My object all sublime

It’s a brilliant idea: rich people who break the law should be fined more than poor people.

It stands to reason that a Dh200 fine for jaywalking is grossly over-punitive for some Dubai labourer for whom Dh200 represents his monthly food budget, whereas for a degree-educated experienced western manager the same sum is mere pocket change.

So the solution to this patent unfairness is obvious, isn’t it? The court finds out what the offender’s monthly income is and fines him a percentage of that. Some Emirati teenager was fined half a million dirhams earlier this week for doing doughnuts on the public highway and bringing the UAE into disrepute by posting the video in Instagram (and subsequently in 7DAYS and The National). Half a million? Jeez!!

Such as system would have been ideal a year ago while the Goat was resting between jobs. As a house elf and kitty whisperer, his personal income was zero. He could, under some system of means-tested fines, have driven Beloved Wife’s car in the manner of a total hooligan and incurred numerous fines. Haha! Any percentage of zero is zero. And exactly the same situation would occur when some foopballer’s WAG went out in her husband’s Lexus and drove with reckless abandon.

We can perhaps imagine the court: “You have been found guilty of the charges, and are fined 75% of your monthly income,” which is big fat zero, zilch, nada, sifr.

“Ah, but,” the Goat hears you protest, “Because Beloved Wife is working, she brings in the total household income, and the fine should be based on that.”

Indeed. Except that Beloved Wife did not commit the offence, and only an unreasonable Man on the proverbial Clapham Omnibus would argue that Beloved Wife, or anyone else, should have to pay the penalty for an offence committed by somebody else.

And what if the punishment that fits the crime isn’t a fine, but a custodial sentence? Can a year in the slammer seriously be served by two people doing six months each? No, I didn’t think so.

]}:-{>

Scambags!

The Goat was recently issued with a new credit card. The previous one, which had worked faultlessly for several years, was now deemed by the bank not to be secure enough, and so a new one with an embedded chip was issued to replace it.

The Goat has hardly used the new super-secure card. He rented a car from AVIS, he paid a month's rent at a major Doha hotel complex, and he paid a couple of phone bills over at Itisalot. He has certainly never used the card to buy anything from some outfit apparently calling itself the Igenetix Corporation, and was thus a little surprised when his phone bleated on Thursday to alert that a payment of $50 had been presented.

It startled the Goat even more when four further $50 charges appeared in as many minutes, but by then the Goat was on the phone to the bank and getting the card blocked.

When the Goat makes a card transaction on line to a foreign retailer, the bank almost invariably phones him to check that the transaction is genuine. Yet five quick-fire transactions didn't ring any alarms this time.

Fail.

"A new card will be issued to you after five working days, Mr Goat."

"I won't be able to receive it. I'll not be in Dubai for several weeks."

"No problem. Give us your current address and we'll get it to you there. You'll need to provide some sort of photo ID."

Hahahahaha! Meanwhile, back in the real world...

"Oh, no, Mr Goat. It must go to you personally in Dubai."

Fail.

In short, the local and yet global bank is incapable of delivering the replacement card to anyone except the Goat's own hoof and only in Dubai. It can't be sent to the bank in Doha for collection; it can't be sent to the Goat's temporary address (business or residence) in Doha; it can't be mailed; it can't be delivered at the weekend in Dubai; it can't be delivered to Beloved Wife, even though she has her own card for the same account.

Fail. Fail. Fail.

Eventually, 40 minutes into the third long phone call to the bank's call centre, the Goat was told to write a letter to the bank, get it stamped by any branch of the bank, and send the letter to Beloved Wife. "Please deliver the replacement card to Beloved Wife on the Goat's behalf...etc."

Except in Doha, apparently, they don't do that. Never mind this outfit being a major international bank; they do it differently in Doha. They're special. My, these crayons are yummy!

Fail.

The Goat was now instructed that he'd have to rewrite the letter, addressing it to the bank in Dubai. He should get it stamped in Doha, wait four days for the letter to be mailed, and then all should be well.

Enter the Bank Manager: "You have a joint account? yes? Good; there's no problem. Beloved Wife can go to the branch and pick up the card. All you have to do, Mr Goat, is go to your home branch in Sharjah to arrange this."

