Greetings from the United Kingdom. Yes, that’s right; this week’s edition of UAE Uncut comes from the south western corner of London in Kingston-Upon-Thames; home to me since birth. I have returned to this gray little island for a week to attend my best friends wedding and so far the experience has left me somewhat scratching my head. I spent the weekend in Bristol with all my friends for the stag party, and when the poor groom wasn’t being rescued from toilet cubicles or from the clutches of the Bristol mob, which blog topic I would be broaching this week was frequently raised. So, what the hell am I writing about?
As you may be aware, I enjoy garnishing most things with some scorn as opposed to praise. Praise is boring and weak. The poor UAE certainly can appear battered and bruised at times through the eyes of the typical UAE Uncut reader, but so too can the UK. Readers will know that I was not very fond of the previous Labour government, or any Labour government for that matter. But I can hardly sit here and say that the coalition has been wonderful, either. No, here in the UK there is too much nonsense, too much needless legislation that seems to be designed simply to make peoples lives as miserable and as uncomfortable as possible. Why, then, do I moan about the UAE all the time and some of its mad laws when the UK is 100 times worse?
In the kitchen here at home there are three bins’ one for food scraps, one for papery things and another for everything else. Then there are bottle bins, can bins, cat bins… pah! The UAE wouldn’t waste its time on such things. You know what the UAE would do to separate all the various waste items don’t you? They’d employ a few hundred workers who didn’t mind the occasional whiff, therefore creating job opportunities, not really a desirable one, but hey. Here? No, we’re expected to manually sift our waste so that the council doesn’t have to bother. Have you ever tried stumbling home drunk one night and making a sandwich only to throw most of it away in the paper bin by mistake? I stand before a Magistrate next week!
Unemployment could be reduced if, no wait, sod unemployment, I have a better idea. Why don’t convicts serving time get rounded up and sent into to the landfill site to separate all the cabbage from the copies of The Daily Mail? It would give their eyes a rest from the Playstation and 42” plasma.
We will be great again
I also have a complaint about taxis. Now, those readers who actually live in the UAE will stand with me when I say that the majority of taxi drivers aren’t exactly what you would call competent. There are some that have good knowledge and a keen sense of awareness and we are sure to keep their numbers and use them as much as we can. But most are terrible. They don’t know where they’re going, they don’t know how to drive and they make little effort to keep you safe. I always look back at the UK with fondness when I ride in a UAE taxi. I think of the black cabs and how the drivers have knowledge of such brilliance that I find it amazing that they do not work for NASA. But black cabs are incredibly expensive, so we use minicabs where we can.
In Bristol this weekend I thought I was back in the UAE. We required the services of the taxis frequently and each time relied on the concierge to make the arrangements. Being 12 of us, we required two six-seaters and a speedy drive. Never have I encountered a taxi company like it. To describe them as terrible is a masterpiece of understatement. By UAE standards even they were diabolical. Who in the name of God employs someone to drive a taxi that has as much knowledge of the Bristol road network as a tribesman from some undiscovered South American jungle? No, really. Each time we met them to go to a different activity we had to fanny about on iPhones looking for maps and postcodes to help the drivers out. And they still got lost.
This isn’t the country that I remember. I don’t understand how some things can be so stupid, I really don’t. We are the only nation in the world that has the prefix “Great” before its name and that perhaps gives a false impression. We cannot live off our previous imperial laurels anymore. But, then again, find me a paradise and I’ll find you a six by two foot box buried six feet under the ground; nowhere is perfect.
So now it’s raining outside and the temperature is barely 10 Celsius, but I don’t mind. I need to go and fill my car up in a few minutes and that will bankrupt me and again, I don’t mind. Tonight I am going to walk into town to meet my friends for a few beers, it will be wet, cold and arguably overpriced, and I don’t mind.
But this is my country, this is my home, and I love it regardless.
