One or two of you may have noticed that UAE Uncut has been unusually quiet over the last week or so. Don’t fret, I’m ok, but sadly my laptop is not. The old girl gave off a light smell of burning before telling me that she couldn’t take the risk anymore. She has been sent to the laptop hospital in Al Ain to see if she can be resuscitated, as such I am using my fiancé’s laptop. I apologise for my spelling, the keys are too far apart and I keep pressing enter whenever I want to backspace.
Anyway, she’s at work now so I can type freely. Without having a laptop at my disposal 24/7 I found myself bewildered and lost. I have been cut off from the world and as such have not been able to trawl the UAE press looking for plans and schemes to analyse, query and dissect. Since today’s missive has no actual theme, and Mel will be back in 15 minutes, lets have a quick round up of eye catching news from around the Emirates…
First off, it has been reported that a man, labourer by trade, decided one night to chop his three roommates up with a meat cleaver and a chainsaw. This sounds like quite a curious crime and if Hollywood is anything to go by you would expect swift legal action against him. Alarmingly no, despite the attack being premeditated, in the sense that he actually went out to buy a cleaver and a chainsaw especially, he will not be tried. Nope, apparently the poor sod is insane and as such his tribe will only have to pay AED 200,000 to each of the three families of the deceased.
You don’t have to be Lt. Horatio “H” Caine from CSI: Miami to work out that a man who willingly opts to chop his roommates up into thin strips of meat might not be all there. He claims that he thought – that’s thought, not confirmed – that his roommates were mocking him and performing sexual acts on him whilst he slept. He became paranoid about this so popped down to Ace Hardware to put his mind at rest. I’m not sure what’s more alarming, the acceptance by the courts that this guy is too insane to stand trial or that the lives of the three Indian workers are penned at a gentleman’s AED 200,000 a piece, that’s £33,333 each. That’s a human life for less than the price of a bottom range BMW 5 Series. A tough pill to swallow since the killer’s tribe and not the killer himself has to foot the bill, and they aren’t even in the country.
Stay away from my monkey; bitch
Elsewhere, an Emirati man was killed the other week by sand after engaging in a fight with another Emirati man who was, at the time, walking his pet monkey. Yes, that’s right. So, a man called SE was walking his pet monkey one balmy night when another man called “Neighbour” hollered from afar. As it turns out both men were courting the same barmaid, who was not indentified. Of course the surplus in male hubris meant that the men challenged each other to a fight, so hand in hand they went walking, with the primate in tow, to a suitable place.
Eventually they found a park with some railings and to make it a fair bout SE tied the monkey to the fence. Neighbour, a renowned opportunist, saw a chance and gave SE an unsporting bop over the head. He apparently came at SE with a knife, but decided to poke him in the eye instead, and then threw sand in his face.
A scuffle ensued, presumably with the Star Trek fight music from the 60’s playing loudly in the backgrounud. SE clattered Neighbour to the ground and thought best to give his nose a bite and then proceeded to fill his mouth with sand. Neighbour, who wasn’t a fan of sand, showed signs of obvious asphyxiation and started struggling. It was at this point that SE decided to take a different approach; he could see that Neighbour was in jeopardy so went to the nearby Abu Jamal Grocery and paid AED 3 for a bottle of water. He rushed back to Neighbour and gave him the water. Sadly Neighbour’s conditioned worsened so SE did what any honourable fighting man would do and rushed home to tell his brother, after untying his monkey.
SE’s brother, RE, went to the scene of the crime, spotted that a man was indeed lying there dead so popped round to Neighbours house to tell his family what had gone on. After a brief confab it was agreed that the police should be called and that they would be best placed to deal with the situation. SE made a full confession without resistance that he caused death by assault whilst under the influence of narcotics and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was, however, given a couple of weeks to appeal the decision if he didn’t fancy jail. Blood money was not specified.
Elsewhere in the Emirates, another massive push for Emiratisation is underway. For those that don’t know, Emiratisation is a scheme intended to get more locals working in the private sector. Despite the fact that working for government institutions in the public sector pays 4-5 times more per annum, confidence of duping people to accept private sector employment remains naively high.
So there we have it, all the relatively latest big news stories over the last month from the UAE, I’m Martin Fullard, and that was the UAE…Uncut.