Fail.

"Or send a secure email using the bank's online banking website to instruct the bank to give your new card to Beloved Wife. Oh, but despite the fact that I can see you, your face, your old and cancelled card, and your ID card, you can't send a secure email because you don't have your Secure Key device. How silly of you not to bring it to the bank, when all you'd been told was required was a rubber stamp."

Fail.

DHL rang the Goat on 20th October to say the card was ready for delivery. But no, they absolutely would not deliver it to Beloved Wife. The bank confirmed (eventually) that they received the Goat's secure email on 19th October, but had not seen fit to communicate this piece of irrelevance to DHL.

Just imagine a parallel universe in which the customer of a major international bank can have his credit card replaced wherever he is on the planet, and without every bank representative coming up with a new and unique set of widely and irregularly-spaced flaming hoops. One of the Goat's friends says American Express can do this, so why not Red Triangles?

]}:-{>

It's Troo-dos anyone believe it?

Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain. Who’s next? Cyprus.

These are the European Union countries whose banking systems are in such a mess that some belevolent uncle agrees to pay off their overdrafts, provided that they promise to be more financially astute in the future. Of course, the benevolent uncle doesn’t have any money either, so what he’ll do is offer negligible returns to his investors until he gets his money back, or get taxpayers to refund him.

We all trust the banks with our savings, those same banks play fast and loose with our money plus a whole load of additional imaginary money, and then when it all goes wrong, we the savers – the ones who trusted the banks because they told us we could – have to pay for those rather expensive mistakes.

What genius thought up the latest idea for Cyprus? Basically, all bank depositors have between 6.75% and 9.9% of their deposits stolen in a one-off burglary perpetrated by the same organisations who have been trusted to look after everyone’s money. Never mind the alleged money laundering by Russian oligarchs; hundreds of thousands of Cypriots and expatriates stand to have up to a tenth of their life savings stolen, replaced by shares in clearly worthless banks that could collapse given an unexpected gust of wind.

This is so wrong. Investors are supposed to receive interest and borrowers are supposed to pay interest.

Naturally, the good citizens of Cyprus are concerned, and they queued over last weekend to withdraw what cash they could until the ATMs emptied or were shut down. It can hardly be a coincidence that Cyprus banks chose to stage this stick-up over a holiday weekend. And they’re planning to stay closed until Thursday. I think arguments will rage behind closed doors and the outcome will be that depositors will not be robbed.

However, the damage has already been done. No amount of promising not to do it again can restore savers’ faith that their money’s safe in the bank’s safe. The EU and the banking industry, by demonstrating a willingness to consider such measures, may have signed their own death warrant.

If banks cannot be trusted, and recent events illustrate that this is indeed the case, an awful lot of people will withdraw their savings the instant the banks re-open, and there will be a run on every bank in Cyprus, as savers all switch their investments to Sokunda-Matres Bank: no interest, no overdraft, no charges.

And how will the depositors in other bailed-out countries react? I fear panic withdrawals from every bank in southern Europe and the consequent catastrophic collapse of the Euro.

In the short term, I’m just glad that I didn’t open a bank account last time I was in Cyprus.

 ]}:-{>

Joy of backup

There is going to be a delay in getting the Road Trip written up. I have to re-create, from memory, around a year of data held on my newer computer, and that's going to take priority.

Having bought the thing a year ago, I made a full backup and transferred the working files to the new machine. Then I went off to Qatar. I got back in July and almost immediately shot off to the United States for a month. My round tuit didn't arrive, and anyway there was barely time to turn and spit before jetting off. The GPS mapping software is only held on the older laptop, so this is the machine that got to travel all over America.

Naturally, when I got back I wanted to catch up on the household accounts and so forth. This has so far proved completely impossible because my new computer, an entire year of data (and absolutely nothing else in the Crumbling Villa including the mains adapter for the machine) have vanished without trace. In the total and absolute absence of evidence, the combined efforts of Lord Peter Wimsey, Sherlock Holmes, and Miss Marple would be of no use.

Beloved Wife and I have turned the Villa inside out and upside down in the futile quest to find something that apparently does not exist. I remain hopeful that someone has simply squirrelled the device away in a cupboard somewhere, and it'll eventually be unearthed. If you happen to see an electric-green laptop with a goat logo in white on the lid, do please let me know.

