Alan Morton-Smith
Mindreign.com
25/09/2009
At 9:09:09 PM on September 9, 2009 Dubai achieved an impressive feat of engineering, by launching the world’s longest automated driverless rail system. Built in just four years by a Japanese consortium, the Red line is 52km long (comparable in length to the Northern line on the London Underground), and possesses the world’s biggest underground metro station. Dubai’s Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) expects 318km of metro lines to be in operation by 2020, which is just shy of the entire length of the New York City Subway.
However, all is not well in the state, which is one of the seven members of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It has been hit by one of the steepest fall in property prices worldwide — a 47% decline in a year, according to Knight Frank’s Global House Price Index — as well as having been battered by the global financial crisis. As a result, its economic boom came to an abrupt end in 2008 after several years of windfall oil revenue. According to figures released by Fitch Ratings on September 24, the Dubai Government’s debt will have tripled from last year, to reach $30 billion by the end of 2009. This is nearly 40% of GDP, and has resulted in firm downgrading the ratings of seven banks, including the country’s largest lender by assets, and the largest bank by market value. Although it is the stated intention of the federal UAE government to support financial institutions, the ratings agency said that their ability to do so has deteriorated. In addition, Fitch has placed the country’s largest telecoms firm Etisalat on watch, with a view to potentially downgrading it as well.
Prestige projects
However, these short-term financial difficulties aren’t putting the brakes on the numerous prestige projects which have been announced in the UAE in recent years. Take Al Maktoum International Airport, for example, which is currently under construction. With no less than six parallel runways, a cargo capacity treble that of Memphis International Airport (today’s largest cargo hub) and 100,000 parking spaces, it’s a project on a staggering scale. This in turn is merely a constituent part of a complex which will eventually cover an area of twice that of Hong Kong Island, and will be home to 750,000 people. It’s all part of the emirate’s strategy to diversify its economy and wean itself off the oil and gas sector, which provides around a third of the UAE’s Gross National Product. The aim is to transform itself into a regional headquarters for banking, technology, media, shipping and aviation. Not that they need to hurry — the UAE has proven oil reserves which, at the current rate of extraction (2.5 million barrels a day) will last for at least another 150 years.
Dubai in particular has been building on past successful ventures, including the Jebel Ali Port, built in 1979 and the biggest such facility in the Middle East. The country is now the third most important re-export centre in the world, behind Hong Kong and Singapore. There was a significant amount of controversy in 2006 when the owner of Jebel Ali Port, Dubai Ports World, purchased the British firm P&O — who at the time were the fourth largest ports operator in the world. This opposition arose because P&O had port management businesses in six major US seaports, and various American political figures argued that the takeover would compromise US port security. But given that the UAE is a long-standing ally of the United States, this seems very unlikely indeed. However, Dubai Ports World eventually sold P&O’s American operations to American International Group’s asset management division for an undisclosed sum. AIG was subsequently one of the major financial institutions which had to be bailed out by the US federal government.
It can certainly be argued against the above xenophobic sentiment that the UAE is one of the most liberal countries in the Gulf. But this is still far removed from Western norms — for example, there are regulations banning things such as kissing in public and wearing skirts above the knee. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the constitution of the UAE provides for freedom of speech and of the press, but in practice, the government uses its judicial and executive powers to restrict those rights. Journalists regularly suffer from several forms of intimidation and harassment. Given the high-profile attempts to lure international media outlets to Dubai, as well as the focus on promoting itself as a tourism hub, clashes between traditional sensibilities and a modern outlook can only increase.
Post credit-crunch
Realistically, Dubai really has nothing to worry about, despite what a credit rating agency may say. The federal United Arab Emirates government is buying Dubai’s bonds and is still aiming for a nationwide growth rate of 3% for 2009. Once the credit crunch fully subsides and the global economy emerges from recession, it will most likely be a case of ‘business as usual’. Some of the more interesting developments will come from how the country squares its stated desire to become a major trade and tourism destination with the conservative values it espouses. The native population is already hugely outnumbered by foreign workers, with only 15-20% of residents being UAE citizens. According to a projection by Dr Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, Professor of Political Science at the Emirates University, this percentage will reach 10% by 2015, and 0% by 2025, which would be unprecedented. What would happen in a country with such a demographic make-up? As long as it’s good for business, the country’s rulers are unlikely to object.
Book review: The Great Gatsby
Mindreign.com
29/09/2009
The Great Gatsby is a much-lauded book, and for good reason. It deals with a darker side of the American Dream, and charts the life of the eponymous Jay Gatsby — a mysterious, wealthy individual who is forever throwing extravagant parties for the great and the good at his beachfront mansion. He seems to have it all, yet is the subject of much hushed speculation by his guests. It’s through the narrator Nick Carraway that we are able to slowly piece things together, as he ends up moving next door, and eventually becomes entangled in Gatsby’s life.
The novel is set in the early 1920s, with Prohibition in full swing, and repercussions from the First World War still being keenly felt. Before he left to serve in the Army in Europe, Gatsby had fallen madly in love with Daisy, a girl from a wealthy Southern family. The aftermath of this time spent away, when he eventually gets back to the US, is what produces the tension and drives the plotline.
When he wrote this in 1924, Fitzgerald was 28 and already had two commercial and critically successful novels under his belt, and was approaching the height of his fame. Elements of the story are taken from his own life, including grand parties he hosted in Long Island that were driven by alcohol. A year of such largesse led to him being deeply in debt, to the tune of $5,000. But he hunkered down and wrote stories to pay this off, and with the leftover proceeds eventually moved to the French Riviera to focus all of his creative energy on this work. It certainly paid off.
At one point there are some interesting (and possibly autobiographical) reflections on approaching thirty. Carraway puts it in this amusingly bleak way: “Thirty — the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning briefcase of enthusiasm, thinning hair.” The style of writing throughout is wonderful, with many such delightful turns of phrase and reflections on humanity, often with a bracing dash of cynicism, for good measure.
During the course of its pages, we discover more about Gatsby’s extraordinary leap from rags to riches, his pursuit of a single dream, and ultimately its unravelling. It deals in a very poignant way with the longing for something that is just beyond reach, and serves as a fascinating critique on American ambition. When it was first published, it received mixed reviews and relatively poor sales. In 1939 it had even gone out of print! This unfortunately resulted to Fitzgerald’s confidence beginning to flag, and was an element in his long decline. Thankfully, the novel is now rightly considered a classic, and has often been referred to as a “Great American Novel”, which caught the spirit of life in the United States during the jazz age. It’s well worth a read, old sport.