A taxing situation

27 February 2009

One of my main objections to travel in the USA is the almost endless additional charges and taxes that have to be paid.

Santa Barbara was not too bad with a simple 10% room tax; but why are we paying a room tax; who is it paid to? What use is the collected revenue put to?

Meanwhile our Hertz Rental from LAX, which was already expensive as it was a one way rental, included:

A 11.10% concession fee recovery
A 2.5% California Tourism Assessment
Collision Damage Waiver of US$15 a day
and Sales Tax of 8.25% on the base rental and on the concession fee recovery.

Moving onto Las Vegas:

The Signature at MGM Grand adds a US$20 resort fee per day for providing the very things that a guest should expect as part of the room cost.

The resort fee covers internet access; two small bottles of water each day; in room tea and coffee (one bag of caffeineated and one of decaf only); a newspaper which was never delivered anyway; and pool access; although the pool was closed in our tower and who wants to swim outdoors in winter ! Extortion !

There there is a 9% room tax and a 9% tax on the resort fee.

As for the Alamo rental: CDW was US$19.99 a day. There is a customer facility charge of US$3 for each day's rental; a concession recovery charge of 10%; a Clark County rental fee of 2%; a Registration Recovery surcharge of 2%; a Nevada Recovery surcharge of 2%, a Nevada government service fee of 6% and sales tax of 7.75%. The base cost of the rental almost doubles with the extra charges! 

And the standard gratuity is now 15% - it used to be 10% - in fact it used to be nothing but no one can remember those days !

How Not to Make a Political Fashion Statement in Bangkok

26 February 2009 - Time Magazine

Last year, a swarm of yellow-clad demonstrators massed in Bangkok, taking over the international airport and virtually paralyzing the Thai capital for a week. Today, the color of protest is red. As bigwigs from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) began gathering at a seaside resort near Bangkok on Feb. 26 for an annual summit, thousands of anti-government protesters wearing crimson shirts congregated at the Thai Prime Minister's office, demanding that Abhisit Vejjajiva hold elections soon. Thursday marked their third day of protest, and the red-hued demonstrators vowed not to cease until their demands for fresh polls were met. (See pictures of last year's protests.)

This week's new spate of color-coded dissent underlines not only the political instability that has marked Thai politics for several years now but also the tricky task of what to wear in Bangkok. Thailand is a country obsessed by color scheme. In Bangkok, the hues people wear can indicate everything from their political leanings to the days on which they were born. According to Thai tradition, each day of the week is assigned a color. Born on a Monday? Your lucky color is yellow, as is the case for the country's King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-serving monarch who is so beloved that many Thais wear yellow shirts every Monday to honor him. Wednesday babies are green. Saturday children are ruled by the color purple. Thailand's Queen Sirikit was born on a Friday, which claims blue as its auspicious shade, so Mother's Day in Bangkok is celebrated with all things aqua and indigo.

The habit naturally extends to politics. In the U.S., where Republicans are associated with red and the Democrats are linked with blue, politicians drift from those affiliations — Barack Obama, for instance, wore a red tie when he was sworn in as President, and outgoing President George W. Bush chose a blue tie for the occasion. But in Thailand, you literally wear your politics on your sleeve. When the protesters from the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) stormed Bangkok's international airport last year, the air terminal turned bright yellow. The demonstrators chose shirts of that color because they wanted to show their support for the King, whom they alleged was being disrespected by the then government. (Those PAD rallies forced ASEAN to delay the original date of its summit in December, and reschedule to this week.)

After a new administration aligned with the yellow-wearing royalists came to power in December, the new opposition began staging its crimson protests. Local pundits kid that P.M. Abhisit is being deluged by a Red Sea. The joke among journalists who try to maintain their reportorial objectivity is that orange, a mix of yellow and red, may be the best color to wear when reporting on Thai politics.

The hijacking of red and yellow by political groups has forced some Thais to give up wearing both colors, lest they be erroneously placed in one of the two political camps. The number of people who would normally wear yellow on Mondays to honor the King has dropped considerably, not because they respect the monarch any less, but because they don't want to be associated with the PAD. Likewise, soccer-mad Thais who would usually wear red Arsenal or Manchester United jerseys have been forced to think twice about supporting their favorite sports team.

So what's a safe fashion choice in Bangkok these days? Black may be appropriate for ASEAN members mourning the regional casualties of the global financial crisis. For everyone else, it's pink — a hue that gets to the heart of a color conundrum. The Thai King was born on a Monday, but he was born in Massachusetts, which is half a day behind Thailand's time zone. Technically, that means he was actually born on Tuesday Bangkok time, which could mean he should be honored by pink. In late 2007, when the King left the hospital after a three-week stay, he was pictured wearing a carnation-pink blazer and shirt, apparently because astrologers predicted that the tint would hasten his good health. The monarch's fashion statement provoked a run on all things rose-colored, with tens of thousands of pink shirts selling in a matter of weeks. Now that red and yellow are out, Thailand may again be turning pink.

The outstretched palm

Feb 26th 2009  - From The Economist print edition

Abu Dhabi bails out its neighbour. What will it ask in return?

The Jebel Ali port in Dubai boasts of being the largest man-made harbour in the world. Its “quad-lift” cranes can hoist four 20-foot containers at once. The port’s second terminal will raise its capacity to 14m containers. But plans for a third terminal look premature. Dubai is suffering from a slump in the trading, lending, holidaying and profiteering that buoyed this remarkable emirate for so long.

On February 22nd Dubai was hoisted out of its financial trouble by its oil-rich neighbour, Abu Dhabi. The central bank for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) bought $10 billion-worth of Dubai’s five-year bonds. The bail-out confirmed everyone’s assumption that Abu Dhabi would not let the second-biggest member of the UAE fail. But its benefactor waited long enough to plant a seed of doubt in people’s minds. In recent weeks, the spreads on credit-default swaps for securities issued by Dubai’s government and several of its biggest corporations have widened alarmingly, if a little hysterically.

Having long ago depleted most of its oil reserves, Dubai has reinvented itself as a “sell-side” emirate, dreaming up ingenious schemes for other people to invest in. Chris Davidson of Durham University, who has written a history of the emirate, describes it as a “spongelike economy”, designed to absorb foreign money. The government imposes few levies (Dubai has no income tax) and accounts for only $10 billion of the emirate’s debts. But its rulers sponsor an extended family of companies. Between them, these corporations have amassed about $70 billion of liabilities (see chart), adding to a debt pile that almost matches the emirate’s 2008 GDP of $82 billion.

On the other side of Dubai’s ledger, the government claims to have $90 billion in assets on top of the $260 billion held by its corporations. But it has not revealed the composition or liquidity of its holdings. The very fact that it had to turn to its neighbour for help suggests that its own family silver is not that easy to sell.

The bond proceeds will allow Dubai to meet its obligations this year (which amount to about $10 billion-15 billion) and probably next. But what will Abu Dhabi ask in return? On the face of it, not much. Tristan Cooper, of Moody’s, a rating agency, had expected Abu Dhabi to be “a bit more fussy” about how the funds were used. It might, say, have taken equity stakes in Dubai’s freewheeling corporations or sought some control over their managers.

But Mr Davidson thinks the unstated price of Abu Dhabi’s support will be stiff indeed. “It is the end of the second emirate’s economic autonomy, which it has fiercely protected,” he says. Why else did Abu Dhabi put Dubai through “months of pain and humiliation”, if it did not see some long-term gain from chastening its neighbour and strengthening the UAE federation, Mr Davidson asks. Dubai will now have to be more accommodating of its neighbour’s wishes, he says. It will, for example, have to forgo its independent foreign policy, which had seen it become Iran’s outlet to the world, even as Abu Dhabi kept a careful distance.

Dubai will also have to “lose its ambitions to become the Monaco of the Gulf,” Mr Davidson says. Abu Dhabi will insist on greater prudence and Dubai’s go-getting rulers may also now feel defeated. Their economic ambitions were driven partly by their political insecurities. “A lot of the urgency we saw in the last ten years was fuelled exactly by Dubai’s need to keep its autonomy,” Mr Davidson says.

But for all Dubai’s woes, the Gulf still needs a financial centre, a port, and a secure place to live, Mr Cooper points out. With a little less gumption and a lot less gearing, “Dubai is plausible.

Happy birthday bunny !

26 February 2009

Happy birthday to everyone's favourite Bunny and to my very special wife!

No hope for Zumanity

25 February 2009

Clever name. Tedious show. Zumanity is the Cirque du Soleil's adult show at the New York New York hotel in Las Vegas.

The trouble is the Cirque shows are naturally sexy do this show is just an attempt to extract yet more dollars by billing this as an adults only show. But there is little that is arousing or erotic. Tacky at best.

It plays twice a night to a packed house of very large people from Kansas who have never seen anything quite like t before. But frankly you would see a more erotic show at almost any bar or club in Bangkok and that only costs a couple of drinks and not US$100 a ticket.

Actually a trip on the Bangkok subway or a walk around Siam Paragon is sexier than this show.

If you go on the Zumanity website, you see a fast-moving acrobatics show that is sensual and creative.

Unfortunately, in the real show there is audience participation; this is a disaster; very large people looking foolish on stage is not sexy in any way. There are attempts at humor but it is not funny.

Some of the acrobatics impress. But if you have seen other Cirque du Soleil shows this one will disappoint even on that level. There is an MC (he/she is very tedious and predictable - Singapore's Kumar but without the humour or timing) who is meant to link the performances together but they did not flow together in a cohesive whole show.

A couple of decent acts - two girls performing in a goldfish bowl of water and a trapeze style act done with straps of fabric that was extraordinarily acrobatic.

Overall, this is an endeavor of such cynicism that it makes my own look faint-hearted.

Emirates starts to adjust schedules

24 February 2009

Emirates has confirmed on the GDS details of further expansion and capacity adjustment plans for 2009. The major changes that EK will be implementing are as follows:

MNL - frequencies increased from 10 to 12 weekly nonstop flights using a 2 class B 773ER effective April.

PVG - frequencies reduced from double daily to 12 weekly nonstop flights effective July.

PEK - frequencies reduced from double daily to 12 weekly nonstop flights effective July.

MXP - capacity reduced to double daily A 343s from daily A 332 + daily B 773ER effective October.
 

A class act

24 February 2009 from the Toronto Star - on 14 February 2009

"I always write from the wounded side of love."

That's not the sort of comment you expect to hear from Jim Cuddy, who's normally known as the upbeat side of Blue Rodeo. (Greg Keelor was long ago given the title "Chairman of the Dark Days.")

But Cuddy, who's performing with The Jim Cuddy Band tonight at Massey Hall, is ultimately the perfect Valentine's Day troubadour: bitter and sweet entwined in a fabric so tightly woven it's hard to pull them apart.

Sure, everyone knows that he's been happily linked with actor Rena Polley for the past 30 years, and that their three-children-successful marriage is one of the miracles of modern pop music.

But that doesn't mean there haven't been times before and after he met her that didn't tug at Cuddy's soul and leave some painful emotional scar tissue he managed to put to fine creative use further on down the road.

When quoted a line from the 1960 musical The Fantasticks – "without a hurt, the heart is hollow" – he nods sagely. "That's just how it is."

Looking back on his youth, he admits that "for a long time in my life, I liked girls who were bad for me." He recalls one in particular. "Her name was Nancy Walker, she had the best handwriting in the class, while my penmanship was, and continues to be, horrendous."

His Valentine's Day concert tonight reminds him of those times in school when "it was a crushing experience to see people leaving or not leaving valentines on your desk. And when the one you loved passed you by, it broke your heart."

He sits quietly, eyes in the past, remembering the pain. "It took me a long time to get over that. Liking the perfect girl, loving an image and she didn't love you back."

By the time he got to Queen's University, Cuddy had begun writing his own music and was looking for mentors to improve his guitar playing. "There was one guy, Walter Macnee, who I swear was the best guitarist I had ever heard. I pursued him for lessons, but he finally turned his back on it all. He's now president of MasterCard for the Americas."

Even without Macnee's guidance, Cuddy found his way and learned that "girls were very sympathetic to music. I was off to the races."

At this point came his great traumatic love, whom he prefers to leave nameless. "She had been someone else's girlfriend," he recalls, "but I fell for her hard. I had my heart so severely broken by loving somebody who didn't love me back. But I learned something.

"Pain is the most clarifying thing. Joy can be very unfocused, but pain embodies everything inside of you."

A few years after that, Cuddy met his wife, and he recalls the moment with a Zen-like clarity more than 30 years later. "It was 1978, one day just before reading week at Queen's, and I was jogging. This girl went running by me in the other direction and – bam! – I was smitten. She had a huge smile and curly hair. I found out who she was and asked her out on a date. She was leaving town, but she met me the next day for breakfast and we talked for hours. For the first time in my life, it crossed my mind that I could spend my life with one woman."

In 2008, in fact, Cuddy, on tour, found himself in Kingston at just that time of year and went to Morrison's, the greasy spoon where they had met years before. He ate a solitary breakfast and told the waitress he had met his wife there 30 years before. "That's sweet, honey," was her response.

But Cuddy is the first to admit that it hasn't been all sunshine and roses for the past three decades.

"When Blue Rodeo began to break big," he admits, "it caused a major adjustment in our lives. We started out as equals; I was playing a bar band and she was a working actress.

"But when the opportunities come, you can't not take them, and I found myself on the road an awful lot of the time. I started to think that she didn't want to lead the life we were leading. And we had two kids by that time, which made it really tough."

What did they do? "We worked it out. If you have a total commitment to a relationship, that's what you do."

Age is bringing another side of reflection to Cuddy's thoughts on relationships. A few years ago, he wrote the poignant "Pull Me Through" when his aunt died, offering his feelings on what happens to someone when their long-term partner passes on.

But now, Cuddy is starting to see those same shadows on his own personal horizon. Two of his kids have left home and the 53-year-old artist, although in excellent shape, describes this decade as "a real reckoning, an acceptance of alterations in the body that are difficult to take. The thought of turning 60 scares me more than anything else ever has before."

At the same time, Cuddy says he's in the right profession for aging gracefully. "I always looked ahead to Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson. I've always appreciated that I'm in a profession that won't put you out to pasture just because you're getting old."
 

Allegiant Who?

23 February 2009

The friendly skies cater to airlines of many different descriptions but few could be as different as Emirates Airline and Allegiant Air.

Emirates has no domestic market and flies new wide body airliners from Dubai to most of the world's major international destinations. It offers full service flights and seeks to fly to most destinations at least daily; subject to government agreements.

Allegiant Air meanwhile flies domestically in the USA bringing small town folk to places like Las Vegas and Orlando using gas-guzzling MD-80 aircraft.

What do they have in common; despite the train wreck that was 2008, both airlines are profitable; both manage costs with great efficiency albeit in very different ways.