]}:-{>

Why so serious?

The Goat accidentally ran into one of his fans last evening. It’s great to know that there are folk out there who read the blog. Seems there are more lurkers than posters. One point made was that of late, The Grumpy Goat has been rather more grumpy and less amusing than it used to be. Perhaps the blog is suffering the same fate as Viz comic: not as funny as it used to be. If this is indeed the case, the Goat apologises. He writes to entertain, and just recently has been going through a rather difficult patch.

How about an ill-researched rant?

The Goat has been a Barclays Bank customer since nineteen eighty-fruitcake, when, as a fresh-faced, beardless school-leaver he headed off to Polytechnic to start a degree course in Civil Engineering. That was when the Goat could hardly even spell ignigneer; now he am one. Barclays was the only bank that would trust fresh undergraduates with a chequebook, cashpoint card, and a credit card. Those with a cynical streak might suggest that the bank was simply trying to get its grubby mitts on that big, fat grant cheque, for given values of “big” and “fat”.

And the Goat has banked with Barclays ever since. He arrived in the Gulf in 1996 and was obliged by his employer to bank with good old “Red Triangles”, but that’s a different story.

It is alarming to learn from the news that Barclays has been found guilty of fiddling its figures. Seemingly, the basic modus operandi was to fix the price for inter-bank lending whilst still charging borrowers an arm and a leg in interest, and whilst offering savers rates that might disappoint a church mouse. And then keep the difference.

Having committed the heinous sin of Breaking the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Get Caught”, Barclays is obliged to pay a fine of £291 million. That’s over 1.7 billion UAE Dirhams. It would take the Goat many, many human lifetimes to earn that much; in goat years the figure is too large to comprehend.

The Goat has a couple of question, which are these:-

1. Where is the bank going to find the money to pay its fine?
2. Where does the money go?

Unfortunately, it would appear that the bank will raise the cash from its customers. It will, in all likelihood, increase interest rates to borrowers and decrease rates offered to savers. How else does a bank make money? The Goat, among others, having already been ripped off, seems now to face the prospect of having to contribute towards paying the fine on behalf of those who wronged him.

One of the Goat’s friends reported that this £291 million will go back to the British taxpayer, whatever one of those is. Oh goody; the Goat gets to pay his contribution to the British government. But wait! Another of the Goat’s sources said that around 90% of the fine will have to be paid to the United States Treasury. No, the Goat has not checked the veracity of this claim. At the start, he said that this rant would be ill-researched.

Whatever the truth, it appears that small-time personal (and caprinal) customers get short shrift from the big corporation, even when it’s that same corporation wot done them wrong.

]}:-{>

Forgive me; I was drunk

In 2011 England, it’s not actually OK to get pissed up and then attack someone in the street, but the offence is a lesser one that being rude on a tram.

Four Somali Muslim women get drunk and repeatedly kick someone in the head. The judge decrees that shouting, “kill the white slag” is insufficient evidence to prove that the attack was racially motivated. The attackers get six months suspended and community service for actual bodily harm.

The lenient sentence is because these Muslims are forbidden by their religion from boozing, and were thus not used to alcohol.

Now I may be wrong, but if I committed a violent offence while drunk, wouldn’t my punishment be increased? Claiming that “I was in my cups, m’lud. I didn’t know what I was doing” isn’t likely to help my case. Yet here it reduced a possible five-year sentence for ABH to a non-custodial one.

Meanwhile, the alleged perpetrator of a foul-mouthed racist rant on public transport gets remanded in custody until January. She gets to spend Christmas in the slammer for an allegedly racist verbal attack. No matter how obscene the language and sentiments in the YouTube video may be, nobody was actually physically harmed, were they?

I do not care for street violence I have a particular hatred of drunken street violence, having been a victim. And of course, I only get what the papers choose to print rather than the full court transcripts. However, There must surely be something wrong with a legal system that allows one criminal gang to walk free after kicking someone in the head, yet incarcerates another for a month without trial for a verbal assault.

Daily Telegraph article
Another Daily Telegraph article
Something from This Is Croydon Today

]}:-{>

The mouse problem

Dubai follows Abu Dhabi’s lead, and is, according to this article in the Gulf News, going to offer discounts on traffic fines.

