Hurray, Hurray, it's UAE National Day

Say what you like about Sheikh Mohammed, and I’ve never ever heard anything but praise for him (in contrast to some other well-known types from these here parts - Dancing Girls of Lahore – Contents - Twelve year old Pakistani Virgins, shipped to the Gulf, Sheikhs for the Use of) economically he is the man. In these post Fukuyama days, he stands somewhere between the Sun God and David Hasselhoff in his post Baywatch chest-rippling glory days.

Now, you expect a little hagiography in the Gulf - just look at the adoration allotted to Sheikh Zayed. But frankly, it can get a little old to read hardened journo’s behaving like a bunch of thirteen year olds at a knicker-wetting contest.

Nice then to find another article from the FT, but one which redresses the balance a little. (And to be honest, at least the FT knows where Dubai is. Unbelievably, in March 2007 London's Metro News mixed up a photo of our Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, with that notorious terrorist badboy, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Great stuff London!)

Anyway,

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e9966606-f9dc-11db-9b6b-000b5df10621.html

There's totally some spin here - see for example the Haroun al-Rashid type detail of wandering the offices of Dubai picking out the brilliant and the deserving.

'It was, for example, a "mystery shopper" who first noticed Mohammed Gergawi a decade ago, when he was deputy head of the government's economics department. Since then, Mr Gergawi has risen to chairman of Dubai Holding, probably the most powerful of Sheikh Mohammed's companies, as well as to the post of cabinet minister in the UAE federal government...'

Very Arabian Nights, and yet, given that Gergawi was already Deputy Head of the Economics Department, not exactly seeking out a brilliant diamond in the rough hein?

This is sweet too:

"People think we're just building Dubai. But no, we're accommodating 1.5bn people in the central world, here, between the east and west. When we say the west and we think of Europe and America. When we say the east and we think of Japan and China. And we are part of Asia but we are in the Middle East. And that's what I meant by the central world."

Slightly reminiscient of the old Dan Quayle crack about the Middle East existing to stop the Far East and the Near East from encroaching on each other, but a truly important point. Anyone who thinks Dubai is about Dubai is an idiot. It's about the GCC, Asia, the Levant, North Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa.... Any major company who doesn't have an office here is already about ten years behind, and falling further.

Given the traffic, the dust, and the noise of construction, it says something about Sheikh Mohammed that to read an interview with him is to start feeling excited about Dubai all over again.