The Allegiant model is unusual among low cost carriers. From its chosen hub cities it flies to most destinations only 2 to 4 days a week. Most airlines wouldn't dare fly a schedule like that because it doesn't help you attract the business traveller, but Allegiant isn't looking for the business traveller.

Start with their hubs. Las Vegas, Orlando, and Tampa (and now Los Angeles) are all big leisure destinations, so there should be decent traffic from just about anywhere in the country if you fly the route twice a week. And Allegiant concentrates on flying routes that no other major airline flies.

Allegiant offers extremely competitive low fares and that combined with convenience make them hard to beat in these smaller markets. Our fare from Santa Barbara to Las Vegas was US$19 each. There were extra fees from pre-booked baggage. Many passengers just carry large carry-on bags onto the airplane to avoid this charge.

The MD80 has 150 leather seats; decent legroom; but no seat recline.

Low fares means keeping costs low. The MD80s burn a lot of fuel, but they are cheap to acquire on the used market. The airports that Allegiant flies to charge lower landing fees. And there are some serious cost advantages to flying from these smaller airports. Faster turnarounds; shorter taxi to the runway, less idle time. They also keep crew costs down by having out-and-back routings so that they don't have to pay for crew hotels or meals on the road. Crew wages are also lower.

In addition, they have embraced the Ryanair model and have boosted ancillary revenues onboard. You pay for an assigned seat and for drinks and snacks. If you need a hotel or car rental at your destination, Allegiant will be happy to help and take a commission from the sale.

Their newest routes will be to fly into Los Angeles; they will be basing two aircraft here at LAX and those planes will usually each do a morning roundtrip to some far flung destination followed by a second roundtrip in the afternoon every day of the week. The plan is to serve twelve destinations from LAX with only two airplanes.

Each destination will be served only two or three times per week. Here’s the rollout schedule from Los Angeles:

Starting:
May 1 - Grand Junction (Colorado) on Monday/Friday
May 1 - Medford (Oregon) on Monday/Friday
May 2 - Bellingham (Washington - near the Canadian border) on Monday/Wednesday/Saturday
May 2 - Missoula (Montana) on Wednesday/Saturday
May 3 - Monterey (California) on Tuesday/Thursday/Sunday
May 3 - Springfield/Branson (Missouri) on Thursday/Sunday
May 22 - Billings (Montana) on Tuesday/Friday
May 23 - Fargo (North Dakota) on Tuesday/Saturday
May 23 - Sioux Falls (South Dakota) on Wednesday/Saturday
May 23 - Wichita (Kansas) on Wednesday/Saturday
May 24 - Des Moines (Iowa) on Thursday/Sunday
May 24 - McAllen (Texas) on Thursday/Sunday

Los Angeles is the sixth hub for the Las Vegas-based airline, which also serves McCarran International Airport (Las Vegas), Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport, Orlando Sanford International Airport, St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport and Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport.

Allegiant Air will now provide nonstop scheduled service to 70 U.S. cities including to 40 destinations from Las Vegas.

Dear Mr. President

21 February 2009  - sent to the White House today.

Dear President Obama,

I flew a non stop 16 hour flight from Dubai to Los Angeles yesterday. It may have been a while since you last travelled in the middle seat of Economy Class. It has little to recommend it for an hour, let alone sixteen.

But my wife and I had some time off and wanted to come back to America.

Sadly Los Angeles immigration has a reputation for unpleasantness and they lived up to that reputation yesterday.

Since 9-11 and the establishment of Homeland Security there has been an unpleasantness about travel to the USA that continues to put off many visitors.

The lady at immigration, a Ms Choi, was unpleasant verging on hostile. Her questions were intimidatory. Now I know that all we can do is quietly answer her questions but my preference would be to tell her to keep her job and her questions and her attitude and to turn around and go somewhere where they are pleased to see my wife and I.

We are here for two weeks, helping your hospitality and airline industries and I suspect (my wife does enjoy her shopping) helping your retail sector.

You could do so much so easily to open America's doors and welcome visitors back to America. But it will require a major attitude change among people who have taken the authority that they have been given as an excuse for unpleasantness and hostility.

Believe it or not 99.999% of people coming to America are happy to be coming here and great admirers of your country.

After a 16 hour flight a little courtesy and a welcoming smile would be a pleasure to see.

I wish you and your administration every success and a full eight years.!

Yours sincerely,

Robert A Scott
 

Nicolaides freed after royal pardon

21 February 2009

At long last Australian Harry Nicolaides has arrived back in Melbourne on Saturday after being pardoned on Thursday by Thailand's King Bhumibol Adulyadej and released from a Bangkok prison on Thursday night.

Nicolaides was arrested in August and sentenced to a three-year jail term last month after pleading guilty to a charge of insulting the royal family.

Nicolaides said a royal pardon was issued as he was asked to kneel before a portrait of the revered king.

The minimum sentence under Thailand's harsh lese majeste law, which makes it a criminal offence to insult the royal family, is three years imprisonment. The maximum sentence is 15 years.

Nicolaides' was one of several high-profile cases of lese majeste in recent months. Giles Ungprakorn, a well-known Thai academic, fled the country for the UK earlier this month after being formally charged with lese majeste.

Nicolaides' release was welcomed by the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA).

'SEAPA welcomes the pardon on Mr Nicolaides, but the problem with lese majeste remains,' SEAPA executive director Roby Alampay said. 'As a vague, over-broad law that can be used by anyone against anybody else, it is a blunt instrument too easily abused by politicians, the military, and others in Thailand to stifle free expression, and not just news and commentary relevant to the royal family.'

Thailand's lese majeste law was passed in the 1950s when the country was under a military dictatorship. The legislation has itself been obliquely criticized by King Bhumibol himself, who in a speech three years ago noted that he should not be above criticism.

Emirates boldly continues expansion

19 February 2009 - Emirates Press Release

Emirates Announces 2009 Expansion Plan - Airline to increase capacity by 14 per cent

Emirates Airline today unveiled plans to grow the number of flights across its network by 14 per cent in 2009.

This year, the Dubai based carrier will add 18 new passenger aircraft to its fleet, increasing seating capacity by 14 per cent and enabling it to start new routes as well as increase frequencies on many existing routes. It will also expand cargo capacity by 17 per cent.

The additional frequencies will afford passengers a greater choice of flights, more frequent connections with their target markets and shorter, more convenient connection times.

Emirates currently has a fleet of 129 wide-bodied aircraft. By the end of the 2008-09 financial year (ending 31st March 2009), that figure will stand at 132, including four superjumbo Airbus A380s. The carrier will welcome a further seven A380s in fiscal year 2009-10 (ending 31st March 2010), as well as 10 Boeing 777-300ER, one 777-200LR and one Boeing 777 freighter.

HH Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed Al-Maktoum, Chairman and Chief Executive, Emirates Airline and Group, said: “The next year is not going to be an easy ride for the airline industry. Emirates has prepared the best we can for the challenges we foresee, but we also see it as a time of opportunity. 2009, with our significant capacity increase, will be a year of consolidation for us, with fewer new routes launched than in previous years.

“Instead, we will concentrate on strengthening our presence on routes where there is a greater demand from our customers. All of our new capacity will be deployed in markets where we see growth potential, particularly Africa and the Middle East.”

Indeed, Emirates’ fastest growing markets are Africa and the Middle East, recording 17 and six per cent growth respectively in the last 12 months. To this end, Emirates recently added a second daily flight to Lagos.

It will also introduce services from Dubai to Durban, South Africa on 1st October 2009. The route will be served by a two-class, 278-seat Airbus A330-200 which can carry up to 14 tonnes of cargo into the port city.

Last month, Emirates announced a vast Middle East expansion plan taking the number of seats in the region to 50,000 on 180 flights a week. Additional services to Amman, Riyadh, Jeddah, Kuwait and Damascus were started recently.

Emirates has added 32 weekly flights to its existing Indian services since November. The enhanced capacity means customers now have a choice of 163 weekly flights into 10 gateways in the country.

As new aircraft come online, both Los Angeles and San Francisco – Emirates’ newest routes, launched in October and December – will go from thrice weekly to daily from May. The extra services will add more than 2,000 seats a week between the US west coast and Dubai, which is more than a 100 per cent increase on the current 1,600 seats.

There is increased capacity to Australia with additional daily flights to Brisbane and Melbourne, taking the total number of flights a week to 63 effective 1st February. Later this year, a third daily service to Sydney will be added. On 1st February, Emirates became the first carrier to operate commercial A380 flights into New Zealand with the launch of its Dubai-Sydney-Auckland service. Operated by a 489-seat Airbus A380 three times a week, it will go daily from 1st May.

Plans are also afoot to deploy superjumbos on Dubai–Seoul and Dubai–Singapore services in November and December respectively.

The first A380 flight between Dubai and Seoul’s Incheon International Airport will depart in November, while the Singapore service will start in December and initially run four times weekly.

In Europe, Emirates has already embarked on an expansion programme. In recent months it has commenced double daily flights into Milan, increased Istanbul services to 11 flights a week, increased services on the Larnaca-Malta route to seven times weekly and Nice flights to five times weekly. Second daily services into Moscow and Athens are also planned for March.

In total, the additional capacity will see more than 8,635 seats and around 600 tonnes of cargo capacity added to the Emirates fleet.

“Emirates has recorded an annual growth rate of 20 per cent over the last five years,” reported HH Sheikh Ahmed. “In the last two years alone, we have launched 11 new passenger and three cargo-only routes. In 2007, with the launch of its Dubai–Sao Paulo service, we became the first – and only – carrier to fly to six continents non-stop from a single hub.”

Established in October 1985 with flights to Karachi and Mumbai, Emirates Airline today directly serves 101 cities in 61 countries. In October 2008, the Emirates dedicated Terminal 3 at Dubai International Airport opened. With a total built-up area of 515,000 sq metres and the capability of handling 43 million passengers annually, the 10-storey concourse was specifically designed with Emirates’ future growth plans in mind.

In 2008, 22 million Emirates passengers passed through Dubai International Airport – an 11 per cent increase on 2007.

The perils of sponsorship

18 February 2009

Never have the perils of sponsorship been more obvious than in Dubai this week.

Both Barclays and Sony Ericsson are inextricably linked to the refusal of the UAE authorities to grant a visa to an Israeli tennis player, Shahar Peer.

The Wall Street Journal Europe withdrew its secondary sponsorship of the event in protest.

And Emirates, who are sponsors of next week's International Festival of Literature in Dubai have already seen Margaret Attwood withdraw due to the UAE's censoring of a novel by Geraldine Beddell; other authors may well follow her lead.

The Wall Street Journal release a statement saying that "The Wall Street Journal's editorial philosophy is free markets and free people, and this action runs counter to the Journal's editorial direction."

A Journal spokesman declined to say how much money the Journal had planned to give to the tournament. The Wall Street Journal's parent company, Dow Jones & Co, is owned by Rupert Murdoch's international media conglomerate News Corp.

The Barclays Dubai Tennis Championships is one of the Women's Tennis Association Tour's most prestigious events, but has attracted attention this year because of the UAE's decision to bar Peer from entering.

The UAE, like most Arab countries, has no diplomatic ties with the Jewish state and routinely denies entry to Israelis.

The tournament's organizers supported the decision to deny her a visa, saying local tennis fans would have boycotted the championships if Peer had been allowed to compete. Peer's presence would have antagonized fans who had watched recent television coverage of Israeli attacks on Gaza, tournament director Salah Tahlak said. This is not altogether convincing and the statement was made three days after the visa was denied and the tournament started.

Meanwhile Margaret Atwood has pulled out of the inauguraul Emirates Airline international festival of literature in the wake of a novelist being blacklisted for potential offence to "cultural sensitivities". Other authors due to appear at the festival, including bestselling children's authors Anthony Horowitz and Lauren Child, are now also reconsidering whether to attend.

Atwood, a vice president of writers' group International Pen, has written to the festival's director about the "regrettable turn of events" surrounding Geraldine Bedell's The Gulf Between Us. "I was greatly looking forward to the festival, and to the chance to meet readers there; but, as an international vice president of Pen – an organisation concerned with the censorship of writers – I cannot be part of the festival this year," she wrote in a letter posted on her official site.

"I know you have put an enormous amount of work into it, I can imagine how many difficulties have had to be overcome, and I am very sad about the regrettable turn of events surrounding The Gulf Between Us."

Bedell's book is a romantic comedy set in a fictional Gulf emirate, and was due to receive its official launch during the festival. According to Bedell, the organisers of the festival were initially keen to feature it, but then produced a list of reasons why they couldn't launch it there, citing its Gulf setting, its discussion of Islam and its focus on the Iraq war, as well as the fact that a minor character is a gay sheikh with an English boyfriend.

Bestselling children's author Anthony Horowitz, a key speaker at the festival, is also "deeply concerned" and is "seriously consider[ing]" pulling out of the event. He is currently deciding whether he would have more of an effect by bowing out of the event, or attending and protesting there, and has written a strongly-worded email to the festival's organiser setting out his position.

"The issue here is not sexuality – but you must understand that as both a children's author and a member of Pen, I cannot be associated with a literary festival that opposes freedom of speech and which attempts to censor other writers," he wrote. "I must ask you to let me know, with some urgency, quite how this situation has arisen and where exactly you stand. It doesn't help that my name is being used constantly to promote the festival … in truth, I should have known about this earlier." He is awaiting a response.

Children's author, illustrator and creator of Charlie and Lola, Lauren Child, who has just taken up a new role as a Unesco Artist for Peace, is also considering her position, her publicist said this morning.

Former children's laureate Anne Fine, who still plans to attend the festival, said: "I'm very surprised that these problems are coming up at such short notice. Authors notoriously write with great freedom and are outspoken. It surprises me that this is coming as a surprise to an international festival of literature."

The difficulty for the sponsors is that their names get associated not with a successful event but with a controversy which by their very sponsorship they appear to condone.

It's not safe anywhere!

17 February 2009

Last week two satellites crashed in space. A privately owned American satellite hit an obsolete Russian communications satellite.

Now we are being told that earlier this month two nuclear missile submarines had a near catastrophic collision deep under the ocean. So bad that the French boat incurred some US$75million in damages.

New York state has seen two airplane accidents in one month,

And I thought driving along our local Dubai roads is hazardous.

I thought there were space tracking systems. That there was a means of monitoring the orbit of all existing satellites. Think of it like stellar air traffic control. There are some 19,000 objects in space; including lumps of manmade debris. Of course the collision just added to the galactic debris.

What is remarkable is that there was no hint that these two satellites could collide and therefore no action that could be taken. the problem will get worse. And there is no means yet (other than gravity) to eliminate space debris.