Think about the purpose of a traffic fine for a moment. Officially at least, it is punishment. The money that you were saving up for your holiday, new fridge, school fees or beer is instead directed into central government coffers. That’ll learn ya! A more cynical Goat might believe that traffic fines, especially those incurred after being detected by a speed camera, are simply a means of raising revenue.

Look how easy it is to pay most traffic fines. Go on-line and quote your credit card number. Visit a shopping mall and stand at one of those fine Fine-Payment machines. Wait until the end of the year and simply add the payment on to the inspection and registration fees.

If the intention were punitive, the perpetrator would have to take time off work, attend court, and then be given a right royal runaround across town, collecting rubber stamps on official forms in order to obtain permission to pay. In truth, this punishment is reserved for those attempting to recover their security deposits before leaving the country. It is true that some traffic offences incur a version of the time-wasting palaver. According to the Goat’s spies, driving on the breakdown lane (for example) can involve an invitation to stand in front of the Police Captain to receive a dressing down and then to apologise. (Fifth Amendment inserted here for the avoidance of doubt.)

What can possibly be the reasoning behind reducing traffic fines, then? Previously they were increased: speeding now starts at Dh600, whereas it used to be Dh200. That ‘zero tolerance yields zero crashes’ no-messin’ attitude seems to have had minimal effect.

The Goat reckons that the increased fines simply cause more and more cases of non-payment. Either can’t pay or won’t pay. It’s impossible to register a motor vehicle without paying the fines, so logically the non-payers are punished by not being able to use their vehicles, right? Of course not! The number of unregistered and consequently uninsured vehicles on the road increases. By reducing the fines, they become easier to pay. Result: fewer unregistered and uninsured vehicles. A further benefit for the government is that 50% of some income is better than 100% of buggerall.

Abu Dhabi, and soon Dubai seem to be following advice from Monty Python’s The Mouse Problem sketch. “The only way to bring the crime figures down is to reduce the number of offences.”

]}:-{>

Gaudiamus

The Goat has been instructed by his M.I.L. that another blog post is required. The teeth need to be pushed down the page in order that visitors to this little corner of the blogosphere aren’t greeted by a hideous grinning rictus.

So, instead of further complaints about the state of medical care, motoring, the Crumbling Villa, officialdom or customer service in the Lands of the Sand, the Goat shall reminisce about a delightful recent week in Spain.

M and J got married in Barcelona in February, and the Goat and Beloved Wife were among those invited. Thus any plans for heading east and going diving were put on hold. Tickets to Barcelona were obtained: Austrian Airlines, via Vienna. Beloved Wife wanted to go and do a pastry cooking course in Vienna, but a week in France became a better option. Travelling through Vienna nevertheless remained a fixed feast.

M greeted us at Barcelona airport, and we taxied to the hotel; the same hotel as most of the other wedding guests and about five minutes’ walk from M and J’s apartment where everyone met for pre-wedding drinks the night before. On the Big Day, we all piled into the underground train and headed into town to the registry office.

Although first in line, all the happy couples were kept waiting. The authorities wanted to ensure that everyone was ready so they could be processed very quickly by the judge. At one point in the ceremony, M was nudged by her Spanish-speaking friend. “This is the bit where you say, ‘Si.’”

Champagne Celebration

And then we were all outside for photos before heading off for a slap-up meal of predominantly steak followed by a little sightseeing.

Breakfast: A silly name for a lobster

More sightseeing followed over the next couple of days. Gaudi is Mr Barcelona, and a visit to the world’s most expensive building site had to be on the itinerary. Sagrada Familia was astonishing. It’s not going to be finished until 2040, but the interior was almost clear of construction paraphernalia. Once finished, the clear glass will be replaced with stained glass. There’s a lift to near the top of one of the spires, which will eventually be dwarfed by the final spire. The whole construction works are apparently funded by admission fees.

