Chris in London said:Some people were kind enough to write nice things about my long post in this thread yesterday. At some risk of self indulgence, there are a few points I would like to add.
First, I made a remark about Abu Dhabi being nothing more than a strip of land in the desert before they discovered oil there. When I re-read that this morning, it struck me how offensive that would be to anyone from Abu Dhabi, even though I had no intention whatsoever of being offensive. I actually know very little about Abu Dhabi's pre-oil history so am not really qualified to make that sort of statement, but quite apart from that it's a fairly disrespectful thing to say about an entire people, especially when you bear in mind what the ruling family there is doing for our club and our city. (My family is from east Manchester originally and many family members live only a tram ride away from the ground - well, they will do when the roadworks are finished). When you think about they way the ruling family in Abu Dhabi act generally, whether in relation to our club, FIFA/UEFA, the development of their Emirate/country or however, it is difficult to have anything other than the highest respect for them. However if you are unintentionally offensive you are still offensive, so for anyone who read what I said yesterday and thought it was disrespectful to Abu Dhabi or any of those who live there, I apologise for that, it was not at all what I intended.
The second thing is that I somewhat over-stated City's importance in the context of Abu Dhabi's economic development. It is a lovely mental image to think of Sheikh Mansour's family saying "thank God you bought City, for now we can still eat when the oil runs out" but it's just not like that. As has been said, the oil there isn't going to run out any time soon - I think current predictions are that it will last until well into the 22nd century - but perhaps a more realistic threat to Abu Dhabi's economy is increasing pressure on an international/inter-governmental basis to move away from fossil fuels. If your exonomy depends on one commodity and that commodity either falls away or demand for it falls away, you are knackered. Anyway, whatever the reason, the powers that be in Abu Dhabi have made a strategic decision to widen the basis of their economy, to make it less dependent on oil revenues, and eventually that long term planning is likely to pay dividends for one reason or another. Tourism and financial services are just two aspects of Abu Dhabi's highly impressive expansion programme.
The essential thought I was trying to convey was expressed rather more elegantly by hbruz80 when he said "the club makes up one small part of a larger sector (Sports and Media) which Abu Dhabi are concentrating on to diversify their economy". City, in other words, has a role in the overall development of the Abu Dhabi economy, which you might fairly assess as small but significant. In a similar vein, the actual economic impact of bringing the Olympics to London is in many respects limited, but there are a number of indirect benefits (raised profile, feel-good factor etc) which are important but not easy to measure in financial terms. Whilst City is miniscule in direct financial terms, it is a highly visible investment and is important for that reason - ditto the Olympics in terms of the UK economy generally.
The third point is where I part company with hbruz80. He suggests that the publicity value of buying City (for want of a better way of describing the intangible benefits owning the club brings) was something of an afterthought, and is in the grand scheme of things rather small beer. Certainly the outlay on City is a drop in the ocean of the overall resources available to this family, but I find very surprising the idea that this careful and prudent family, who have the strategic vision to develop a nation's economy and to lay out their scheme for doing that over a 25 year period, and who have access to the best advice money can buy, didn't appreciate the PR benefits of owning an English football club in terms of raising profile at the time the club was bought. I suppose that if you were there you know how it happened and if you weren't you don't, but I would be amazed if an important feature in the decision making process when the club was bought was not the potential for maximising exposure, and ultimately painting a consistently positive picture of Abu Dhabi.
Khaldoon himself is almost certainly far too modest to say so, but he is undoubtedly a Big Player in Abu Dhabi. As Hbruz80 said, Khaldoon is the Crown Prince's right hand man (he also pointed us towards the Abu Dhabi 2030 plan, and you dig that out you can get some impression from the introduction alone of how important a figure Khaldoon is there). If City was a relatively insignificant piece in the jigsaw, it would be surprising to see such a big player spend so much of his time overseeing this aspect of the project. It's a bit like David Cameron saying to Nick Clegg "you know what, Tameside council needs looking after properly, can you go up there and run it for me?" (okay, bad example). As I understand it Khaldoon has a number of other responsibilities, but he plainly devotes quite a significant amount of time to City, and if it was 'just another investment' it would be surprising that such an important figure spends so much time on it. In other words, there is probably a correlation between City's importance to Abu Dhabi's expansion and the identity of the person appointed as chairman.
The final point is Damocles' central concern about the connection between our club and possible human rights violations. I know little about the video link he posted, but I do know that within the middle east Abu Dhabi's human rights record is one of the best there is. In Yemen, if anyone is interested in the comparison, crucifixion is still part of the penal code, albeit only for piracy. Moreover, Abu Dhabi's human rights record, whilst perhaps not perfect, puts the record of many states beyond the middle east to shame. We can look within the EU for far more significant human rights violations. The royal family in Abu Dhabi is essentially the government, and it makes no sense to look at the ruling family there, in this context, on any basis other than that it is a government. Unfortunately, I doubt there is a government in the world which has a totally unblemished human rights record. For instance, elsewhere in this threat someone mentioned the assassination of Bin Laden. Whether it would have been preferable to put him on trial and eventually let him rot in a prison cell is an interesting debate, but it is well documented that the information which eventually led to his elimination originated in Guantanamo Bay, a place which exists for the sole purpose of allowing human rights violations to take place beyond the protection of the US constitution. The decision to mount the capture/assassination mission was directly taken by President Obama, so there is a direct link there between human rights abuses and the very highest levels of government in the US. Some might say the ends justified the means, but that's another debate. Our own security services have done and doubtless still do much that would give Amnesty heart attacks, and they do it in the name of Her Majesty, but you don't find them fussing about that at Newmarket when one of her horses romps home.
If there was any evidence of a connection between human rights abuses and City, we would all be concerned, and with good reason. But there is none, and to say that the connection is Sheikh Mohammed to my mind does not amount to much more than saying "governments sometimes do bad things". That is sad but undoubtedly true (certainly true of our own government) and is perhaps inevitable in the world in which we live.
Sigh.
If only I could express my thoughts so eloquently. (5*)
And people still pay money to buy papers.
Long live the 'free' internet and those that use it and write via it.