The the two subs collide. Apparently they were both operating silently. That is how good they are. Their sonar systems were off. They are in stealth mode. So good that they ploughed straight into eachother. What is the chance of that. The Brits only have four such submarines and the oceans are vast. Apparently the Russian and Chinese subs are so noisy that you can hear them coming even when they are silent. The Brits and Americans tell eachother where their boats are so that they don't collide. But the French and the Brits have not swapped any useful information since Agincourt.

Maybe I will stick to driving my car!

 Fate is the Hunter

16 February 2009

It is a month since Captain Sullenberger's miraculous landing of his USAir A320 on the Hudson River in New York. A potential disaster was averted with no loss of life.

On Monday this week the passengers and crew of Continental Airways flight 3407 were not so fortunate.

Fate, as Ernest K Gann wrote in 1961, is the hunter.

Captain Sullenberger was hugely skilful; and very fortunate. He was flying in clear and calm weather and in daylight. His plane had no power but could fly as a stable glider for a short distance.

Last Thursday night everything seemed normal for the first 59 minutes and 34 seconds of Flight 3407 from Newark to Buffalo.

But the last 26 seconds launched a terrifying descent in which the crew tried to regain control of the plummeting plane as it was rolling and twisting, according to information retrieved from the two black box recorders of the ill-fated plane and released Sunday.

A minute before the plane crashed, nothing appeared amiss. The autopilot was controlling the final descent at 154 mph, the landing gear and flaps were lowered, and, at 1,650 feet above the ground, the plane was on course for landing on Runway 23 at Buffalo Niagara International Airport.

But 34 seconds later, the plane suddenly went out of control and began a deadly roller-coaster descent that ended at 10:20 Thursday night.

The pilot and first officer heard a warning tone, signaling that the autopilot had automatically disengaged.

Instead of easing toward the landing strip at a gradual descent, the nose of the plane suddenly pitched up at a 31-degree angle, far steeper than what's normal for a plane during takeoff.

At that point, it appears that the crew took over from the autopilot and rammed the throttles all the way forward, trying to prevent the plane from stalling.

Seconds later, the nose of the plane dipped dramatically. At the same time, the plane rolled to the left, its left wing dipping and the right wing pointing up. Then the plane rolled even more dramatically to the other side. The plane was almost inverted.

Inside the cabin, passengers and crew felt a gravitational pull of two Gs, twice the force of gravity.

The wings then came back toward level flight. But the nose of the plane still pointed down, and the plane was pointed in the opposite direction from the airport. It had reversed direction. There was almost no forward motion.

Continental Connection Flight 3407 also was dropping nearly 20 times faster than normal … falling 800 feet in 5 seconds. The last recorded data showed the plane 250 feet above ground level, at 115 mph, less than 5 seconds before impact.

Finally, the plane hit flat on a single house igniting a fireball that took the lives of all 49 people onboard and one in the Clarence Center house it struck.

That is the terrifying sequence of events that federal investigators reconstructed for reporters Sunday evening in a hotel in Amherst.

The final cause of this disaster will take some time to unravel.

SQ cuts aircraft and capacity

16 February 2009

Reacting to falling demand, as reflected in advance bookings, Singapore Airlines has announced plans to reduce capacity in the coming financial year, commencing April 2009 and ending March 2010, by 11 per cent from the preceding twelve months.

In the course of the year, 17 aircraft will be decommissioned from the operating fleet. Before recession hit major markets, the plan was for only four aircraft to be phased out – one for conversion to a freighter, and three to be returned to lessors at completion of lease contracts.

Singapore Airlines Chief Executive Officer, Chew Choon Seng, said, “The drop in air transportation has been sharp and swift. Given the falls of over 20 per cent that we have seen recently in air cargo shipments, and the tradition of demand for air travel following closely behind trends on the cargo side of the business, we have to face the reality that 2009 is going to be a very difficult year.

“Singapore Airlines does not have a domestic operation to soften the blow from the slump in international air traffic, and we have to act decisively to address the situation. We have determined the capacity to be operated that will enable the Airline to remain viable in a shrinking market, but the removal of surplus capacity will result in redundant resources and will draw sacrifices from every one of us in the company.

“We have already taken action such as expanding and stepping up training and re-training programmes, and we will contemplate retrenchment only as a last resort, but we do not have the luxury of time and we need to agree and act on some measures quickly so that we can push back the point of retrenchment as far as possible and improve our chances of avoiding it altogether.”

The Airline’s efforts in improving efficiency and reducing wastage have been, and will be, continuous. Apart from containing costs without compromising on safety, security and quality of service, the Company is engaging the unions on measures that will affect staff. Such measures include accelerated clearance of leave entitlements, voluntary leave without pay, voluntary early retirement and shorter work months. If there are to be cuts in salary, the management will be the first to take them.

Nice to see SQ seeking some consensus and understanding of its plans. “The Company will work with the staff and the unions in forging a consensus on the action plans. Together in cooperation, we will rise to the challenges confronting us and ride out the storm,” Mr. Chew said.

There is a lesson for Emirates here. Arguably Singapore and Emirates are significant competitors; in particular on long haul routes into Australia. I think we can expect similar announcements from the UAE based carriers.
 

Hong Kong - the new refuge of the rich fugitive

16 February 2009

I do love Hong Kong. But it is a bit sad to see that the city has become the welcoming home to a new brand of rich political fugitives.

First there was Thaksin Shinawatra. And now the Mugabes.

Yesterday's UK Sunday Times reports that Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe bought a $5.7 million house in Hong Kong at the same time his country is dealing with 94-percent unemployment and a cholera outbreak that’s killed 3,467 people.

The house was bought on Mugabe’s behalf through an unidentified company, the U.K. newspaper said. The home is in Tai Po in the New Territories.

Meanwhile Zimbabwe is in the grip of a decade-long recession and had the world’s highest inflation rate, at 231 million percent last July, the last time the government provided an official estimate. Zimbabwe is facing shortages of food, fuel and other basic commodities.

At least 6.9 million Zimbabweans, or more than half of the population, need emergency food rations, according to the United Nations World Food Programme.

Caught in the crossfire

16 February 2009

Everything I hear and read from Thailand indicates that the following Straits Times (Singapore) report is sadly accurate. What many Thais forget is that the foreign media were also strongly critical of Thaksin during his time in power, in particular over human rights (or the lack of them) issues and government corruption.

Thailand is dependent on foreign investment, foreign tourists and on foreign exports. It cannot therefore escape foreign scrutiny and reporting.

"Caught in the crossfire. Foreign media facing hostility from royalists who accuse them of unfair reporting.

By Nirmal Ghosh - The Straits Times
11 February 2009

Hours after Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva was voted into office, on the evening of Dec 15, I was at Bangkok’s sprawling Sanam Luang grounds to assess the reaction of the pro-democracy ‘red shirts’ who had been enraged by that morning’s developments.

When a Thai friend, a senior manager in a five-star hotel in Bangkok, found out where I was, she flew into a rage.

‘Why are you encouraging the red shirts? I hate these people. It is you foreign journalists who are encouraging them,’ she said to me on the phone.

I explained that I was just doing my job and observing the developments. But she grew angrier: ‘No, it is you foreign journalists who are giving Thailand a bad name and destroying tourism.’

Such a sentiment is quite widespread among Thais, especially those in Bangkok who follow the output of Manager Media.

The conglomerate’s ASTV and Outlook Channel are not simply news networks. Owned by Mr. Sondhi Limthongkul, co-leader of the royalist People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD), Manager Media functions as the PAD’s propaganda wing.

On the opposite side of the still-deep political divide, the pro-democracy ‘red shirts’ had their Truth Today TV show which this month morphed into D-Station. The D stands for ‘democracy’.

When the PAD seized Bangkok’s two airports on Nov 25 last year, dealing a severe blow to the economy in an attempt to force the government from power, then Associated Press journalist Sutin Wannabovorn, 61, had an epiphany.

To the amazement of other reporters on the scene, Mr. Sutin, who began his career in journalism with United Press International in 1978, went up on the PAD’s stage and dramatically announced his resignation and threw his support behind the PAD.

He said the foreign press had been biased against the PAD.

Subsequently Mr. Sutin has been working for Manager Media’s Thailand Outlook Channel.

In the fraught political atmosphere, there is little middle ground. There are splits at every level of Thai society, and even within families. Those who strive to stay in the middle are told they must take sides.

This applies to the foreign media as well; there is a growing chorus that if the foreign media reports on the red shirts or quotes former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, it must be in his pay.

‘These days, the story is not coming from real sources, it is coming from a group of people who are intentionally cooking it up,’ Mr. Sutin said in the course of a long discussion on the phone.

‘Some people who speak good English go to the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand - like Jakrapob Penkair (a Thaksin loyalist). And lately they have commented on a very sensitive issue. A negative image of the royal family is appearing through websites. We know that this comes from a group of people with bad intentions. Why did The Economist print that about the monarchy? Because they got money!’

He was referring to a December 2008 issue of The Economist, which was not distributed in Thailand because of its cover story titled ‘The king and them: The royal role in Thailand’s chaos’.

When I asked Mr. Sutin whether he had any evidence that the foreign press was being paid, he admitted there was none.

‘We don’t have any evidence. But we know,’ he said. ‘I do believe the foreign media is paid to make a negative image of Thailand.’

He accused the BBC, the South China Morning Post and CNN of ‘blowing up’ the recent story about the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar, hundreds of whom apparently died at sea after being towed out and left adrift on the high seas by the Thai navy.

A picture leaked to CNN, taken from a Thai boat as it towed a boatload of Rohingya refugees out to sea, had come from Thai military sources.

That was proof of a ‘conspiracy’ against Thailand, Mr. Sutin claimed.

His views, even as he admits there is no evidence to support them, are shared by many in the current ‘if you are not with us, you are against us’ mood in Bangkok.

Some of the objections to coverage are par for the course, and part of the occupational hazard of being a foreign journalist - in any country.

But while the foreign media corps in Thailand does not go about its work in fear of being thrown into jail, the mounting hostility among some quarters is quite new.

My experience with my Thai friend was not an isolated one.

Another foreigner told of how he had to restrain his Thai friend from accosting BBC correspondent Jonathan Head when they encountered him in a supermarket.

Mr. Head has had three lese majeste complaints filed against him by a police colonel, and has been the subject of public tirades by the PAD.

PAD activists regularly castigate foreign journalists, saying they do not understand Thailand and have been bought off by Thaksin.

Several popular bloggers have received hate e-mail, or been warned by friends to be careful of what they post.

Even the mainstream Kom Chad Luek daily, which is owned by the Nation group, last week suggested that some foreign journalists appeared to have ‘conspired’ with one faction of Thais to present ‘negative news’ about Thailand.

Mr. Sutin’s ire is particularly directed at Thaksin loyalist Jakrapob Penkair, who is now a red shirt activist and D-Station talk show host.

Mr. Jakrapob, who is being prosecuted for lese majeste, had to step down from former Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej’s Cabinet over the case. That the comments that got him into trouble were spoken at the Foreign Correspondents Club of Thailand directed attention at the club and at the foreign media.

Asked for his reaction, Mr. Jakrapob said: ‘Accusations (like those of Mr. Sutin’s) come from the same problem - an incredibly narrow perspective.

‘Reality in Thailand has been blurred by organised propaganda inside the country.’"

Traffic chaos expected soon

16 February 2009

Preparations to start constructing the most complex part of the Dubai Creek extension - from Business Bay off Shaikh Zayed Road to the Arabian Gulf - are in the final stages according to the local media.

Major diversions on Shaikh Zayed Road will be in place in few weeks. The bridge on Shaikh Zayed Road will be 800 metres long with six lanes on each direction. It will be 8.5 metres high to ensure smooth sailing for marine transport.

A six-lane bridge with three lanes on each direction will also be built on Al Wasl Road next to the Safa Park and another six-lane bridge with three lanes on each side will be built on Jumeirah Road.

The canal will be 100 metres wide. The project involves extension of the Dubai Creek by 2.2 kilometres from Business Bay to the Arabian Gulf through Safa Park and Jumeirah 2. The project will be carried out in three phases and will be completed by the end of 2010.

The Dubai Creek extension canal will be part of Dubai's ambitious plan for marine transport, as it will be used by private boats, water taxis and ferries.

Some 10 kilometres of the total 12.2 kilometres of the Dubai Creek extension work has already been completed in Business Bay.

Dubai Creek, which starts at the Arabian Gulf near Al Shindagha in Bur Dubai, is currently 14 kilometres long and naturally ends at Ras Al Khor Wildlife Sanctuary.

Once completed, the final length of the creek will be around 26.2 kilometres with Bur Dubai becoming an island within the Dubai Creek ring.

The Creek has been the life-line of the city as Dubai was initially built along the creek. On completion, it will provide a comprehensive marine transport facilities as commuters will be able to use water buses, water taxis and ferries as an alternate mode of transport to beat the traffic on the roads.

With the rush hour traffic volumes on Shaikh Zayed and Al Wasl roads this project will inevitable cause significant disruption. It is also very close to our Business Bay home where after two years we still do not have road access and have endured two years on constant construction noise.

ARG - cricketing farce

15 February 2009

So the poor suffering cricket watchers in Antigua got dragged out to the sandpit, also known as the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Stadium and saw a second test that lasted ten balls.

The ground was a dangerous disgrace.

But why did the game even start? The players were not allowed to train at the ground due to concerns over the state of the grass. The match referee had arrived four days earlier and had presumably been too busy tanning himself to think about checking the ground. He is the ICC appointed referee. Asked if he thought of having the run-ups tested before the game started he simply answered no.

5,000 English supporters had spent good money coming to Antigua for a cricket watching holiday. They deserved better. Rather than concentrating on the game - the ICC spends its time questioning the size of the sponsors logo on Kevin Pieterson' bat. Farce really. The cricket umpires are already looking like advertising billboards covered in Emirates logos.

The ICC will blame the West Indian cricket authorities. They were guilty of taking Chinese money for the new stadium. They were incompetent in overseeing preparations for the Antigua test. But the ICC runs cricket on a full time basis. Trouble is they are so focused on the money making South Asian nations that they have taken there eyes off the game elsewhere.

Now the third test is underway at the ARG; the Antigua Recreation Ground; which is a far more entertaining place to play cricket anyway. As a ground it may not have all the corporate niceties of the new stadium but it is human and accessible. The ARG hosted test matches from 1981 to 2006. I was there in 1990 as a poor England team lost by an innings and a lot and a happy crowd belted out London Bridge is Falling Down.

Even by 1990 the stadium was dilapidated. The famous double decker stand held together with corrugated iron. It was a health and safety hazard. Everyone loved it. Watching cricket there was a party. This is the ground where Sir Vivian Richards and Brian Lara (375 in the test against England in 1994) played some of their most brilliant cricket. This is where the cross-dressing Gravy danced and where Chickie's Disco blared between overs, the ground which arrived on the international scene at a time when West Indies were in their swaggering pomp.

