you've heard me going on about how quiet the hotel's getting. Well if you look down here I know it's in a bit at shared but even so there's just nobody around. I know there's a few guests in your hotel but there's not many. So if it's like this is why I'm showing you this

13:40video really because you know there's just normally a couple of weeks ago when we first arrived then beds have been nearly full. You'll be looking to get a bed to be honest. You get the idea. I just wanted to include this because just so you know I'm not making things up. You've got the the voice of a very trustworthy Yorkshireman there. I hope he got back safe. Yeah me too. I hope he enjoyed his holiday. It'd probably be quite a nice time with no one around. You can get the dodge a drone every now and again. Yeah well if you're in the swimming pool you know you just go under the water. You'll be alright wouldn't you? I mean that's absolutely not the sort of place or hotel I would go to but if I were to it being completely empty is about the best case scenario. Yeah I would say so. So I hope you had a nice time but the point is here of course that everywhere is empty that people are not going and it's probably going to stay like this for a while isn't it because it's not exactly the most decisive conflict the Iran US and Israel conflict. It could drag

14:44on for who knows how long and even after it wraps up if it wraps up anytime soon. People are going to be wary because the idea of getting you know staying in a nice hotel and a drone blowing you up is enough to put me off and I already was you know quite averse to going there in the first place. You can imagine when all those people move to Dubai and they're drawing up their pros and con lists getting attacked being in the middle of a desert when their water supplies and fuel supplies run out I'd imagine didn't even feature on the cons list. I would imagine say so from the now on everybody thinking about Dubai is going to have to add those on. And I think it's going to take a very very long time for them to have to recover to the point that they were before all of this went on if they can recover at all which I'm not entirely sure but lots of the countries around there the oil rich countries have been trying to turn themselves into holiday destinations and the Saudis are trying to do the same thing in Riyadh and a number

15:47of other places like they're spending an inordinate amount of money and things like the line city and they've got like a water sports complex and a skiing complex and all sorts of things and Saudis have a huge WWE deal as well and they and they keep hosting events there as well so I don't think there's going to be quite as many this year. I would say so. Well I mean all these Arab countries they realized we got yeah we got loads of oil but the oil is going to run out so we need to start building up secondary industries now and that's why they did all of those things that you mentioned that that whole long list and Iran was like oh well we're not allowed to sell oil so we're by drones and missiles instead which obviously turned out to be a it's like rock paper scissors drones and missiles beat building infrastructure yes seems they do but the problem is that this is come at the time when there's growing competition and what you would ideally want if you were running Dubai would be to make it the go to place in the Middle East to go on holiday however you've got other rivals coming up who are going to be less affected by this like I don't I didn't hear any

16:53strikes on on Saudi tourist destinations for example and so people might gravitate more towards them than they would have otherwise because of this going on so it could be the thing that puts Dubai into a deaf spiral and another thing that is doing that is the fact that many people who have realized wait I don't want to live here anymore can't actually sell their homes in Dubai and yeah there's one person who faces making losses on their 1.5 million pound mansion as all the property prices collapse so if you've invested in property out there might have seemed like a good idea at first because it was a growing industry however if you can't sell it your assets are basically worthless aren't they if you can't turn them into actual money well also this is at the moment you sell either no it's a terrible time to sell and you'd be very stupid to do it but people are for some reason but again at the same time like if the city collapses within a year I mean you get the question is like do I try and wait it out and hope the

17:56city is still standing or do I try and sell now and get out and get whatever money I can yeah I have I have heard it's like 80% drop in prices yeah it's steep isn't it not great and this is the concern when you get people like Peter Hitchens saying you need to leave the country well if you go to another western country the same problems that we have here are happening over there as well and then if you try and go to somewhere that's presenting itself like Dubai did as an escape for you you won't have to pay too much tax you'll be able to live in this world of paradise and opportunity well they're in incredibly unstable regions of the world where this can happen at any time and also you're just putting yourself at risk by living in the middle of a desert anyway yeah it's just it's not very appealing just like would you like to live in a shopping mall in the desert no actually I don't why why would anyone want that and it's even worse than that because the Brits that were there and getting locked up because they videoed the drone strikes or took photos of them and at the minute up to 70 Britain's are locked up in the UAE including tourists

19:00expats and even cabin crew on flights and even receiving an image in the UAE can be treated as a crime with punishments of up to 10 years in jail or fines reaching 200,000 pounds so this is the reality of your your shopping mall in the desert is that if you take a photo when you're getting drone strikes and send it to your loved ones to say that you're okay and you survived then you could face 10 years in prison and bankruptcy yeah great I mean it's a weird contrast with with here where people are allowed to murder native Brits and basically get a slap on the wrist or in America where people go on stabbing sprees on buses and basically just get away with it and in Dubai if you get sent a photo you're going to prison yes it does put into perspective a little bit our own you know it was on these sorts of things doesn't it that it's even harsher again at least on some things by the looks of it and it's to the point where apparently our prisoners

20:04are just getting beaten in their cells and there's journalistic proof of this supposedly and it's a known thing that they do so for taking videos like this or pictures of the missiles you could be jailed for 10 years and face regular beatings in a country that you might not even want to live in anymore for the crime of documenting things that have happened in your life I don't know that's not for me I think that should be enough to put off most people to be honest and but God wasn't done with punishing Dubai for its vanity and hubris and so yeah there was a really big storm and the world's tallest building was struck by lightning you can see here the streets were also flooded and this is when they're receiving drone strikes and the like a missile strikes as well and some of the videos I've seen from the flooding is unbelievable so this one I believe shows

21:09the airport being flooded of course this is the same airport that was recently struck by drones now being flooded and turned into as they say the world's most expensive swimming pool but also you see the buildings that have been built by Indian slave labor falling apart as well there's all of this plastic artifice just in the contact with the wherever you get in the desert is that plane trying to take up I'm not very stupid for it to take off how you are God's not subtle no I mean striking the world's tallest building we're lightning and then flooding their airport is a pretty strong home isn't it in a town where as somebody in the rumble rants pointed out they need to bust in water hmm well here you go sorry

22:16here are some of the buildings just falling apart with a bit of rain we can get this back in Britain would you if it just rained yeah I used to rain yes they're not that's true not in our shopping malls usually we're not in desert so we kind of used to it and expect it exactly so obviously they don't really have the infrastructure properly built out there to deal with these sorts of things obviously to deal with missile strikes not many countries do and drones but also just rain and flooding and of course it floods there relatively regularly and scenes like this one no no credence that will get us in trouble but yes just the roads into the city getting flooded as well as here's some more here you go doesn't do by lovely this time of

23:16year if you don't get flooded out you can get a drone struck so yes my point is that the city is terrible there are many good reasons not to go there and hopefully if you did live there you had family there they're out and they're safe and they're not harmed by all the things going on but there should be a cautionary tale not to move to places like this because they are you know castles built on sand foundations of sand right it's all going to come down eventually and it's just a matter of time