Sagrada Familia. From Wikipedia, with the cranes digitally removed

The nave of Sagrada Familia

Looking up at the roof

Organ pipes

This stone turtle supports one of the columns

Art Deco knight

We rambled down La Rambla, and explored the Gothic Quarter and Gaudi’s Park Güell. Always mindful of the allegedly ubiquitous pickpockets, both of us were very careful of miscellaneous buskers, living statues and pairs of young gentlemen one of whom would typically ask the time whilst the other one would help himself to the content of the target’s pockets. We were left alone, possibly because the Goat does appear to be a big hard bastard. I was, at one level, spoiling for an attempt so that I had the excuse for pugilism. Presumably, because the local Plod seems disinclined to do anything about low-level criminality, a similar attitude would be taken with someone who broke the nose of a deserving scoundrel.

The splendid warm (for Spain in February) and sunny weather didn’t last. Whilst at Park Güell there were some spots of rain, although not enough to warrant the raincoats that we’d left at the hotel. Gaudi originally conceived the park as a retreat for Barcelona’s upper classes. Nowadays, everyone’s allowed in to see the buildings and vegetation. Gaudi was very much into ceramics, it seems. And his ‘more organic than real life’ style appears to have inspired the set designers for all of the Alien films.

Gaudiesque mosaic roof

Gaudiesque columns

Canine gargoyles

A feral budgie

Getting the hang of a ‘hang’

Levitation on La Rambla

Cowboy on La Rambla

Gothic unicorn gargoyle

In the Gothic Quarter

Our next stop was Madrid to visit Keef and Noëlle. Madrid was much colder than Barcelona. Art and Kulcher were on the menu in Madrid. The Prado art museum was jammed full of splendid paintings and sculptures, including Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and miscellaneous variants of Three Large Pink Women and One Small Piece of Gauze by Peter Paul Reubens. (Thank you, Terry Pratchett - Thief of Time).

Taking photographs was forbidden, although I was allowed to retain my camera. My little tripod was confiscated and held to ransom in Left Luggage for inexplicable reasons.

The following day, we went to Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Try as I might, I was unable to appreciate pretty much all of the ‘art’ on display. Even Picasso’s obscenely famous Guernica did very little for me. The photo gallery and preliminary sketches were more interesting than the finished product. Taking pictures of Guernica was supposedly forbidden, but photography was permitted everywhere else in the museum. Like anyone would want to take pictures of spilled acrylics mopped up off the floor with an old piece of tent (and then framed and sold at auction for $100,000,000.) Sorry folks, the Goat is an uncultured savage where a lot of modern art is concerned. Who remembers the little boy in the tale of The Emperor’s New Clothes?

I did find a sculpture I liked: Pablo Gargallo’s The Prophet

The weather took a turn for the worse, fortunately after we’d done our outdoor exploring. After trying one of Keef’s English Breakfast pies, which was very yummy actually, we headed off to the airport. Many thanks to Keef and Noëlle for their hospitality.

Why did we fly between Barcelona and Madrid? What was wrong with saving a few polar bears from drowning and taking the train? Well, as flying cost half the price and a fraction of the time, there was very little incentive to do otherwise. How ridiculous!

Perhaps it might have been nice if the Goat’s employers had given him the Sandal Up The Jacksie before the holiday, rather than immediately upon his return. That way, he could have accompanied his Beloved Wife on her exploration of France the following week and possibly helped out a bit with the language.

]}:-{>

Two little ducks

Registration number obscured to protect the guilty

The story is very familiar. Tailgated on the Emirates Road by the flashing 4x4, I move out of the left lane. The 4x4 pulls level and down goes the dark window to reveal two unbelted young male occupants. They hurl verbal abuse and make obscene gestures.

One of the disadvantages of having a easy-to-remember vanity plate on your car is that it’s, well, easy to remember. And that is how I was able to check on the Dubai police website that this particular 4x4 does not have the best record in the world. Fifty-two traffic offences since March 2010, over Dh30,000 in fines, and now the car is wanted for impounding. Yet curiously, there are no black points! Despite UAE law imposing 12 points plus a Dh1000 fine plus a 30-day confiscation for speeding at more than 60kph above the posted limit, no points have seen fit to appear. Frankly, anyone who continues to drive this offensively and doesn’t get any penalty points at all is a miracle of modern wasta. Insufficient, however, to prevent the list of offences from appearing on the internet at all.