Two days of chaos to get the old ground as ready as it could be. A pitch that has seen more football than cricket recently. TV cameras to be moved - not enough to allow the referral system which is no bad thing.
 

Dubai tennis - where love all does not apply

15 February 2009

The Dubai women's tennis championship starts tomorrow; but it will be missing one qualifier.

Israeli tennis pro Shahar Peer was denied a visa that would allow her to play in the Dubai Tennis Championships in the United Arab Emirates.

The rules are simple. Israelis are not allowed into Dubai. This has always been policy. But the fact that her ban has been announced and appears to have surprised the tennis authorities has raised this issue in the international media. It looks like a poor decision where politics has taken priority over sport.

It might have been better to quietly let her play. Any country that wants to be a major player in international sports cannot pick and choose who it allows to play.

The World Tennis Association said: "we are deeply disappointed by the decision of the UAE denying Shahar Peer a Visa that would permit her to enter the country to play in the Dubai Tennis Championships," WTA chairman and CEO Larry Scott (no relation) said in a statement. "Ms. Peer has earned the right to play in the tournament and it is regrettable that the UAE is denying her this right."

She may have the right to play in the tournament but she does not have the right to enter the UAE. Simpleas that.

Peer, 21, is ranked No. 48 in the world on the WTA Tour and was scheduled to play 15th-seeded Anna Chakvetadze of Russia in the first round of the $2,000,000 tournament. She was the only Israeli player to be entered into the tournament.

Scott continued "The Sony Ericsson WTA Tour believes very strongly, and has a clear rule and policy, that no host country should deny a player the right to compete at a tournament for which she has qualified by ranking. The Tour is reviewing appropriate remedies for Ms. Peer and also will review appropriate future actions with regard to the future of the Dubai tournament."

The last note might worry Dubai; but given the money available for the Dubai tournaments it is unlikely that the WTA will do anything except make some noise for an hour or two !

Just as a what if - if Tiger Woods was Israeli - would he be banned from the UAE? If Roger Federer was Israeli would he be banned? I have to hope that if banning Israeli athletes is policy it would apply to all. The UAE authorities should clarify that Israelis of any profession will not be admitted whether for sports or any other activity. The organisers of world sport would then know where Dubai stands and would have to decide if that policy is acceptable to them or not.

This was the year that the WTA elevated the Dubai women's and men's tournaments to elite status on their tour’s new “roadmap” calendar. Dubai now stands on a par with Rome, Cincinnati, Canada and Tokyo as key tournaments behind the four grand slams and major supporting events based in Indian Wells, Miami, Madrid and Beijing. Not so elite I guess. But she is not the first, and wont be the last, athlete to be banned from a sports event because of her nationality.

Dubai's six-year building boom grinds to halt as financial crisis takes hold

15 February 2009 - from The Guardian newspaper

Arab tycoons wrapped in traditional headscarves sipped fruit juice cocktails as they watched Russian models twirl in silk dresses.

It was the most exclusive ticket in town, a private catwalk show to which the Middle East's biggest spenders had been personally invited.

But if the smiles at this week's Dubai fashion event looked more false than usual, it was for a reason. The net worth of the VIPs in attendance today is a fraction of what it was six months ago.

A six-year boom that turned sand dunes into a glittering metropolis, creating the world's tallest building, its biggest shopping mall and, some say, a shrine to unbridled capitalism, is grinding to a halt.

Dubai, one of seven states that make up the United Arab Emirates (UAE), is in crisis.

So too are British expatriates. Many of the estimated 100,000-strong community came here expecting to make millions in property, and to soak up a lavish lifestyle living alongside footballers, actors and supermodels.

But the real estate bubble that propelled the frenetic expansion of Dubai on the back of borrowed cash and speculative investment, has burst.

Many westerners are being made redundant or absconding before the strict legal system catches up with them.

Half of all the UAE's construction projects, totalling $582bn (£400bn), have either been put on hold or cancelled, leaving a trail of half-built towers on the outskirts of the city stretching into the desert.

Among the casualties is the tower Donald Trump promised would be "the ultimate in luxury", a $100bnresort complex by the beach, and four huge theme parks and an artificial island developed by the state company Nakheel.

It is not all bad news: the building projects still in play are almost the equivalent of the US stimulus package. And the city remains a haven for super-rich sheikhs, billionaire hedge fund managers and Russian oligarchs.

But banks have stopped lending and the stock market has plunged 70%. Scrape beneath the surface of the fashion parades and VIP parties, and the evidence of economic slowdown are obvious. Luxury hotels are three-quarters empty. Shopkeepers in newly-built malls are reporting a drop in sales. In Dubai you expect to see a Ferrari parked beside a Rolls-Royce. But not, as is the case now, with scruffy For Sale signs taped to the windows.

Living the dream

Nowhere sums up the fortunes of expatriates in Dubai quite like Palm Jumeirah, an artificial island fanning out into the Persian Gulf, populated by residents including the likes of David Beckham, Michael Schumacher and even, it is said, Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai.

At the top of the island stands the Atlantis, a garish $1.5bn hotel complex with 1,539 rooms and a whale shark swimming in a 1 million-litre fish tank.

The Atlantis's $20m inauguration celebration, where the world's A-list celebrities were treated to 1.7 tonnes of lobster and 1,000 bottles of Veuve Clicquot, was promoted as the world's biggest party.

For Palm residents, it was followed by an equally impressive hangover. The value of their villas and apartments on the Palm fell by as much as 60% in just a few months.

"Drink your last cocktail and get out of here," said Sasha Reynolds, a 33-year-old airhostess. "My boyfriend is an engineer and work has dried up. He's been offered work in Qatar but who wants to go there? People are still making money here but the parties aren't quite the same. I'm lucky ‑ I didn't buy."

The exact number of unemployed is not known. The Dubai government does not release figures, and prevents the press from running stories that damage the economy, such as mass redundancies.

But there were sacked expatriates ‑ bankers, lawyers and architects ‑ in all but one of the hotel bars visited in Dubai this week.

Employees who lose work in the UAE automatically have their visa rescinded, generally giving them 30 days to leave.

"I look out of my balcony every day and I see Brits by the pool on their laptops," said Andrew Hillocks, 29, a sacked telecoms consultant whose passport has been seized. He will be escorted to the airport next week. "They're looking for work that just isn't there. I sold my car to cover my loan, but other people are panicking."

Under Dubai's strict legal code defaulting on debt or bouncing a cheque is punishable with jail. Any expatriate in financial difficulty knows the safest bet is to take the next outbound flight.

At the airport, hundreds of cars have apparently been abandoned in recent weeks. Keys are left in the ignition and maxed out credit cards and apology letters in the glove box.

Officials put the number of vehicles at 11. "No one believes that. There are 11 cars abandoned just on my street," said Anne, 26, a fashion editor from London. "Over the past two months I've been getting an email a day from people trying to sell their stuff. 'New Jaguar – need to sell before the end of the week'."

In a world of self-made millionaires and property entrepreneurs, some remain bullish. Simon Murphy, 42, runs the exclusive Crest of Dubai social club for Palm residents. "My job is to keep people smiling," he said.

The former hedge fund adviser's apartment is a "boy's paradise". Beside the snooker table and darts board are photos of him beside Richard Branson, Alan Shearer and Pele.

"I have the beach there. My local is that bar a couple of yards away. That's the pier where they're going to dock the QE2. People ask about the whole 'living the dream' scenario? Ain't this it?"

Some people had to lose out, he said. "As they say: eagles fly with eagles. The motivating factor to come here is greed. You have to be selfish, have minimal social responsibility, and want to make money quick. Brits in Dubai are gamblers. It's the nature of the beast that not everyone wins."

The invisible losers

In the Dubai however, the losers are the invisible majority.

Taxi drivers from Egypt, Yemen and Iraq compete for work. Their clients often ask to go to hotel bars where, at night, they will find prostitutes from Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia.

Expatriates from the developing world maintained Dubai's orgy of consumption during the boom years. Now they too are being forced to leave.

Perhaps those who suffer most are the construction workers from the Indian subcontinent, who have worked on perilous building sites earning as little as £70 a month.

The Indian embassy is reportedly anticipating an exodus with 20,000 seats on flights to India already "bulk-booked" for next month.

Buses come to pick up 250 workers every night from one dusty street on the edge of Sonapur, a labour camp on the edge of the desert.

As night falls, the gangly silhouettes of construction workers file out of the camp gates. "There is no work," said Jasvinder Singh, 24, placing his suitcase in a pick-up truck, the words "Dubai to Delhi" taped to the side.

"It has been such a drama. We came here to earn money. We are going home to see our wives but our pockets are empty."

Sanjit, 44, another construction worker from Punjab, gestures angrily in the air: "We were treated badly here. We were slaves to the Arabs."

But unlike their British counterparts, construction workers from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan cannot abandon lives in the glove compartment of a 4x4. Most took loans to pay agent fees to come to Dubai, and their debts will follow them home.

"I sold our land and took loans in the village to come here," said Imran Hassan, a 20-year-old Bangladeshi farmer. "I paid the agent £2,000 to bring me. He said I would earn 1,500 dirham [£287] a month, but we are paid 572 dirham. When I return people in the village will want their money but I have none."

A Welsh construction site manager said he had protested to his boss about the treatment of labourers.

"We tell them to bring their clothes to work one day and then we send them home. It makes me feel sick. I asked why it had to be done so quickly and I was told a lot of them commit suicide and we don't want that on our hands."

Tale of two cities

Dubai's future will actually be decided well way from the shimmering skyscrapers.

To find out why, you need to drive along 90 miles south along the Gulf coastline, past tiny Bedouin enclaves and shimmering desert mosques.

Abu Dhabi, the oil-rich capital of the UAE and the richest emirate, has opted for a more conservative – and, some say – prudent approach to growth that contrasts with Dubai's giddy expansion.

But it boasts 95% of the UAE's oil reserves and more than half of its GDP, and regional experts predict it will overtake Dubai as the destination of choice for westerners in the Middle East.

Dubai, which has barely a trickle of oil in comparison, is projecting a 42% increase in public spending on infrastructure projects, to compensate for vanishing private investment. But it cannot go it alone. Abu Dhabi is increasingly expected to bail out its poorer neighbour, and the two ruling families are meeting regularly to decide how to transfer cash into Dubai's ailing economy.

"The question is not if Abu Dhabi will come to the rescue, but how big it will be and how public," a source with knowledge of the negotiations said. "Abu Dhabi cannot let Dubai sink."

But Abu Dhabi has its own problems. The emirate's sovereign wealth fund – once said to be worth $1 trillion – has taken a hit in the global recession, while the lifeblood of the economy – the price of oil – is down more than 60%.

Thirty miles from the capital, dust rises from the barren horizon where a 10km-long building site is being turned into al-Raha Beach, an $18bn waterfront city, a joint venture between Aldar, Abu Dhabi's largest property developer, and Laing O'Rourke, the UK's largest construction company.

"A lot of staff have been moved over here from Dubai," said Paul, 35, a Laing O'Rourke project manager, raising his voice over the noise of JCBs.

"But it is all coming to a stop here too. There are mass redundancies now. We've gone from an expat workforce of about 1,000 to about 400. There are more waves of redundancies coming this week."

He said he could not be sure, but by his estimate more than half of the al-Raha development had been quietly shelved.

"I've not been made redundant myself but I've decided to go home in April. The wife and kids have already left. A lot of people are jumping ship before there are no lifeboats left."

Back in Dubai the following day, a Mercedes Benz snaked along the city's main street, Sheikh Zayed Road. Firas Darwish, 35, an Emirati property magnate dressed in traditional Arabic clothing, sat in the driver's seat, listening as as Veronica Chapman, 65, a real estate agent from Hull, recalled what the city was like when she first arrived in 1980.

"No milk, no bread, no schools. It was a desert and a couple of buildings," she said.

Darwish slowed the car to point out abandoned building sites where cranes stood still in the baking heat. "Here we are completely reliant on foreigners," he said. "Maybe Dubai grew too fast."
 

The world's scariest airports

14 February 2009

Nervous fliers, stop reading! Travel + Leisure has come up with a list of the world's scariest runways that can make even the most relaxed travellers grip their armrest.

1. Paro Airport, Bhutan

Tucked into a tightly cropped valley and surrounded by 4900-metre-high Himalayan peaks, Bhutan's only airport is forbidding to fly into. It requires specially trained pilots to manoeuver and land through a channel of tree-covered hillsides.

2. Princess Juliana International Airport, St. Maarten

The length of the runway is just 2180 metres which is fine for small or medium-size jets, but as the second-busiest airport in the Eastern Caribbean, it regularly welcomes wide-body jetliners like Boeing 747s and Airbus A340s which fly in low over Maho Beach and skim just over the perimeter fence.

3. Reagan National Airport, Washington, DC

Located smack in the center of two overlapping air-exclusion zones, Reagan National requires pilots flying the so-called River Visual into the airport to follow the Potomac while steering clear of sensitive sites such as the Pentagon and CIA headquarters. On taking off, pilots need to climb quickly and execute a steep left bank to avoid flying over the White House.

4. Gibraltar Airport, Gibraltar

Pinched in by the Mediterranean on its eastern flank and the Bay of Algeciras on its western side, the airport's truncated runway stretches just 1828 metres and requires pinpoint precision.

5. Matekane Air Strip, Lesotho

The 399-metre-long runway is perched at the edge of a couloir at 2300 metres. You drop down the face of a 609-metre cliff until you start flying. Says bush pilot Tom Claytor: "The rule in the mountains is that it is better to take off downwind and downhill than into wind and uphill, because in Lesotho, the hills will usually out-climb you."

6. Barra Airport, Barra, Scotland

The airport on the tiny Outer Hebridean Island of Barra is actually a wide shallow bay onto which scheduled planes land with the roughness of landings determined by how the tide went out.

7. Toncontin Airport, Tegucigalpa, Honduras

Having negotiated the rough-hewn mountainous terrain, pilots must execute a dramatic 45-degree, last-minute bank to the left just minutes prior to touching down in a bowl-shaped valley on a runway just 1862 metres in length. The airport, at an altitude of 1000 metres, can accommodate aircraft no larger than Boeing 757's.

8. John F. Kennedy International Airport, New York

Pilots have to avoid interfering with flights into New York's two other close-by airports, LaGuardia and Newark. Set up in 1964 as a noise-abatement measure, this approach forces pilots to have a reported 457-metre ceiling and a eight-kilometre visibility before lining up with runway 13L and the waters of Jamaica Bay.

