Dubai 3rd Report: The weekend magazine was full of letter to the editors:
Right behind a luxurious gated condo, the government is going to build a six-lane highway. The buyers were not aware of those plans when they've bought nor were informed. Now will have 24 hour noise behind their bedroom. They -coming from Not in backyard places- are up in arms. Thye, of course, like to have roads to drive those big cars. But the roads have to be built through their neighbors' condos. Not theirs.
Another theme was the swimmingpools close down. A child drowned and as a reaction the big real estate companies closed down the swimmingpools. Decision was made that from now on every swimmingpool will have a supervisor and its costs is passed on to the tenants. Again, the people come from nanny countries where someone has to take care fo themselves. Someone would and they have to pay more administration charges for it.
We have to note that a place like Dubai your child needs to be entertained. In other places tis si done by letting kids roam around with other kids their age. Here they can't. If kids go outside they roast under the sun. The community is artificial and many people from different nationalities live in those gated communities. Try imagining the Swede kid, try to play with the Irish kid, and the Dutch kid play with the Russian kid, the German kid with the Canadian kid. It doesn’t work. Kids go inside and tell: "Mum, I'm bored stiff!" in all those languages. As a result, the only activity -that doesn’t need talking- for the kids is to jump into the pool. Parents can’t be at the pool side taking care of kids. Accidents may happen.
The reaction of the tenants to the swimmingpool closure was immediate: Basically they said: We don’t care about kids drowning! This is a problemof people with kids. We want our swimmingpools that we are paying for!
With all those news at the top of the people's agenda, they overlooked one, "Government plan to put a Valued Added Tax" Government said: Don't worry. It is no new tax. We are just replacing the import tax, to a VAT tax. Uhm, they came in. Tax free country. Once they are here, and have spent good on their house etc, they start getting the surprises. But the people are too busy worrying about the swimmingpool issie and the new six-lane road |