Assuming a wave of the wasta wand doesn’t cause the fines to vanish at registration time, is the prospect of forking out Dh30,000 really going to worry someone who’s happy to spend millions on a Very Special number plate?

It is high time the traffic authorities - the RTA and traffic police - got all their ducks in a row so that “zero traffic fatalities by 2020” is even remotely achievable. May I helpfully suggest a couple of new year resolutions...?

1.Education

I’ve been unable to obtain any form of Highway Code for the UAE despite trying. There is clearly a need to devise and issue a rule book. This ought to be done at a federal level to ensure consistent traffic laws across the entire country. With 150 or so different nationalities all with their own ideas of what constitutes ‘correct’, different opinions inevitably cause a bunfight. All drivers should be issued with the rules when they take driver training, when they get their licences, and when they get their cars registered. Then ignorance of the law really will be no excuse.

2. Meaningful enforcement

Sticking cameras all over the highways can only detect speeds in excess of a posted limit or red light violations. It might provide the easiest and most lucrative solution, but almost by definition, the easiest method is the least effective. Perhaps more pullings over to discuss tailgating, speeding, driving on the breakdown lane, mobile phone use, lane discipline and seatbelts are needed, along with inspections of tyres, lights and window tints.

3. Effective penalty points

It occurs to me that it’s quite difficult to collect black points except by driving spectacularly badly. A driving ban only occurs after accruing 24 points, and anyway they disappear after a mere six months. I am therefore amazed to read in the news that some drivers even then somehow manage to get themselves disqualified.

How about linking the points to the motor insurance? Someone who collects plenty of points obviously has a proven inability to stay within the rules and is therefore presumably a higher risk.

4. Disqualification

It’s simple really. Having driven so badly that you got yourself banned, if you’re caught behind the wheel you go to jail. Go directly to jail, do not pass ‘Go’, do not collect £200. If you can’t be trusted to stay off the road, the State can provide some assistance.

The alternative approach is to continue to permit mayhem and destruction on the Emirates’ roads. Use automated means to detect speeding and don’t chase up on the fines for up to a year. Don’t bother enforcing the wearing of seat belts; ignore drivers’ mobile phone use; disregard excessive window tints. Pay no heed to driving on the breakdown lane; overlook bald tyres and defective lights. Turn a blind eye to non-existent lane discipline; be oblivious to illegal parking. Rather like what seems to occur most of the time anyway.

And having completely removed all functions of the traffic police, it’s logical to abandon having the Force at all. Instead, the huge budget savings can be reallocated to ambulances, hospitals and funeral directors.

]}:-{>

Two wheels on my wagon

The much-publicised case of two-wheeled driving and burnouts on Sheikh Zayed Road has mushroomed. The story has gone beyond local blogs and forums, into the UAE’s national newspapers, and even finding its way into the pages of the UK’s Daily Telegraph.

Apart from a few comments along the lines of it being “...my country and if you don’t like it you know where the airport is...”, most amateur and professional commentators seem to take the position that the perpetrators should have their cars/licences/goolies confiscated. Delete as applicable.

What is perhaps a little less well known is that this motorised overexuberance, captured on video and distributed on YouTube, was part of an organised convoy in celebration of a local football club’s victory. Al Wasl Football Club apparently won the Gulf Club Champions Cup. I don’t possess a football gene, so have no further information.

Anyway, the convoy was apparently approved by Dubai Police, who were handling traffic control. Unfortunately, it seems that Plod was at the back of the convoy and the hooning was taking place at the front...

Here’s the contentious bit. Local lads partaking in a celebratory cavalcade apparently believed that Sheikh Zayed Road was closed with a rolling roadblock. They were only having fun in a modern local style. As recently as last week, I think it was Gulf News’ weekend ‘Xpress’ paper that published a picture of a Nissan Patrol on its right-hand wheels and a kandoura-clad gentleman balancing himself on the driver’s door. “Fun, until someone gets hurt” was the gist of the caption, but there was no unequivocal condemnation. And who remembers Jeremy Clarkson's Motor World? UAE, 1996. It's on YouTube at the end of this clip.