9. Madeira Airport, Funchal, Madeira

Wedged in by mountains and the Atlantic, Madeira Airport requires a clockwise approach for which pilots are specially trained. Despite a unique elevated extension that was completed back in 2000 and now expands the runway length to what should be a comfortable 2743 metres, the approach to Runway 05 remains hair-raising. Pilots must first point their aircraft at the mountains and, at the last minute, bank right to the runway.

10. Juancho E. Yrausquin Airport, Saba, Netherlands Antilles

Perched on a precipitous gale-battered peninsula on the island's northeastern corner, the airport requires pilots to tackle blustery trade winds, occasional spindrift, and their own uneasy constitutions as they maneuver in for a perfect landing on a runway that's just 396 metres long.

Something for your Valentine?

14 February 2009

Bangkok airport train to half open !

14 February 2009

The Airport Link from the Phaya Thai and Makkasan areas of downtown Bangkok to Suvarnabhumi airport is set to open for passengers on Aug 12, the birthday of Her Majesty the Queen, deputy Transport Minister Sopon Zarum said on Friday.

But in their rush to open the rail link the transport minister conceded some facilities, including the baggage carousel system, would not be ready on the opening day, but he said he needed to speed up its launch.

The luggage-loading service at Makkasan station would not be operational, so there might be some inconvenience for passengers with heavy bags. Might!!! Will. It will be a shambles.

The construction of the 28-km route is apparently 96 per cent complete. There have been delays to work at some stations and route sections due to hold-ups in land acquisitions, said SRT deputy governor Prasert Attanan.

The SRT plans to collect a fare of 150 baht from passengers taking non-stop trains while those travelling on trains that stop at every station will pay between 15 and 45 baht.

Laid-Off Foreigners Flee as Dubai Spirals Down
13 February 2009
New York Times

"Sofia, a 34-year-old Frenchwoman, moved here a year ago to take a job in advertising, so confident about Dubai’s fast-growing economy that she bought an apartment for almost $300,000 with a 15-year mortgage.

Now, like many of the foreign workers who make up 90 percent of the population here, she has been laid off and faces the prospect of being forced to leave this Persian Gulf city — or worse.

“I’m really scared of what could happen, because I bought property here,” said Sofia, who asked that her last name be withheld because she is still hunting for a new job. “If I can’t pay it off, I was told I could end up in debtors’ prison.”

With Dubai’s economy in free fall, newspapers have reported that more than 3,000 cars sit abandoned in the parking lot at the Dubai Airport, left by fleeing, debt-ridden foreigners (who could in fact be imprisoned if they failed to pay their bills). Some are said to have maxed-out credit cards inside and notes of apology taped to the windshield.

The government says the real number is much lower. But the stories contain at least a grain of truth: jobless people here lose their work visas and then must leave the country within a month. That in turn reduces spending, creates housing vacancies and lowers real estate prices, in a downward spiral that has left parts of Dubai — once hailed as the economic superpower of the Middle East — looking like a ghost town.

No one knows how bad things have become, though it is clear that tens of thousands have left, real estate prices have crashed and scores of Dubai’s major construction projects have been suspended or canceled. But with the government unwilling to provide data, rumors are bound to flourish, damaging confidence and further undermining the economy.

Instead of moving toward greater transparency, the emirates seem to be moving in the other direction. A new draft media law would make it a crime to damage the country’s reputation or economy, punishable by fines of up to 1 million dirhams (about $272,000). Some say it is already having a chilling effect on reporting about the crisis.

Last month, local newspapers reported that Dubai was canceling 1,500 work visas every day, citing unnamed government officials. Asked about the number, Humaid bin Dimas, a spokesman for Dubai’s Labor Ministry, said he would not confirm or deny it and refused to comment further. Some say the true figure is much higher.

“At the moment there is a readiness to believe the worst,” said Simon Williams, HSBC bank’s chief economist in Dubai. “And the limits on data make it difficult to counter the rumors.”

Some things are clear: real estate prices, which rose dramatically during Dubai’s six-year boom, have dropped 30 percent or more over the past two or three months in some parts of the city. Last week, Moody’s Investor’s Service announced that it might downgrade its ratings on six of Dubai’s most prominent state-owned companies, citing a deterioration in the economic outlook. So many used luxury cars are for sale , they are sometimes sold for 40 percent less than the asking price two months ago, car dealers say. Dubai’s roads, usually thick with traffic at this time of year, are now mostly clear.

Some analysts say the crisis is likely to have long-lasting effects on the seven-member emirates federation, where Dubai has long played rebellious younger brother to oil-rich and more conservative Abu Dhabi. Dubai officials, swallowing their pride, have made clear that they would be open to a bailout, but so far Abu Dhabi has offered assistance only to its own banks.

“Why is Abu Dhabi allowing its neighbor to have its international reputation trashed, when it could bail out Dubai’s banks and restore confidence?” said Christopher M. Davidson, who predicted the current crisis in “Dubai: The Vulnerability of Success,” a book published last year. “Perhaps the plan is to centralize the U.A.E.” under Abu Dhabi’s control, he mused, in a move that would sharply curtail Dubai’s independence and perhaps change its signature freewheeling style.

For many foreigners, Dubai had seemed at first to be a refuge, relatively insulated from the panic that began hitting the rest of the world last autumn. The Persian Gulf is cushioned by vast oil and gas wealth, and some who lost jobs in New York and London began applying here.

But Dubai, unlike Abu Dhabi or nearby Qatar and Saudi Arabia, does not have its own oil, and had built its reputation on real estate, finance and tourism. Now, many expatriates here talk about Dubai as though it were a con game all along. Lurid rumors spread quickly: the Palm Jumeira, an artificial island that is one of this city’s trademark developments, is said to be sinking, and when you turn the faucets in the hotels built atop it, only cockroaches come out.

“Is it going to get better? They tell you that, but I don’t know what to believe anymore,” said Sofia, who still hopes to find a job before her time runs out. “People are really panicking quickly.”

Hamza Thiab, a 27-year-old Iraqi who moved here from Baghdad in 2005, lost his job with an engineering firm six weeks ago. He has until the end of February to find a job, or he must leave. “I’ve been looking for a new job for three months, and I’ve only had two interviews,” he said. “Before, you used to open up the papers here and see dozens of jobs. The minimum for a civil engineer with four years’ experience used to be 15,000 dirhams a month. Now, the maximum you’ll get is 8,000,” or about $2,000.

Mr. Thiab was sitting in a Costa Coffee Shop in the Ibn Battuta mall, where most of the customers seemed to be single men sitting alone, dolefully drinking coffee at midday. If he fails to find a job, he will have to go to Jordan, where he has family members — Iraq is still too dangerous, he says — though the situation is no better there. Before that, he will have to borrow money from his father to pay off the more than $12,000 he still owes on a bank loan for his Honda Civic. Iraqi friends bought fancier cars and are now, with no job, struggling to sell them.

“Before, so many of us were living a good life here,” Mr. Thiab said. “Now we cannot pay our loans. We are all just sleeping, smoking, drinking coffee and having headaches because of the situation.”"

Fly Dubai start up plans

12 February 2009

Budget airline Flydubai, will begin flying to five Indian destinations - Pune, Chandigarh, Amritsar, Jaipur and Goa - in the second quarter of this year, a media report said today.

The flights, however, will depend on the availability of aircraft, as the airline has not yet received any of its aircraft.

The budget carrier, assisted in its initial stages by Emirates, has 54 Boeing 737-800s on order, worth $4 billion. It ordered 50 planes from Boeing and four from leasing company - Babcock and Brown - during the Farnborough International Airshow in July last year. Boeing's 58-day strike, which ended in October last year, has raised doubts over delivery delays for Flydubai.

The airline said in November that it was in talks with Boeing to understand the breadth of the delay.

With an aim of serving destinations within four hours of flying distance from Dubai, such as India, Pakistan, Eastern Europe and parts of Africa, flydubai plans to serve about 70 destinations by 2014

Burma's shocking racism

12 February 2009

I read this shocking letter in the South China Morning Post yesterday; it was written by Myanmar's senior official in Hong Kong who described the Rohingya boatpeople as 'ugly as ogres.'

Myanmar's Consul General to Hong Kong, Ye Myint Aung, wrote to heads of foreign missions in Hong Kong and local newspapers insisting that that Muslim tribe should not be described as being from Myanmar.

'In reality, Rohingya are neither Myanmar people nor Myanmar's ethnic group,' he said and he highlighted the 'dark brown' Rohingya complexion with the 'fair and soft, good looking as well' skin of people from Myanmar. They are as ugly as ogres, he wrote. He went on to claim that his own complexion was typical of a Myanmar gentleman and fellow diplomats could contrast their "handsome colleague" with the "ugly as ogres" Rohingyas whose pictures were in the newspapers.

The reality is that the Rohingya are stateless and face religious and ethnic persecution from Myanmar's military regime.

Myanmar's junta denies the existence of the Rohingya as an ethnic group in the mainly Buddhist country and says the migrants are Bangladeshis.

Was there any comment from the countries of ASEAN after this extraordinary racist outburst? Not a word. Because in reality the ASEAN nations all regard brown skins as a sign of low class if not actual racial inferiority.

The Mynamese belief in racial purity and the superiority appearance of pale skin, as well as not being Buddhist, seem the basis of refusal to admit the Rohingyas as citizens even though they have lived in the Rakhine (formerly Arakan) division of Myanmar for hundreds of years.

There has been no challenge to his written racist remarks. Silence may even be taken as endorsement. ASEAN's human rights agenda looks vacuous. 

ASEAN is supposed to discuss the Rohingyas refugee issue at its end February summit in Thailand. A discussion yes but real action is unlikely.

Slumdog's emotional pull

10 February 2009

The plot is simple: A young street kid makes it to the final round of Mumbai’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and ends up in the police station with battery cables on his toes. The film opens with our hero Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) being tortured by police with a car battery attached to his toes. This is downtown Mumbai and Jamal is a nobody without money. The police can do whatever they like; but because they assume he’s a liar and a cheat.

Did he cheat? Or could the ‘slumdog’ from the ghetto actually know the answers?

The film is a modern day fairytale with at its heart a love story; that triumphs over everything.

My concern as I sat and watched it was that it was too commercial; it was a film made by Westerners potentially exploiting the chaos and poverty of modern India. I was wondering just how the film would be received by Indians who live through this story on a day to day basis.

As an audience we are all cheering for Jamal and then thanking our lucky stars that we are not him. Everyone talks about this as an optimistic feel good film. But a film which depicts a child having his eyes gouged out, people on fire, child prostitution and scenes of torture does not feel so good to me.

Despite having no education, Jamal has made it to the final round of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire by answering a string of difficult, in some cases arcane, questions. The police captain (and as we see later the show host himself) simply can’t believe a kid who grew up on a garbage heap would know anything about anything, and tortures the kid in the hopes of eliciting a confession.

The only snag is Jamal isn’t lying and he didn’t cheat. He knew the answers to the Millionaire quiz, and over the course of the film, he flashes back to the specifics of his unorthodox education to prove how, and why, he retained the facts he did.

It is clever; it is colourful; it moves along at a fast pace. It can shock. 

Jamal, his brother and Latika have been fighting for their lives from the moment their parents were killed, and each one has developed a unique series of tools and behaviours to survive. Salim turns to criminal activity and a gangster’s lifestyle for camaraderie and support. Latika lives with a rich man as a kept woman, and Jamal makes a humble living serving tea to call center personnel.

But through everything Jamal is a a thoroughly decent man and as he explains the answers through the sort of his life we see the sights, sounds and constant chaos of Mumbai.

The film portrays much of the wonder and chaos and injustice that’s India. The filthy slums, the abject poverty, the Hindu-Muslim violence, the Bollywood craze, cricket mania, Mumbai underworld, horrific exploitation of young children, the ‘new’ India rising over the demolished slums of Mumbai, police brutality, the call centers, inexplicable goodness in some souls, the packed commuter trains. The story fits into modern India. But it risks being regarded as poverty porn or slum tourism.

The answer I think is not to read too much into the movie; in the end it is absorbing cinema, to be enjoyed as a Cinderella-like fairy tale, with the edge of a thriller. It is not intended as social documentary.

The young Jamal was my favourite of the three actors that portray the growing up of Jamal. His stubborn determination starts at a young age with his first plunge into no-man's land (the shit pit on the edge of the slum). The opening scenes with the three children are the best parts of the film; and are Dickensian.

My nagging about the whole film is that there is nothing glossy about poverty. Which is why this is best viewed as a fairytale.

Qatar jet makes emergency landing in China

8 February 2009

All the 172 passengers of a Qatar Airways flight that had en emergency landing at the Kashi airport in China on Friday  have now arrived in Doha.

Kashi airport was built in 1953 and is the second largest airport in Xinjiang only after Urumqi Airport. On the old Silk Road in the western part of China, the city is the transportation hub of southern Xinjiang. This is a pretty remote part of the world.

Qatar Airways said that the unscheduled landing was forced due to loss of cabin pressure.

The flight was an A330 from Osaka to Doha operated by 4 cockpit crew and an enhanced cabin crew of 16 (the flight can take up to 13 hours). The stranded passengers and 20 cabin crew arrived in Doha on a relief flight operated by the airline. The grounded flight was scheduled to arrive in Doha 0300hrs UTC.

A Qatar Airways spokesman denied reports in some news agencies that the plane plunged 9,000 metres in five minutes forcing the crew to prepare for safe landing. The spokesman said the rapid decent was a “controlled descent” and in keeping with procedure.

Chinese state media (the ever reliable Xinhua) reported that the plane plunged 9,000 metres (30,000 feet) in the space of just five minutes before landing at an airport in China's Xinjiang autonomous region.

There appears to be no explanation for the sudden depressurization. Airbus will have to sort that out. But the crew executed a textbook descent, decision making and handling of the failure.

Whither Dubai

8 February 2009

Very few people believed things would go so bad, so fast in Dubai. And it is hard to tell jus had bad it is. A lot of the reports are anecdotal. Genuine statistics are largely out of date or use questionable data.

One  trend; many expatriates are abandoning their cars at the airport and fleeing home rather than risk jail for defaulting on loans.

Police have found more than 3,000 cars outside Dubai’s international airport in recent months. Most of the cars – four-wheel drives, saloons and “a few” Mercedes – had keys left in the ignition.

Some had used-to-the-limit credit cards in the glove box. Others had notes of apology attached to the windscreen.

In Dubai, the punishment for defaulting on a debt is severe. Bouncing a check, for example, is punishable with jail. Those who flee the emirate are known as skips.

A year ago Dubai was still boom town. But the fall has hit hard and fast. Many foreigners invested in Dubai’s real estate market, buying and reselling homes before building was even complete. But, as the recession has taken effect, property and financial companies made thousands of workers redundant and banks tightened lending. Construction companies have delayed or cancelled projects and tourism is slowing.

