Received from a friend yesterday - a letter he submitted to one of the local papers. Perhaps not surprisingly, it hasn't been published.
Those misguided individuals complaining about Etisalat’s recent blocking of Skype and other VOIP phone service need to understand that there was a small number of people misusing Skype, and for that reason, (and certainly not to increase Etisalat’s income – perish the thought!), the services simply had to be denied to the rest of us for our own protection.
Similarly, a small number of people here misuse motor vehicles, driving them too fast and in a manner dangerous, so using the same unassailable logic as Etisalat has employed in blocking Skype, those who are protecting us from the depredations of the Skype misusers need immediately to deny everyone in Dubai the use of a motor vehicle.
There have been complaints – I’ve seen them right here in this newspaper – that a small number of people play music overly loudly, annoying their neighbours. This can be easily fixed – all people must be banned from playing music immediately.
I understand that some non Muslims here in Dubai overindulge in the consumption of alcohol. Clearly the answer to this problem is to ban all alcohol use for everyone in the Emirate without delay.
A number of smokers insist on lighting up in places where smoking is already banned. Let’s use the Etisalat fix – ban it completely.
Mobile phones – I received a smutty SMS once. Ban the lot of them.
I hear constant complaints about unattached males – ‘bachelors’, who are mostly labourers from the Subcontinent – causing unease and distress among many of the females who reside here, so it’s obvious that all these ‘bachelors’ should be sent home immediately. There’ll be an added benefit to this – with all the labourers gone, there’ll be no more complaints from people disturbed by all that noisy construction work at all hours of the day.
I’ve also read that quite a few people here are offended by Western women wearing inappropriate clothing in public in Dubai. Following Etisalat’s logic, the obvious answer is to introduce a strict dress code for women, particularly those dreadful tourists from Western Europe who think that just because they’ve spent multi thousand Euros coming here to stay in a five star hotel on a holiday package that promises limitless sun and pristine sandy beaches, they can wear the kind of clothing Westerners usually wear at beachside holiday resorts.
It may come as a shock to some that a small number of the single young women among the many who have come here to Dubai from overseas indulge in work in some of the nightclubs and bars of this city that can best be described as… (gasp!) immoral, so it’s obvious that the only way the rest of us can be protected from this small number of ladies of ill repute is immediately to deport every young woman from Dubai.
I’ve also heard that some of these women set up shop in private villas, so the obvious fix for that is to ban everyone from living in private villas – and apartments as well.
So, with all those fixes in place following the Etisalat model, we’ll have everything solved and Dubai can remain where it is at the very cutting edge as an international, cosmopolitan trading and commercial centre.
Right up there alongside Pyongyang, the only other city in the world where VOIP is banned.