The Sheikh Zayed Road video only actually became a problem when it went on general release, and a wider audience inferred that this sort of thing goes on all the time and everywhere, with the authorities powerless to prevent it. How embarrassing. If the camcorder hadn’t been there, no evidence would have been available, and any misbehavin’ would have gone undetected. All those cameras along Sheikh Zayed Road, and all powerless to detect any traffic violations that do not involve more than 100kph.

In reaction to the public outpouring of outrage, the villains of the piece have now been ‘arrested’ and their vehicles ‘impounded’. Presumably once the heat has died down there’ll be some minor wrist-slapping.

A brief aside. Earlier this year I was involved in an organised motorbike ‘Thunder Parade’ in aid of Dubai Autism Center. This was also a police-controlled cavalcade along Sheikh Zayed Road. Whilst it is true that there was little or no hooning in evidence on the bike procession, I’d have been less than impressed to receive unwelcome personal attention from the constabulary afterwards.

I cannot and do not condone two-wheeled driving – except on motorcycles, of course – on the public highway, any more than wheelies up Jumeirah Beach Road, and burnouts and handbrake turns at the traffic lights. These activities ought to be limited to closed roads, fenced areas and race tracks. Much practice is required, and plenty of broken machinery. YouTube carries multitudinous examples of stunt drivers who aren’t quite as good as they thought they were. Public roads are an entirely inappropriate place for stunt driving.

There are legal outlets for motorised exuberance: track days over at Dubai Autodrome, where petrolheads can go and drive as fast as they like, in the sole company of consenting adults. And how about the desert, where there’s loads of empty space?

If it’s possible to be arrested for misbehaving on what you thought was a temporarily closed road, then there’s the dangerous possibility of a sudden clampdown on any and all motoring offences. And I bet nobody, no-one at all, drives perfectly 100% of the time.

I’d remind those demanding punitive action to be meted out on the football fans that there’s a story about a man a few years back who said, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”

Be careful what you wish for.

]}:-{>

No kidding

Gleaned from all over the internet, here is some helpful guidance for anyone considering the middle east as a destination...





























]}:-{>

Off? Ah, you can't re-fuse

The other evening Beloved Wife and I were heading home after discovering that Geeekfest 2.0 had been postponed to October. While rummaging in the dark trying to plug in the phone charger, a coke can ring-pull fell into the socket and shorted the circuit with a briefly thrilling flash and a fuse blew.

We stopped at a petrol station to avail ourselves of the available light, I dug out the owner’s manual and found the fuse box. The task was not made any easier when Beloved Wife recovered her emergency wind-up torch from the boot and discovered that it was FUBAR. Neither was the job facilitated by the blue 15A fuse, as per the manual, mysteriously not being blown. It turned out that the relevant fuse as fitted by some German mechanic back in 2007 was a yellow 20A fuse. So much for Volkswagen’s dire injunctions against fitting fuses with different ratings from those stated in the manual. And the petrol station shop hadn’t got any blade fuses anyway. Loads of cuddly toys and phone accessories, but no automotive fuses. In a petrol station. Is there no limit to mercantile idiocy? Just as well the burned-out fuse only affected the fag lighter. If it’d been on the headlight circuit that night, there might have been more of a problem.

The following day it took four further attempts to buy a replacement fuse before I finally succeeded. Three car accessories shops, whose stock includes flashing lights, radios, spotlights, replacement lenses and any other related electric paraphernalia, didn’t stock automotive fuses. So they all fit aftermarket electrical accessories without any fuse protection, eh? And we wonder why in this country there seem to be so many cases of cars spontaneously combusting. I eventually found a tiny hardware shop where the man had a cut-down Masafi bottle full of 20A yellow blade fuses. He charged me a dirham, and then guiltily gave me a handful rather than just two. (One to use and one to lose.)

Anyway, back to the previous evening. I was fuming by the time we got home. Why? Well, Beloved Wife’s wind-up torch has never been used in anger. It has lived in a bag in the boot along with some jump leads for two years. And this evening the winding mechanism had mysteriously become broken. Come to that, the yellow case had also magically become battered and bruised.

What I suspect is that some unknown person who owned an old and broken wind-up torch swapped his with the decent one that he found lying around in someone’s car. It appears this could only have been the Volkswagen mechanics at Al Naboodah or the car valets at Yellow Hat. Except at the car wash where we stand over the cleaners, no-one else has had access to the boot, as far as either Beloved Wife or I can ascertain.

