"If I kill people, so be it"

Apparently 21 per cent of all road fatalities in the first three months of this year involved minibuses and Gulf News has stories today on the subject.

Of course, that figure means that 79 per cent of deaths are not caused by minibuses but by other drivers.

There are quotes from a freelance minibus driver that sum up the problem, not just with minibus drivers but with drivers in general here.

It's about attitude.

It's about too many drivers being irresponsible, inconsiderate, brainless.

Here's what the driver says:

"...I am taking the risk. If life is lost, so be it."

"...as a driver it is my responsibility to drive them safely, but if an accident happens I can't do anything, can I? It is an accident isn't it - there is nothing deliberate."

"If I die on the roads it is my fate."

And of course, other people drive dangerously so we can all do the same:

"I don't think that the entire fault lies with the minibus drivers. We are not the only one who might be changing lanes without indicating."

Unless there's a change in that kind of attitude we'll stay at the top of the world's most dangerous roads list.

The problem is, the attitude isn't going to change.

We need many more traffic police, better trained, to get these people off the roads. Permanently.


The Gulf News story is here.

Dubai, ghost town

You'll recall the confident predictions, from sections of the British press in particular which was gleefully repeated by people living here, that the economic meltdown would destroy Dubai.

With absolute certainty they insisted that Dubai would rapidly become a ghost town, abandoned by its expats and reclaimed by the desert sands.

The hysterical reports told us there were three thousand cars abandoned at the airport by fleeing expats. Hundreds more maxed-out expats were sleeping at the airport and in the desert.

But worse was to come because tens of thousands more would flee at the end of the school term.

All absolute nonsense of course.

Thousands of cars were not abandoned at the airport, there were not hundreds of homeless, jobless, maxed-out expats living in the airport or the desert.

And the thousands who were only staying so that their children could finish the term's schooling, well, they're still here.

We're at the start of the new school term and the schools are still full.

Many more roads have been completed but the traffic is still heavy - and chaos when there's one of our regular crashes.

The cafes and restaurants are still doing good business as people still eat out.

In a post at the beginning of December I said I thought there would be an upside to the downturn, that it would force a pause in the frenzy of development, allow for better planning, allow time for infrastructure to catch up.

A downturn and slowdown yes, a ghost town no.

I've posted many times that the predictions of Dubai's collapse were gross exaggerations with no understanding of its history. The evidence I see backs me up.

Plenty of traffic this morning in New Dubai around 10 o'clock after the peak...






And there was no evidence of a ghost town at The Walk at JBR early Friday evening...







I'm not holding my breath that the writers who made those confident, often spiteful, predictions will bother themselves with a retraction.

Ain't that the truth.

In his New York Times column, Thomas L. Friedman talks about the frightening divisiveness and rise of extremism in American politics.

Amongst it is a spot-on comment about the blogosphere, and the internet in general:

...a blogosphere that at its best enriches our debates, adding new checks on the establishment, and at its worst coarsens our debates to a whole new level, giving a new power to anonymous slanderers to send lies around the world.


The column is here.

Black magic again...but in Oz this time.

I quite often post about black magic practitioners operating here, a regular one being that you can double your money with magic chemicals.

I've just been browsing one of Sydney's local newspapers, the North Shore Times, and the same scam has popped up there.

I find it hard to believe but the story says that three business owners from Victoria payed around A$160,000 for chemicals that would double their money.

I'll let you know when we get stories about genies in Sydney.



The story's here.

Singapore pics

Not having seen them before, I posted a pic of 'Wife Biscuits' the last time we came back from Singapore. This time the baker had them side-by-side with 'Husband Biscuits'.

I'm told that the wife biscuits are sweet and the husband biscuits are salty.

Talking of food, it looks as though it's tiring work chasing the frogs around...

No, I wasn't tempted to try it.

We also came across an interesting awards scheme, not one I've seen anywhere else:

Back, down, blackballed

Back from Singapore and the next day the virus hit.

The one that my doctor says is sweeping Dubai - if you have it you have my sympathy, it's no fun. If you've escaped it so far I advise you to do whatever you can to avoid it.

I've been down and out for three days but as this afternoon I feel slightly less awful I thought I'd dip my toe gingerly into the blogosphere.

The Singapore Airlines flight back was going on to Cairo and I came across something that I haven't experienced before.

Cairo passengers were told, several times, that they could not leave the aircraft during the transit, including during the cleaning of the aircraft. Blackballed.

We Dubai passengers had to show our boarding passes to security people stationed right at the exit door of the aircraft to prove that we were indeed booked to Dubai and then they let us through.

Does this happen to passengers to/from other destinations or is the heavy hand reserved for Egypt I wonder?

UK pics

Here they are, the inevitable holiday photos.

We only had four days in the Peak District National Park in Derbyshire but we managed to see a few things and with the ease, and no processing cost, of the little pocket digital camera I ended up with hundreds of photographs.

We stayed in the largest village in the Peak Park, called Youlgreave. Like most English villages it's nestled in a valley (an interesting opposite to Italy where they're mostly on hilltops).



The village is built from the local stone and slate, old and new buildings alike, so there's an attractive overall style to the place:




What I'm told is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's smallest detached house is in the main street.



Called Thimble Hall it's basically one room with a ladder up to a few planks which make a sort of mezzanine floor. It was once home to a family of eight.

The village has a thriving community with plenty of activities on a regular basis. By chance we were there on the weekend the Youlgreave Show was being held.

That's a typical English country show, with residents exhibiting all sorts of handicrafts and things they grow, competing for 'Best of ' certificates.

Best tomato for example...

Plenty of beautiful flowers in all sorts of categories...

And one for the kids to enter their sculptures made from vegetables...

A couple of visits to the only town in the Peak Park, Bakewell, home of the Bakewell Tart (delicious) and Bakewell Pudding (not my favourite taste).

We were there on Monday which is market day so the town was buzzing. Monday is also the livestock auction day and that's well worth a visit...

It also happened to be the weekend when the Chatsworth Show is on, held in the grounds of Chatsworth House, home of the Duke of Devonshire. It's another of the country shows that are held all over England in the summer, highlighting country activities and produce and offering all sorts of entertainment.

I was, naturally, attracted by the vintage car rally, this Jaguar being my pick of the fifty or sixty cars on show...

They had amusing demonstations too, like the sheepdogs showing off their skills herding a flock of ducks around obstacles in the arena...

Plenty of food and drink stalls...

Including of course typical traditional English items...

We spent some time driving around the countryside too. This really is beautiful country...

You come across interesting little shops in the villages, like this licensed slaughterhouse and farm butcher shop - the meat and things like sausages from this area are absolutely top quality.



There are some beautiful little villages dotted all over the Park, a typical one being Milldale:

Across that little ancient bridge and there's a beautiful riverside walk...

The weather was kind of OK too. When we were further south in Leicester for a couple of days working it rained non-stop, but up in Derbyshire we only had a couple of showers. It was generally cloudy with some sunny spells so we were able to be out sightseeing most of the time.

And that's it for a few days, we're off to Singapore this evening for Eid.


Eid Mubarak everyone.