There are increasing signs that the foreigners who once flocked to Dubai are leaving. There is no way of tracking actual numbers. But there is no traffic jam at rush hour on Sheikh Zayeed Road; and attendance at the Dubai Masters Golf two weeks ago looked to be dramatically down.

Most of the emirate’s banks are not affiliated with overseas financial institutions, so those who flee home to do not have to worry about creditors. Their abandoned cars are eventually sold off by the banks at weekly auctions. Police can issue issue warrants against owners of the deserted cars. Those who return risk arrest at the airport. So it is a one way ticket home.

One newspaper estimates an 8% population decline this year, as expatriates leave; there are apparently 1,500 visas cancelled every day in Dubai. There is no sensible way to gauge the fall in property prices. Property prices very form location to location and project and there is no established secondary market. 

It is also asier for companies to lay off workers in Dubai than in the West because there are no unions. What is clear is that tens of thousands of workers in the construction and real estate market alone have lost their jobs over the last few months.

Some workers have moved to other countries in the region, such as Qatar, in order to find work. Thanks to revenue generated by its vast gas reserves, Qatar's economy is booming.

It is expected to grow by 9% in 2009, which would make the Gulf state one of the fastest growing economies in the world this year. 

The worry is that the slowdown in the construction and the real estate sector could seep into the wider economy.
 
The tourism market is also being hit. Western tourists are cutting back on spending, and occupancy rates at many of Dubai's luxury hotels are down. This also impacts the transit traffic that Emirates carries through Dubai.

There is an argument that a correction is long overdue, and also healthy. But it is not much fun if you are caught in the middle of it. So what does the future hold? Investor credibility is damaged.

Officials in the emirate were until the last few months unruffled by the credit crisis and a dramatic fall in oil prices, arguing that the services-led economy had not been affected. Indeed, they maintained, it would provide a safe haven for bankers and western companies suffering from the global downturn.

Dubai’s six-year boom, which rode the regional petrodollar wave, was fuelled by the city’s infrastructure and quality of life rather than by oil itself, of which the emirate has little. But the very openness of an economy built on finance and property investment now leaves it ill-placed to weather the storms raging elsewhere.

In response, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the Ruler of Dubai, has formed an advisory council to steer Dubai through its greatest challenge since the Gulf was plunged into its own 1930s depression when the pearling industry collapsed. Ambitious growth targets of 11 per cent a year until 2015 have been reined back to 4-6 per cent. The government is also planning a fiscal stimulus that will increase government spending by 42 per cent this year.

But by the time the council went public with its findings in November, the rapid deceleration had given rise to speculation that Abu Dhabi, the richest member of the UAE, might have to bail out its flashier neighbour. Rumours spread that Abu Dhabi would only stump up the cash if Dubai ceded control of its successful airline, Emirates.

Federal support has come through folding Dubai’s troubled mortgage companies into well-capitalised Abu Dhabi banks. There have been other direct discussions between Dubai and Abu Dhabi state companies, although none has reached agreement.

Dubai officials insist they will handle their own problems, only seeking federal support as a last resort.

Many high profile projects have been shelved until market conditions improve. The government is also considering helping developers who are finding it hard to complete projects. But more building sites are falling silent as funds dry up.

The authorities have yet to reveal a plan for financing the property sector, having assumed that deposit injections into the country’s banks last year will be enough to revive lending. The government estimates that, at most, 34,000 units will enter the market this year.

With local banks reluctant to lend, financing Dubai’s property and infrastructure developments will remain its greatest challenge this year.

So Dubai’s ambitions may rest not only on the health of the global economy, and with it a revival of the oil price, but also on the attitude of global banks and capital markets. Dubai has spent three decades transforming itself into a global city; there is still a role for Dubai. But it maybe a little more chastened and a little less brash.

Thaksin Shinawatra in the Air

by Richard S. Ehrlich - 8 February 2009 - source - www.scoop.co.nz

"The international airport is open after a political blockade stranded 350,000 passengers, but Thailand is now grappling with a powerful fugitive who wants to fly his jet on a do- or-die arrival, to topple the government.

Armed with a PhD in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University in Texas, Thaksin Shinawatra is a former police officer, part-time telecommunications tycoon, and ex-prime minister, who was ousted in a bloodless 2006 coup.

He tenderly held hands with George W. Bush, during the then- president's visit to Bangkok in 2003.

Now, bouncing around the world in self-exile while dodging a two- year jail sentence for an illegal real estate deal, Mr. Thaksin appears to be hovering in the air, desperately plotting his return to power.

His flight path to Southeast Asia, however, is experiencing some turbulence.

"I already received reports that Japan has decided to ban Thaksin from entering the country," said Thailand's presumably delighted Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva on Thursday (February 5), tracking Mr. Thaksin like a rogue meteor threatening to hit the region.

England earlier forced Mr. Thaksin to fly away by canceling his visa, after he settled near London, because his Bangkok conviction suddenly made his presence in Britain untenable.

Merely the sound of Mr. Thaksin's disembodied voice creates jitters which ripple Thailand's nervous government, and joy among his many supporters.

"I will fight on no matter what happens. I am ready to be prime minister again, if people support me," Mr. Thaksin declared, claiming to be speaking by telephone from his private jet, in undisclosed airspace.

"Although I will live in exile for a long time, I will definitely not die abroad. Although I cannot return to the country [today], I will sneak back to die in the northeastern region."

That macabre vow referred to one of Thailand's poorest areas.

The ex-prime minister draws much of his support from impoverished farmers, and landless migrant workers, who struggle to survive in the arid northeast and seasonally search for menial jobs in Bangkok.

They favor his populist policies of cheap health care, easy loans and other tax-financed assistance, awarding him with three earlier election victories.

Bangkok's middle and upper classes, however, grew angry about their cash cascading down this Buddhist-majority society's strict hierarchy.

They preferred to use government money on projects pampering their lifestyle in the capital, and financing the elite's extravagance and protection.

They also railed against Mr. Thaksin's alleged massive corruption and cronyism, while human rights groups abhorred the extra-judicial killing in 2003 of more than 2,500 people during his "war on drugs."

Mr. Thaksin's airborne, 20-minute telephone call was broadcast to applauding supporters on Monday (February 2), and included an update on his hygiene, giving them hope that he could be a prime minister again.

"I will try to stay healthy. Yesterday, I had blood check and I am still strong. I am still healthy mentally."

Mr. Thaksin's biggest mental challenge is to get his hands on two billion US dollars in personal assets which Bangkok froze, but did not seize, after the coup.

His supporters meanwhile want to delete Constitutional clauses, orchestrated by the coup-installed junta, which ruled from September 2006 to December 2007.

The junta's 2007 Constitution bars Mr. Thaksin, and many of his colleagues, from politics for five years.

Thailand's new, virulently anti-Thaksin government is widely seen as vulnerable, because Prime Minister Abhisit is snubbing demands to face a nationwide election.

Mr. Abhisit gained power by manipulating Parliament Members who agreed to support his Democrat Party on December 15 in a haphazard, contradictory coalition, after the anti-Thaksin airport siege in November forced Mr. Thaksin's allied government to collapse in disarray.

Mr. Thaksin is now using a new opposition Puea Thai party to install his relatives into political slots, so his family can squeeze the government in his absence.

Mr. Thaksin's younger brother, Payap Shinawatra, was expected to lead the Puea Thai party in the northeast.

Mr. Thaksin's sister, Yaowapa Wongsawat, was said to be the party's representative in the north.

And Mr. Thaksin's younger sister, Yingluck Shinawatra, was to be his extension in Bangkok and central Thailand.

Displaying their numbers, about 30,000 pro-Thaksin supporters, wearing red shirts, rallied on January 31 in Bangkok, demanding the government resign.

Much of Mr. Thaksin's activity, however, may be too little, too late.

"The big winner from the political chaos of the last three years has been the Thai military," wrote a respected analyst under the pseudonym Chang Noi, tracing right-wing moves to unseat Mr. Thaksin by street demonstrations early in 2006, followed by the coup, the airport blockade, and its aftermath.

"Possibly, the generals are now more powerful than at any time over the past 20 years," he wrote."

Emirates seeks to open Canada's skies

6 February 2009

Tim Clark - President of Emirates Airline writing in the National Post newspaper in Canada. He is being a little disingenuous. He forgets to mention that Etihad also flies 3 times daily to Toronto and that the UAE has therefore daily traffic rights (1 a day) to Canada.

That said it can only make sense for the UAE to be granted additional rights to Canada - and if Emirates and Etihad can fill their planes good luck to them. The government maybe trying to protect Air Canada's traffic to India. The likelihood is that the market will simply get bigger with increases in capacity.

Anyway here is Mr. Clark's letter

"A little over one year ago, Emirates Airline began flying to Canada from our home base in Dubai. In offering a direct flight between Toronto and Dubai three times a week, Emirates finally brought a direct connection between two cities at the forefront of a major trade relationship between Canada and the Gulf Region.

While a decade ago many Canadians had never visited Dubai and most businesses did not identify the Middle East as a strong growth market, today trade and tourism between Canada, Dubai and the surrounding region, is growing exponentially. There are now thousands of Canadians living in Dubai and hundreds of Canadian companies doing business there. Indeed, many of Dubai’s biggest successes have Canadian connections, including the famous Emirates Towers which were designed by a Canadian architect.

Emirates has long sought to increase its presence in the Canadian market. We are eager to provide additional flights from Dubai to Canada to further grow that emerging relationship. We argue that desire to increase service to Canada has taken on new importance as a result of the current global economic uncertainty and its impact on Canada.

Two specific impacts are relevant to the discussion about enhanced air access between Dubai and Canada. First, there are daily reports about the challenges of the Canadian tourism industry, and in particular the decline in U.S. visitors.

Second, with the American economy facing a sharp downturn, Canadian businesses are anxious to expand their export base beyond the traditional U.S. market. In October and November, for example, senior government-led delegations from Ontario, Alberta, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia all visited Dubai in an effort to stimulate trade and investment.

Allowing Emirates to offer additional flights to Canada is a no-risk proposition for the government of Canada that would help address the challenges noted above. It costs no governments or taxpayers money and would provide a significant boost to Canadian trade and tourism.

Let’s start with tourism, since it is so important to the Canadian economy and is in such an apparent state of distress. Imagine that one of the world’s fastest growing airlines wanted to fly to your country more frequently, carrying the world’s most sought after and highest spending tourists. With Canada’s tourism industry suffering so much, would you expect any government to say no?

Unfortunately, this remains the case. Emirates is restricted to three flights a week to Canada as a whole, all of which go to Toronto. To put that in perspective, of the 100 destinations on six continents that we fly to, almost all have a minimum of a daily flight.

Emirates has been seeking the right to increase flights to Canada for almost a decade. The UAE Government has also repeatedly asked Ottawa to re-negotiate the existing bilateral Agreement on Air Transport to allow increased flights between Canada and the UAE. However, these requests are sadly rebuffed on a regular basis.

Passengers on Emirates’ flights to Canada would include many additional UAE tourists who spend, on average, $10,000 per week, per person when they vacation. Those tourists are a natural for Canada given your welcoming, open, multicultural and progressive style with magnificent natural assets and sophisticated cities. Emirati tourists vacation for an extended period, often for up to a month, and travel in larger groups. Emirates also would grow tourism arrivals to Canada from other non-traditional markets such as the Middle East, Africa and the South Asian subcontinent, helping to diversify sources of tourists to your country.

Those tourists are not coming presently because they have so many other destination options, all of which are easier to get to. Consider the number of weekly Emirates flights to Canada vs. those to countries with whom you are competing to attract tourists: United Kingdom, 98; Australia, 49; Germany, 49; South Africa, 28; New Zealand, 28; United States, 27; France, 19. The total number of weekly Emirates’ flights to Canada: three.

As for trade, it is a simple fact that frequent direct air service between markets is critical for growth. Dubai, the UAE and the Middle East generally are still booming markets for Canadian exporters of goods and services, despite the global economic slowdown. The UAE is, in fact, Canada’s largest merchandise export market in the Middle East and North Africa region — with 97% of the bilateral trade made up of Canadian exports. Despite that, Dubai is serviced by only three flights a week from Canada.

Therefore, to all those provincial delegations who visit Dubai seeking to expand their trade relationships in the Middle East, fast and efficient air transportation to get those goods to market is essential — and bear in mind that the cargo space on our existing flights from Toronto to Dubai is often sold out months in advance; such is the limitation of three flights a week.

In reading this, you may ask who in Canada could possibly oppose opening your skies to a carrier like Emirates. Certainly not the numerous tourism associations we have met with, or the many chambers of commerce and boards of trade, or the provincial and municipal governments, or the international airports or the major Canadian companies doing business in Dubai.

We agree wholeheartedly with those in Canada who suggest that an open skies-type air transport agreement with the UAE would be a natural fit with your government’s Blue Sky policy on air services liberalization. Being a strong believer in air services liberalization, Emirates fully supports this policy. In fact, Emirates owes its consistent success and resilience to the open skies environment in Dubai, where it has to compete with over 125 other scheduled airlines.

However, despite the stated Canadian policy in favour of open skies and the many Canadian supporters of a more liberalized air transport agreement with the UAE, our long-standing request for an increase in Emirates service to Canada has yet to be granted.

To us, that is a missed opportunity. With Canada just announcing the signing of a new open skies agreement with Europe, we hope that our request will be considered anew. While increased Emirates flights would not solve all the Canadian challenges of tourism and finding new export markets, we can provide a significant stimulus to your tourism and export industries at no cost to government, which are precisely the arguments the federal government used in announcing the deal with Europe. This simple, effective proposition deserves a chance."
 

Frozen trunks

5 February 2009

The Guardian has this picture of Asian elephants trudging through the snow at Whipsnade Zoo north of London. The penguins look a little more at home!

US Air update

5 February 2009

Bird remains were found in both engines of a US Airways jetliner that lost power and ditched in New York's Hudson River last month, U.S. transportation investigators said on Wednesday.

A mechanical problem reported in the right engine two days before the incident had been properly fixed and was not a factor, the safety board said.

There has been some concern at US Airways response. The passengers are complaining that the higher ups at the airline are too busy congratulating themselves to care. They’ve offered the passengers free upgrades – when available – to first class on domestic flights for one year. And one upgrade to either Hawaii or Europe. Oh, and they can have priority check in, too.

Newspaper reports say that the passengers think the airline can and should do better. Many of them say it’ll be at least a year before they’ll want to fly again, and are considering filing lawsuits. I am far from convinced by this. They will all be dining out on the story for years and blessing their good fortune. In the meantime their parasitic lawyers will be demanding that the passengers all claim irreparable emotional distress.....

The airline quickly mailed US$5,000 to each passenger to go towards items lost on the airplane.

