Monday, March 05, 2007

More Brand Dubai promotion downunder

Couple of friends in Australia e-mailed to tell me they'd watched a '60 Minutes' report on Dubai. Overall impression was that it was a good promotion for the City of Dust.

I've read the transcript (which you can too, if you go here) and it looks like one of the less inaccurate reports. There are some oddities - for example Sheikh Ahmed bin Saeed is "a Crown Prince of Dubai". A Crown Prince? He's not even the Crown Prince.

And the gushing new expats who've got a package like we used to get but very few people do get these days.

But it also gives some coverage to the other end of the salary scale, without getting into details, so it sort-of balances the story a bit.

Just on that subject, Sheikh Zayed Road was blocked the other day by 400 labourers demanding a pay rise. They want a Dh2 increase to their Dh25 a day wages. I'll do the conversion - they're getting US$6.80 a day and they want US$7.34.

Just pause and think about those figures for a moment.

The Gulf News story is here.

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