You sound like a young man, I don't mean that as a put down, but there is a certainty about your viewpoint which is the hallmark of youth.
I used to equip hospitals, mostly neonatal units in the Middle East and Africa but I've also been involved in fair trade with the developing world. I've lived in Nigeria for three years, was thirty years involved in export, mostly in the third world, I've been blessed with a chance to experience the world in a way most lads from Lower Broughton could only dream of.
I've seen grinding poverty that you can't imagine and I've seen despots, chancers and shysters screwing their country for all they're worth, but I've also seen that the things that unite us are greater than those that divide us.
Of all the places I've visited the UAE is one of the most enlightened. Arabs regularly put it at the top of the list of the most desirable places to live. 1.2 million Brits visited in 2019, 250,000 live there, it's the preferred destination for guest workers and unlike Saudi Arabia there are no religious police. I first went there nearly 40 years ago and I've seen for myself the country become increasingly more and more progressive. Believe me knowing how deeply conservative Emiratis were when I first started going there in the 80s, that can only be down to its leaders.
Judging most of North Africa and the Middle East through the prism of western values is a fools game, it assumes that western values and western democracy is the gold standard against which countries succeed or fail, but we know from the events of the last twenty years that when the hard men and monarchs fold and elections called, they result, almost without exception, with the triumph of religious based parties that are even less "progressive" than the despots they replaced.
To understand how the oil rich Gulf states work think of old time Chicago gangsters, who kept disruption and violence to a minimum because it was bad for business, by carving out territories and responsibilities. The show was kept on the road because everyone had a piece of the cake. It's the same in the Gulf, the ruling families, the people, the mullahs, all with competing interests, keep things rolling along because they are all stakeholders, they have more to lose than gain if the whole edifice crumbles.
What that means is that change is sometimes glacial, keeping all factions happy means that conservative elements in society must be accommodated to keep them on board, even if this can be frustrating for the others. Given the speed with which the UAE has moved towards what we would consider a liberal society these last few decades, tells me that "progressive" elements within the ruling hierarchy have been willing to push things to their limits. From what I've seen and read about our owners they are in the vanguard of that push and as such should be lauded.
David is clearly a well liked lad in here, hence the deleted posts and I've no doubt we have a lot in common politically, but he wittingly played a part in a hatchet job on our owners they do not deserve. Nobody could come away from that video believing he was speaking only for himself.
Notwithstanding whether the ethics, morals, politics of owners of football clubs is a "thing", because it never used to be when football clubs were owned by white mill owners who screwed their workers, screwed the chamber maid and beat their wives, and it doesn't seem to be a "thing" when clubs are owned by Brits or Americans, Sheikh Mansour and Abu Dhabi do not deserve to be cast as the heinous villains they're made out to be, and the "progress" the UAE has made these last few decades is testimony to that.
