Robin's Hood

Well I am into my fifth year of blogging kinda. I do all sorts of other things too in the social software space but blogging has been with me since the beginning.

Yes, this is my fifth year of blogging. Wil Wheaton has been blogging for over 9 years. Leo Laporte is in his 8th year. My first blog posting was back in 2005 which puts me into my 5th year (if you include 2005 itself). It is nothing to be proud of particularly but I thought I would mention it anyway :-)

Dubai is emblematic of the risk taking speculation which characterises the philosophy at the heart of the global financial collapse. They may have had very little directly to do with the problems, yet they embody everything on which the crisis was created. Hedonists. Inefficient living. Profligate consumption. Property speculation with no day job.

The higher they climb, the farther they fall. The problem is that they are falling back into the British benefit system, schools, hospitals, police protection, all the things we pay for and all the things they didn't.

I have just read in The London Times that up to twenty cars per day are being abandoned at Dubai's airport by fleeing ex-pats. It is illegal to bounce a cheque punishable by prison under Sharia law and these ex-pats are understandably nervous. Nervous enough to abandon their vehicles at the airport in some sort of guilt trip payback to the Government.

Dubai has no oil. Abu Dhabi does. It has bailed out Dubai's failing banks into a 'state-owned entity'. This act was designed to restore confidence in a failing system. Dubai is in trouble and its wealthy immigrants are leaving it like rats deserting a sinking ship.