Today’s silliness

Two random oddities today: the world’s most pointless location map from AGMC;

And some remarkably detailed safety instructions for an office chair.

Whip your wife into shape

One of the joys of living in the UAE is how often the local press print unintentionally hilarious articles like this one. Simply superb.

Something tells me that this approach would not help my beloved other half “understand the situation”.

UPDATE: Here is the link to the online version.

Insincerity

I walked past an ATM earlier today displaying the following message:

“We regret to inform you that this ATM is currently out of service.”

I sincerely doubt that the entire bank is consumed with regret over a glitch at an ATM in Bur Dubai. In fact, I would be surprised if it registered as anything more than a mild irritation amongst a few members of the ATM maintenance department. I am pretty certain that there is no wailing or rending of garments at corporate HQ this evening.

Was the grating insincerity of the first six words really necessary? Are people really so sensitive that they need to be mollified with expressions of regret over the temporary breakdown of a cash machine? Is the bank concerned that without such soothing words shocked customers may run amok, blinded by impotent rage against the cruelty of the universe?

What would the bank do if something serious went wrong?

Dear treasured and valued Customer,

We humbly submit our deepest and sincerest apologies to you, your family and your unborn descendants over our most egregious failure to promptly deliver your new debit card to you. Words cannot adequately express our sorrow and remorse at this unforgivable lapse. We would therefore like to invite you to our AGM in Zurich later this year so that our entire Board of Directors can perform ritual obeisance to you as you sit on our company throne.

We remain your humble and obedient servants always,

The Bank

A veil of a time

A columnist in The Guardian weighs in on the possible banning in France of wearing the veil in public places and drops a couple of clangers.

For a start, the vast majority of women concerned have clearly actively chosen to wear the veil, sometimes in the face of opposition from their family. Moreover, many see their veils as a means of expressing independence, even sometimes as a vehicle of feminine empowerment.

In the 70s, Muslim women who had recently arrived from north Africa were often kept behind suburban doors by the heavy-handed control of their husbands. Sometimes they were forced to wear the veil, but we hardly gave a damn. But, paradoxically, once the veil had emerged as a voluntary item during the 80s, visibly flaunted in the street by a new generation of determined young Frenchwomen, concern began to rise. Pseudo-feminist rhetoric cannot conceal the fact that it is indeed the voluntary veil which is being fought, and not the imposed article.

Evidence please? And how did the veil suddenly go from being an imposition on housebound wives to being the ‘must-have’ fashion accessory of the 1980s?

Also, answers on a postcard as to how exactly you can ‘flaunt’ a veil?

As to the second, theological justification, it is almost laughable to see members of the government and the president himself pompously arguing that such a veil is not truly Muslim, as if more knowledgeable than the Muslims themselves about the orthodox prescriptions of their own lifestyle. A peculiar facet of so-called French secularism sees government ministers assuming the fashionable role of imams.

See what he did there? Raise the question and then dismiss it without actually addressing it. What is actually laughable is the author’s own pompous and unswerving certainty about what Muslim Frenchwomen believe and want.

Others will opine that one cannot be a true citizen if one hides one’s face, because one is thus refusing human interaction. Yet some people wear dark glasses out of shyness or pure obnoxiousness, and nobody would think of denying them their right to humanity.

Is he implying here that women who wear the veil are shy or obnoxious? Is he seriously equating sunglasses with religious dress?

But this is nothing compared with his penultimate paragraph in which he vanishes completely up his own arse:

The worst about all this fuss is that we are completely off target. Women donning the full veil are not against modernity but represent rather its sophisticated product, just like westernised Buddhists. The veil, ­surprising as this may seem, is good news for modern values. Some smart young women keep a niqab in their bag but only wear it in Paris’s Rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, in order to draw attention to the fact that they belong to the best Muslim set, that they really have got that Muslim chic, something like the equivalent behaviour in a gay district. This deep western social movement is no threat to modern values, but rather vindicates the latter under unexpected aesthetic guise: it is so ­individualistic and depoliticised that it is more of a real threat for Islamism and terrorist networks themselves.

Words fail me. Perhaps you have to be French to appreciate post-modernist drivel like this?

The funny thing is that I actually agree that the proposed ban is a silly idea. I disagree with the theology and premises of the veil and hope that eventually it will go the way of various other archaic practices, but I support one’s right to wear it if one chooses. The ban is a pointless and illiberal piece of gesture politics which has an unpleasant Rousseauian ‘forced to be free’ feel to it. Such authoritarianism over what women may wear is as wrong in France as it is in Riyadh. The problem is that the author gets bogged down trying to defend the veil  as somehow empowering rather than making the simpler and much more effective argument that the government simply shouldn’t be interfering in this aspect of people’s lives. I suppose such liberal sentiments don’t come naturally to Guardianistas.

Abject stupidity

A few weeks ago I highlighted a generally positive Guardian travel article about the development of boutique hotels in Dubai and how this was a very welcome addition to the tourist landscape. Imagine my annoyance therefore at the news that the Dubai Municipality has decided to crush one of these little gems under the jackboot of regulatory incompetence.

The full story can be found here. Try to read it without getting angry – I can’t.

This sort of episode demonstrates the foolishness of those whose knee-jerk reaction to any social or economic problem is ‘more regulation’. The problem is that those who create and enforce regulations are not some omniscient and other-worldly sages who easily discern the intricate workings of human society, even if they frequently delude themselves into thinking that they are. They are in fact much more likely, as in this case, to be narrow-minded, asinine, box-ticking jobsworths.

Four Lions

Chris Morris, the man behind The Day Today and Brasseye, has made a ‘jihadist comedy’ film called Four Lions. You can see a sneak preview here.

Morris does not do ‘comfortable’ comedy so this should be interesting. I’ll be intrigued to see how it is received and what, if any, political agenda emerges from the film.

All hail The Onion

Out of the many acres of newsprint generated by the ‘Dubai Debt Crisis’, this is by far the best article of them all. The wonderful thing about it is that it simultaneously satirises both the Dubai real estate lunacy and the overwrought hyperbole of the overseas press reports.

Absolute genius.

Know thyself

I decided to use some time this quiet Friday afternoon to complete the Political Compass quiz. It’s by no means perfect as it relies on a lot of over-simplification and generalisation (my first instinct on a number of questions was ‘it depends’) but it is still an interesting exercise. Unsurprisingly I came out as ‘Right-Libertarian’.

If you find this test interesting and want to delve deeper into your own worldview, I highly recommend this book.

I would be interested in finding out how others get on with this and whether there are any Stalinists amongst my readership…

A few quick things…

Holidays and various festivities have greatly reduced the output of this blog recently. Time for a few brief observations though:

A very good article on the Dubai media circus in The National from a week or so ago – well worth a read.

Unfortunately, Dubai seems to have carefully taken aim and shot itself in the foot again. This story was also in The Times today and will certainly give more ammunition to the anti-Dubai brigade amongst the UK press. Dubai really needs to get a grip on their PR right now. There needs to be a Head of Media Relations for the entire Emirate with direct subordinates within all the government departments and the quasi-government organisations. This matter should immediately have been red-flagged as a potential PR disaster and dealt with in a discreet and professional manner. These things are normally dealt with and ’swept under the carpet’, but only once the PR damage is done.