The airline then announced the upgrades and other perks last week in a letter described by one passenger as “frigid” at best. CEO Doug Parker wrote that passengers would get “coveted” Chairman’s Preferred status - but only until March 2010. The membership gives each passenger and a companion first-class domestic travel when seats are available, one upgrade to Europe or Hawaii, choice seats and priority check-in. “We would very much like to see you on a future US Airways flight soon,” Parker wrote.

A spokesman for the US Airways said passengers did not have to waive their rights to sue in order to accept the checks or the Chairman’s Preferred membership. Some have already contacted lawyers.

In any lawsuit the passengers would have to prove some sort of fault or negligence on the part of the airline. Considering how successful the landing was, that might be hard.

Captain Sullenberger and his wife will be on CBS' 60 minutes on Sunday.

In an account of the ordeal published in The Dallas Morning News on Friday, Susan O'Donnell, an American Airlines pilot who was a passenger on Flight 1549, said that as the plane approached the water, the passengers "remained calm and almost completely quiet."

She described the impact as much milder than she had anticipated. "If the jolt had been turbulence, I would have described it as moderate," she said.

O'Donnell praised Sullenberger's leadership, saying he talked with passengers and crew after the landing and that he'd even remembered to take the aircraft logbook with him.

She said Sullenberger asked her if she wanted to join the crew at the hotel, and that she accepted, as she had lost her wallet.

"He immediately pulled out his wallet and gave me $20. His concern for me when he had so much else to worry about was amazing," O'Donnell said.

As for the library book in Captain Sullenberger's luggage - the Captain actually contacted Fresno library officials in California to ask them to extend his loan and waive his overdue fees.

The librarians said they were so struck by the pilot's sense of responsibility they did him one better.

They waived all fees - even lost book fees - and placed a template in the replacement book dedicating it to him.

What was the book about? Professional ethics.

And last weekend Capt Sullenberger and the crew of Flight 1549 received a standing ovation before the opening kick-off at the Super Bowl in Florida this weekend. I suspect they will all be glad to get back to work.

And if you want to land an A320 on water here is the latest online game from addictinggames.com - if only it was that easy in reality!

Play Games at AddictingGames
 

Caught in the act

5 February 2009

The story of a farang and Thai couple arrested with 22 others for arranging and participating in a Bangkok hotel orgy has been the big news story in Thailand today with television coverage on all the Thai networks. Indeed the police appear to have been thorough enough to have TV crews and photographers with them for their high profile raid.

Certainly the image of some 24 people all trying to bonk away in two rooms in a 2 star hotel is not very appealing.

But I am not sure that they were doing anything illegal. It is a private party in a private hotel room. And if there have been 100 such parties why did the police chose this time to raid the party, Who was tipped off? Who had not been paid off?

And yet police did not arrest the airport protesters and their own private armies. Bizarre.

The details are that British man accused of organising "swingers" parties in Thailand now faces 10 years in jail after police raided a Bangkok hotel where a party was in progress early today. Christian Arthur Richards, 54, was arrested along with his Thai wife and 22 others – 16 foreigners and six Thais.

Police said that Richards had advertised the "swinging" parties on his website and then charged the couples 3,000 baht (£60) to participate. So I guess if anything he could be accused of running a business illegally?

The tourist police commander heading the inquiry, Col Archayon Kraithong, said that Richards had been charged with procuring sex and placing commercial sex advertising.

"He is under interrogation, but has been charged with procurement and commercial sex advertisements, which could land him 10 years in jail and a fine of up to 20,000 baht," Col Archayon said.

The 22 participants – from France, Australia, the US, China, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Thailand – were all released after paying fines of 1,000 baht each. They were apparently fined for lewd behaviour. But if these are consenting adults in a private place how is this lewd behaviour.

Police raided the two-star Elizabeth Hotel in the Chatuchak area of the Thai capital minutes after midnight, bursting into room 1101.

In the £25-a-night room they found 13 foreign men with three foreign women and seven Thai females. Col Archayon said none of the women were prostitutes.

When the officers entered the 11th floor room they discovered several couples having sex, while the rest of those at the party were drinking and dancing.

Richards and his Thai wife are alleged to have organised more than 100 parties in Bangkok and the beach resort town of Pattaya over the past three years.

"This was not the first time we tried to catch them," said Archayon. "We have been following their activities for a long time but it wasn't easy to nab them because they changed the venues often, sometimes holding parties in Pattaya, Bangkok or Chon Buri."

More refugee allegations tarnish Thailand

4 February 2009

The Indonesians found and rescued another boat-load of Rohingya refugees late on Monday. They had drifted at sea in a rickety open boat for twenty days. The 220 Burmese migrants - all men apart from a boy of 13 - were packed in so tightly they could do little but stand jammed shoulder-to-shoulder. As the craft drifted, 22 of them succumbed to dehydration or exposure and died. The bodies were thrown overboard.

The rest, now starving and many in a critical condition, were discovered in their ramshackle vessel off the coast of northern Sumatra by Indonesian fishermen late on Monday.

Their survival is remarkable, the story of how they came to be there is saddening but becoming too common.

The migrants were from Burma's Rohingya Muslim minority. They had been detained late last year by Thai authorities and taken to a remote island where they were held for two months and, they say, beaten before being put on the boats and left to their fate. Theirs was one of nine craft carrying 1,000 Rohingya that were set adrift from the island with little food and water by the Thai military.

Under intense international pressure the Thai prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, has said the influx of Rohingya migrants was putting jobs at risk, but promised to investigate the scandal. However he has placed the inquiry in the hands of the Internal Security Operations Command, the very unit accused of the abuses.

Pending any inquiry and action the reports of Rohingya abuse have been growing.

The migrants picked up on Monday were discovered huddled in their boat which had been lashed together with rope. They had not eaten for a week and were so tightly packed in the tiny vessel there was only room to stand.

"Fishermen found a wooden boat without an engine drifting in the sea with 198 Myanmar [Burmese] migrants," said Indonesian navy officer Tedi Sutardi. "They said the Thai authorities towed them out to sea and set them adrift.

"Their boat was small. It's only 12m [40ft] long and 3m wide. It had almost come apart and was held together with ropes. They were standing in the boat for 21 days because there was no space to sit. It's a miracle they survived."

At least 56 - including the 13-year-old - were being treated at Idirayeuk hospital for severe dehydration, while the rest were being cared for at the town's district office.

Sutardi said the survivors recounted how Thai security forces beat them after they were detained for illegal entry.

The refugees allege that  they were caught by the Thai military together with 1,000 other Rohingya people and were taken to an island and stayed there for two months before being thrown out to sea on wooden boats without engines.

Human rights groups have demanded the Thai government get to the bottom of the tragedies that have befallen the Rohingya.

The source of the problem is of course Burma.In a statement last week Burma's military government denied the existence of the Rohingya, saying they are not officially recognised as one of the country's 100 or so ethnic groups. But it is the unwillingness of the ASEAN nations to confront the Burmese generals that lies at the heart of this growing regugee crisis.

The Rohingya refugees are a Muslim minority with no status in Burma where they suffer abuse. In desperation they take to the sea to try and eventually reach Malaysia or Indonesia.  But there is no safe haven. The Thai military meanwhile tow these people out to sea, provide inadequate provisions and a motor less wooden hulk as a boat.

The Rohingya need protection and asylum. Thailand has said that it is unwilling to grant that. But this is a problem that won't go away.

There are thought to be up to one million Rohingya living in Burma. Hundreds of thousands have fled overseas, mainly to neighbouring Bangladesh, and to Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.

Investigating the Santika fire

4 February 2009

The New Year fire at the Santika nightclub killed 66 people. Investigations indicate serious failings by the police and city authorities. Santika was one of the most popular in Bangkok.

The building had only one exit.

The club had avoided paying tax.

Signatures of building inspectors had been forged repeatedly.

Police raids on the club - a common occurrence in Bangkok - mysteriously stopped in 2005, right after an unnamed person was made a shareholder.  That person is a police colonel, and that many more police officers are implicated.

The club had no official permit to operate as an entertainment venue could stay open for four years.

None of this will come as any surprise to those familiar with Bangkok's lively and lucrative nightlife. Pay-offs to the police are a routine part of business, say nightclub owners - fire safety inspections are not.

But Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva has signalled that this may change as he has ordered the Department of Special Investigations - Thailand's FBI - to take over the inquest into the Santika fire.

That increases the chances that any police role in this tragedy will be exposed.

The Aussie birdman

4 February 2009

An Australian traveler was caught by Melbourne customs with two live pigeons stuffed in his pants following a trip from Dubai.The 23-year-old man was searched after authorities discovered two eggs in a vitamin container in his luggage, said Richard Janeczko, national investigations manager for the Customs Service.

They found the pigeons wrapped in padded envelopes and held to each of the man's legs with a pair of tights, according to a statement released by the agency. Officials also seized seeds in his money belt and an undeclared eggplant. It is not clear where he had hidden the eggplant.

Australia has very strict quarantine regulations on the importation of wildlife, plants and food to protect health, agriculture and the environment of the isolated island nation.

Charges of wildlife smuggling — which carry a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of 110,000 Australian dollars ($70,430) — could be brought against the man.

Janeczko said the pigeons were not endangered and that the case — as well as the birds, eggs and seeds — had been turned over to the Quarantine Service to assess the health risk associated with bringing the birds into the country.

Why he was, as is alleged, smuggling pigeons is unclear.

Where are Thai protesters now?

4 February 2009

Jonathan Head from the BBC continuing to provide some of the best commentary on Thai politics.

"For most of last year, news from Thailand was dominated by the yellow-shirted protest movement calling itself the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD). It helped drive two prime ministers from office. But since December, the PAD has disappeared from the scene. The BBC's Jonathan Head in Bangkok has been finding out what happened to it.

An area of fields surrounded by spectacular hills just outside Kanchanaburi in western Thailand has, within a couple of hours, become a giant campsite.

There are tents, picnic tables, and a huge traffic jam as more and more people arrive. A lot of the cars are Mercedes or BMWs; many in this crowd are from Bangkok's well-heeled business class, here to celebrate their success as political insurgents.

The party was being thrown by Gen Chamlong Srimuang, one of five leaders of the PAD. He has run a leadership school and organic farm here since the early 1990s.

It was the first big get-together by the PAD since they abandoned their occupation of Bangkok International Airport on 3 December.

People who met during the three-month long camp-out at Bangkok's main government offices greeted each other like old friends.
They come from all walks of life, but they are predominantly middle class.

I'd arranged to meet Galiyani and her friends, all of them flight attendants with the national carrier Thai Airways.

Galiyani had been due to fly to London that day, but had switched shifts with a colleague so she could come to the party.

"I don't do this for my company, I do it because I am Thai," she told me. "If we see something is wrong, then we have to do something, we have to become political activists.

"Every time I would come back from a flight, I would go straight home, change into my yellow shirt, take my hand-clapper and go down to join the PAD at Government House."

I'd met a surprising number of airline staff at the PAD rallies last year, so I asked if they all supported the movement.

No, they said, their company was like many others, split between the pro- and anti-Thaksin camps. But they were barred from discussing politics on board the aircraft.

Very few people there seemed to be clear about what the PAD really stood for, aside from distaste for former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and love of the monarchy.

No-one could clarify what the PAD meant by its call for new politics. Did this mean an elected parliament, or an appointed one? Could you rid Thailand of the entrenched culture of corruption? Has the PAD won, or would it have to take to the streets again?

No-one seemed sure, although there was no appetite to do anything as dramatic as taking an airport again.

Instead, they talked about the bonds they felt for each other, after months of sticking it out at the PAD's camp in Government House, where the occasional grenade attacks on them, and their sometimes violent confrontations with the police, had taken on a mythical quality that bound them together.
"During the 192 days and nights, all the people ate together, slept together, cried together, laughed together. We shared the same sorrows - we had tears, smiles. Just like the movies of Spielberg, you feel the same feeling," said flight attendant Oranee Chindamanee.

"A lot of these people have never participated in political movements before," said Professor Chaiwat Satha-Anand, a political scientist at Thammasat University.

"The PAD provides almost a religious communion to all kinds of people to fill in their political void - the nightly gatherings, speeches, dances, entertainments - it makes people's lives whole, being part of something meaningful."

Much of the PAD's success in wooing Thailand's previously apolitical middle class can be put down to its TV station, ASTV, which is broadcast nationwide via cable and satellite.

ASTV puts out intense, emotional propaganda that has proved extraordinarily addictive for its viewers.

The Thai Airways staff I met said their awareness of what was wrong with Thailand had come through watching ASTV. When I suggested that its programmes might only present one side of a story they seemed surprised by the notion.

I watched an ASTV broadcast going out from its small studios in central Bangkok with Panthep Wongpuaphan, a core activist and one of the few leading PAD figures willing to speak to the foreign media.

"We can say that we will never be on the left, and never be on the right, but we will be in the middle of the right thing, of the drama," he said, when I asked him to define the PAD's political orientation.

It is difficult to get beyond official propaganda when talking to a lot of PAD followers. They are a non-violent movement, they always say, despite the well-documented incidents of PAD guards firing guns against their opponents and the police.

They were forced to take over the airport because there was no other way the government would listen to their demands, they say.

Mr Panthep has another variation on this; he argues that they were forced to take that action because they were too vulnerable to attack inside Government House.

But he is clear about the PAD's central goal: cleaning up Thai politics and replacing it with a purer "New Politics", which he defines as appointing qualified and ethical people, from outside the tainted arena of politics, to be ministers.

Much about the PAD still remains a mystery, in particular where its funding originates, and the identity of its most powerful backers.

Its vision for Thailand remains hard to pin down. But it has become a powerful political force, one that still enjoys a significant mass following.

It could certainly play a pivotal role in shaping Thailand's political landscape in the future."

Etihad wins race to the windy city

3 February 2009

Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, will begin non-stop service to Chicago on September 2.

Chicago, the third largest city in the U.S., will be the Abu Dhabi-based airline’s second U.S. destination after New York - JFK.

The new service will increase Etihad’s global flight network to 55 cities and follows confirmation that Etihad also will begin flights to Melbourne, Athens and Istanbul this year.

Etihad will operate three-cabin Airbus A340-500 aircraft configured to seat 240 passengers: 12 First, 28 Business and 200 Economy. The route will be served initially three times a week (Wed-Fri-Sun), and will increase to daily on October 1.

Flight times are:

EY 151 Dep AUH 1020 Arr ORD 1640
EY 150 Dep ORD 2030 Arr AUH 2055+1

Connections via AUH are available in both directions on a daily basis to IKA, ISB, KHI, LHE, BOM, DAC, DEL, BKK, DOH, MCT, KWI, MAA, TRV and COK.

So it looks like Etihad will arrive in Chicago before Emirates; and they should get high loads on connections to Southern India, Pakistan and Dhaka especially plus give Air India/BA/LH/AF a good run for their money to BOM/DEL.