It isn’t the cost of the torch that I’m whingeing about. They’re cheap, and yes I can easily afford a new one. Unfortunately, when you need to use a torch, it’s dark, probably in the middle of nowhere and likely throwing down with rain too. And the inconvenience of changing a wheel by Braille easily outweighs the monetary value of the torch.

I guess this sort of petty theft goes with nicking small change: a perk, a tax on rich idiots who are careless enough to leave anything in the car that’s not bolted down.

]}:-{>

Eighth Commandment

Poor Keefie and MamaDuck have been victims again. It makes me realise how fortunate I’ve been so far. I was only ever robbed once in Spain. Having been directed by the Law to park in the Back of Beyond in Puerto Banus, my mates and I locked and left the rental car and went sighteeing. The car was of course ripped off in our absence. Plod was completely uninterested, so we carried out our own investigation.

A nearby cinema-cum-disco was surrounded by a kind of dry moat, in which we discovered dozens of opened suitcases, clothing, holiday snaps and empty wallets. Clearly this was where the local sticky-fingered brigade brought tourists’ bags and rifled them for cash, passports and other valuables. And in my case, driving documents, camera, lenses and travellers’ cheques. Policing this obvious den of criminality was clearly beyond the wit of the local Constabulary, who were too busy directing traffic around the car park.

I think there’s a fundamental problem with making rental cars so obvious. The occasional ‘Hertz’ sticker might imply long-term lease rather than tourists, but a system whereby the rental status of the vehicle is advertised to everyone might tempt the weak-willed and easily-tempted. Four obviously sunburned blokes piling out of a Seat Panda (with crappy door locks, as we’d just learned) shouts “Tourists!” almost as much as knotted handkies and Union Flag shorts.

That was Spain. Rental cars in Cyprus have black-on-red number plates. OK, this tells everyone else on the road that the car is full of tourists who probably don’t know where they’re going and will probably stop unexpectedly or drive on the wrong side of the road, but the red plate is also a potential thief magnet. An unattended rental car is probably full of cameras, passports and money.

Similar problem in Bonaire in the Netherlands Antilles. In that ‘diving paradise’, the rental vehicle of choice is a crew-cab pickup with a lockable load bed for the dive kit. Unfortunately the local villains have realised that a parked pickup on the roadside near a dive site is likely to be unattended for up to an hour, and is therefore a very easy target. You can’t take your wallet and passport with you when you go diving. Robbery is such an issue that we were warned of it by the rental company. My friends and I resolved the problem when we were there by diving in two buddy pairs, with the dry pair minding the car and the children.

Bear in mind the above, and then appreciate the relatively low levels of theft here in the UAE. Perhaps low crime is encouraged by a penal system that, for example, earns some thief three months in Al Slammah (plus deportation, plus loss of end-of-service benefits, etc) for nicking a - presumably used - tube of toothpaste. Oh, and a camera handle (whatever that is), a phone and a couple of SIM cards. However, given that I’d want to string up thieves by their gonads perhaps the official legal system is effective enough.

That’s not to say crime doesn’t occur. My car, a rented Lancer at the time, was once broken into at Dibba harbour while I was diving on a Mussandam day trip. The evidence was all over the windows: juvenile paw-prints showed that they’d pried one of the windows down a quarter of an inch, opened a door with a long stick and helped themselves to my car-park change. In a busy fishing harbour, no-one had seen a thing, and reporting the incident to the Royal Oman Police at 7pm on a Friday? Forget it. Put it down to Gringo/Gaijin/Gora tax. As Keefie noted, “…you are rich, so it doesn’t matter to you.” I rather think not!

To end on a happier note, here's a story about a burglar who climbs over a wall with intent to rob a house.

A voice says, “Jesus is watching you.”

The burglar looks around, and notices only a goat in the garden. He sneaks up to the house and starts to jimmy a window.

“Jesus is watching you,” says the goat.

The astonished burglar asks, “Who are you?”

“Clarence,” replies the goat.

“What kind of a moron calls his pet goat Clarence?”

“The same kind who calls his pet rottweiler Jesus.”

]}:-{>