I still think we can expect EK to launch a DXB-ORD nonstop flight using a B 777-300ER.

Not the nation

3 February 2009

"BANGKOK -- Bus services were delayed by about two minutes Wednesday as approximately 40 members of the anti-government UDD took over a covered bus bench at the corner of Sukhumvit and soi 43, demanding the resignation of the Democrat-led coalition. Claiming that the government was the product of an illegal coup, the protestors' leader, who declined to be named, threatened to shut down the city's transport system until democracy was restored to Thailand.

Witnesses report that seven passengers waiting for the number 44 bus and three who were waiting for the number 38 bus were forced to walk twenty meters down the road, where their respective buses picked them up within fifteen minutes. The protestors said they were considering seizing a motorcycle taxi stand next."

London's winter wonderland

2 February 2009

There are huge snowfalls in England today and it is bringing the capital to a grinding halt.

However it is also making the city look very pretty indeed. Thanks to Jenny for the pics.

Fantasy flight

2 February 2009

From flight experience in Hong Kong - where you can play in a real live 737 simulator - for a hefty fee.

Bill Frindall dies in Dubai hotel

2 February 2009

For those of us who grew up with an ear to the radio it was sad to note the passing of Bill Frindall who died on Friday, aged 69. Bill was from 1966 the scorer for Test Match Special on BBC Radio, nicknamed "The Bearded Wonder" for his lustrous facial hair and encyclopedic knowledge of cricket facts. 

He was the longest-serving member of the Test Match Special team, covering 377 Test matches, which he considered he only "proper" form of the game.

Frindall took over the scoring for Test Match Special in June 1966, following the death of the previous incumbent, Arthur Wrigley, who had been the BBC scorer since 1934. On joining he soon developed a strong relationship with the commentator John Arlott, who is reported to have said to him: "I hear you like driving – that's good, because I like drinking. I think we're going to get on."

His astonishing ability to recall the most obscure and arcane snippets of cricket trivia was as much a part of the Test Match Special experience as the runs, wickets and discussions about cake. "Johnners," Frindall noted about his TMS colleague Brian Johnston, who came up with the 'Bearders' nickname, "delighted in asking the most impossible questions."

Away from the microphone, Frindall published a large number of books on cricket statistics including four editions of the Wisden Book of Cricket Records, and edited the highly-respected Playfair Cricket Annual every year from 1986. Frindall was president of British Blind Sport, a charity co-ordinating sport for the blind and partially sighted. When asked by Ian Botham to help in Botham's charity walk, his duties included wheeling a barrow of champagne around London.

He was an enthusiastic cricketer in his youth, and his 'fast' bowling prowess was on display at cricket grounds in charity matches for many years. Friends noted, however, that he "couldn't bat, and ran faster than he bowled". In 2004 he was appointed MBE for services to cricket and broadcasting.

He had been suffering from Legionnaires' Disease. Frindall, along with the Lords' Taverners charity cricket team, had been a guest of the Westin Dubai Mina Seyahi; he and two other guests contracted the disease.

A spokeswoman for the hotel said all tests for the bacterium that causes the disease had been negative so far but that checks were still being made.

The disease is a form of pneumonia spread through airborne water droplets.

Recession speak

1 February 2009

Times are hard; as these few words of wisdom (thanks to a friend of mine) confirm:

Ali Baba and the forty thieves are now Ali Baba thirty thieves. Ten were laid off!

Batman and Robin are now Batman and Pedro. Batman fired Robin and hired Pedro because Pedro was willing to work twice the hours at the same rate!!

Iron man now "air-pooling" with Superman to save fuel costs?!!

The only "deposits" being made on a Ferrari are the ones made by birds flying over them.

Q: What's the difference between an investment banker and a large pizza?
A: A large pizza can feed a family of four.

The credit crunch is getting bad isn't it? I mean, I let my brother borrow $10 a couple of weeks back, it turns out I'm now America's third biggest lender.

Q: Why have Dubai real estate agents stopped looking out of the window in the morning?
A: Because otherwise they'd have nothing to do in the afternoon.

Q: What's the difference between an American and a Zimbabwean?
A: In a few weeks, nothing.

Dow Jones is re-branded as "Down Jones".

Goodyear is now re-branded as "Bad Year".
 

Dubai's new airport delayed

1 February 2009

Dubai's new airport has been delayed for a year, opening in mid-2010 rather than the middle of this year, according to a top Dubai Airports executive.

The UAE paper Emirates business says that the hold up for Al Maktoum International has been caused by the lack of a license from the General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), which is required to start operations.

Paul Griffiths, chief executive of Dubai Airports said: "We were hoping to receive our license from GCAA sometime this year. But it has got delayed and we do not see it happening now until mid-2010.”

This seems strange. Only last October Mr. Griffiths was saying that the first passenger flights from Dubai's new Al Maktoum International Airport could begin from autumn next year.

Now he has stated that the 2009 opening had been an “aspiration” and the delay has nothing do with the ongoing global financial crisis. He added that “we still have to commission all equipment needed, hire the right staff, ready all the facilities and so on. We do not see it all being completed this year. So, we are aiming for a mid-2010 opening."

The GCAA confirmed that no date had been agreed on for the airport’s opening.

To date only the runway and the lightning have been completed at the 140 sq km airport site being built in Jebel Ali's $33 billion Dubai World Central development.

Work still needed to be finished on the air traffic control tower and access roads to the airport, Griffiths said.

“These would not possibly be complete by the end of this year,” he added.

Al-Maktoum International, will cover 140 square kilometres with six runways and the capacity to handle 120 million passengers a year when completed.

It is part of the $33 billion Dubai World Central development in Dubai's Jebel Ali area, home also to the region's largest port and its busiest free zone.

Dubai's new low cost airline was scheduled to start up in mid 2009 from the new Jebel Ali airport; however assuming the airline does open on time it will need to open at Dubai's existing airport.

Additionally the 2009 air show may need to remain at the existing exhibition facility at Dubai's current airport.
 

Muzzle Ramsey

1 February 2009

Celebrity chef and bore, Gordon Ramsay, is at the centre of a new TV row after the F-word was used 240 times during just one episode of his latest show.

His channel four show - Great British Nightmare had a total of 312 swear words in 103 minutes – that’s one every 20 seconds.

In one scene involving Ramsay, another chef and a restaurant owner there were 37 obscenities in 95 seconds.

This is after Ramsey has promised NOT to swear on the US version of his live cookalong show for fear of upsetting American viewers.

Ramsay has 25 restaurants around the globe and last year earned £80million making him the world’s highest-paid chef. So he must be doing something right. His shows are entertaining; but the language is dire and I am amazed that no one has taken a rolling pin or a meat cleaver to him.

Channel 4 rather wonderfully defended the language as "a genuine expression of his passion and frustration.

I have always found swearing objectionable at work. There were senior staff in my old company's shareholders who seemed to think that it was acceptable to use the f*** word in every sentence; and we were an education company. The c*** word I find even more offensive.

It should be possible to make an argument strongly without the use of foul language and it is a shame to see it becoming so mainstream.

National security v democracy

1 February 2009

Let's start the new month with the following interview from the Bangkok Post which really should have been in the cartoon section. The Post interviewed Information and Communication Technology Minister Ranongruk Suwunchwee on censorship and the internet.

The interview is alarming; in the weakness of the questioning and the nonsense of the answers. Khun Ranongruk is the Minister of Information and Communication Technology and she does not even know what a webcam is called. It is classic Thailand where Ministers are appointed without any regard to their qualifications.

This government appears to believe that silencing criticism is the only way to feel secure in power. And that we should all be grateful for their paternalistic guidance on what is and is not appropriate internet content. This government is weak. And what is said appears to be very different from what is done.

So here is the interview; please do try and read it with a straight face! I cannot be bothered to comment further. I am too depressed! Make your own mind up!

"Coincidentally, inside her office at Parliament House, the television was showing Justice Minister Pirapan Salirathavibhaga addressing the parliament over this very issue. So I was invited to sit down and watch TV with the minister.

The Justice Minister announced that some 2,300 websites have been banned, while more than 40 lese majeste cases not relating to internet sites are being looked at by the police.

Minister Pirapan went on to stress how the foreign media and foreign governments should respect Thailand's lese majeste law as it is a matter of national security, not dissimilar to the United States banning al-Qaeda or terrorist-related internet content, or even the law requiring visitors to take off their shoes and belts for inspection when entering the US.

"It's a matter of national security," he said. "They have their laws, we have ours."

After watching the minister on television, it was time to talk with Minister Ranongruk.

Q: It has been reported that you requested a 500 million baht budget for your crusade against "inappropriate" websites. Is that true? [After all, it only requires one person and 10 minutes work to ban a website.]

No, that's not true. The budget request was made in 2551 [2008, by the previous People Power party government]. I haven't spent one single salueng [penny]. My strategy is to use the holistic approach.

Q: Would you explain how that's done?

When I first came into office ... I remember people forwarding me emails with inappropriate website content ... so I wanted to make this my priority. I want to track down the wrong-doers. I proposed the ICT ministry, as the host, link with the justice ministry and the defence ministry. We look at three issues on the internet ... national security, traditions and gambling ... like online gambling, which is a bad thing.

I act as the host that links between the three ministries ... it's the holistic way. We each have our units that collaborate in finding inappropriate content and act on them. For example, the defence ministry would handle more of the national security issues, and myself more on tradition.

Q: Is there a guideline for banning a website?

Before, there used to be a code system [put in place by past governments]. For example, let's use my name. If the word "Ranongruk" is on the database, then we can check on anyone who uses the word on the internet. It will pop up and we can see what is being written about "Ranongruk". But the system is easy to evade. People get smart and they type in "Ranong-ruk" if they want to say bad things ... and the system won't catch it.

Now we have the collaboration of ISPs (internet service providers) and we ask the public to inform us through a call centre (1122). If any inappropriate content is found on the net you just call in.

Then I have a committee look over the case. If they find that there's a case, they submit a report to me. If I agree, then I pass it on to the police, then the police pass it to the prosecutor, and then on to the court. With a court order, we then ban the website. But we no longer just stop there. We want to find the people behind the website and bring them to justice. Otherwise, they'd just create another website.

Q: So, does that mean the more than 2,300 websites that were banned were all done so by court order, and that the ICT has not preemptively or illegally banned any website?

Yes. But it takes time to get court orders, so we may delete certain content deemed inappropriate before we go through the process.

Q: With all the time and resources spent on censorship, what about the ICT's other functions, such as developing Thailand's IT [internet technology]?

We do that too. The priority is different. For example, our IT system is even more outdated that Cambodia's. They have 3G, but we still don't! However, our operators already have the technology ... both AIS and DTAC have the capabilities, but we haven't put it to use yet.

Q: What's the delay?

Well, there are issues.

Q: Now that you're in charge, there won't be any delays?

Yes, now that I'm in charge, there won't be any delays. I also have plans to install the internet in schools nationwide - free internet! Not like before when they wanted to install the internet but charge the schools for it. If we can give free books and uniforms, we should also give free internet access.

Q: But back to the banning issue. Given the democratic system, should the government be the one to decide what is "appropriate" or "inappropriate" for the people, or should the people be able to decide for themselves?

Q: We have to look at what is inappropriate. For pornographic content, we know it's inappropriate. For example, what is it called ... com ... com ... webcom? [Interviewer: "webcam"] Yes, webcam. You are supposed to only show your top half, but kids also show their bottom half!

We know that is inappropriate. There's also sex on the internet. What do they call it, sex phone? [Interviewer: "You have cyber sex via webcam"] Yes, having sex through webcam. Or prostitution on the internet. Or [video] clips of kids fighting each other ... these we know are inappropriate.

Q: Okay, but appropriate or not is subjective. You deem something as inappropriate, but that's your opinion, not fact. So does that mean, given freedom of speech as an integral component of democracy, the government should have the right to direct their opinions on to the people? Or should it be the prerogative of the people to decide for themselves what is or isn't appropriate?

Q: Yes, yes, yes. The government should have the right to direct. [A long pause] But let's not use the term "direct", let's say we have the right to "give guidance", to "suggest", what is inappropriate.

Q: Either way, that results in censorship and bans. So what would you say to foreign media and governments condemning such action for being undemocratic?

Q: Like Minister Pirapan said [earlier on television], the Royal Family is our Father and Mother. The Father and Mother of the land. Would anyone allow people to insult their father and mother? Not us. Democracies are always different. France is different from America and South Korea. Can you accept it? Jumping at the chairman of the House and going thump, thump, thump [she makes punching gestures, in a reference to violence in the South Korean parliament]. It depends on the country and traditions.

Q: Both you and Minister Pirapan say that lese majeste is a matter of national security, like the example cited about America banning "terrorist" websites. One may argue that that's a case of enemies at war - there's death and bombing - a case of national security. How then do you make the link between Royal Institutions and national security?

Like Minister Pirapan said, it's not about libel or slander. A lot of foreigners misunderstood. They don't fully understand the law. It's about national security. It's the law of Thailand. We have our laws, they have theirs. We respect theirs, they respect ours, right?

It's what our flag stands for. The colours of our flag stand for country, religion and King. What our flag stands for is our national pride ... our national security. All of these are what Thailand stands for ... for "country", it's about fighting foreign invaders ... for "King", it's about protecting our revered institution.

Thailand's hard working Ministry of Culture

31 January 2009

The Ministry of Culture has been hard at work on the web again. And not just on the web; but making phone calls as well. The Bangkok Post has the following report but - sorry dear reader - they do not give details of any of the web sites ! But expect site like hi5 to come under pressure or to be censored.

"Assoc Prof Sukhum Chaloeysap of Suan Dusit Poll on Saturday said that he was not surprised with the report that Ministry of Culture had found more than 1,000 websites claiming to be by university students selling sex.

The quoted price ranges from 1,500-3,000 baht or higher for very good looking female students. When the ministry personnel phoned the published phone numbers, they could contact actual women claiming to be university students.

Mr Sukhum said he had been informed by Rajabhaet Suan Dusit students that some websites featured sex workers dressed in the uniform of Suan Dusit students as well. He wanted every university to discretely investigate sex-for-sale students whether it was true and if it were true, the students should receive psychological therapy as they were also human beings.

Mr Sukhum wondered why the concerned authorities did not take action to close down the offending websites or the issue was treated as normal.

He also revealed that female students selling sex were not confined to only websites but by peer-to-peer networking. One female student sex worker could offer a network of over 20 students with pictures album to be browsed by prospective clients."

Red shirt pretties

31 January 2009

I really should have stayed in Bangkok for today's red short protest. There are clearly many distractions as this site's regular Bangkok correspondent has pointed out !

Nice to see that many young people are politically active; they are the future of Thailand and it is important that they are seen and heard and participate.