Programme featured amazing people - but not in good way

Did you catch Inside Dubai: Playground of the rich on the BBC earlier this year?We did, although it was partly a hands-over-the-eyes watch.
The main reason for this was that we lived in Dubai for seven years in the 1980s and wonder if family and friends who did not visit us there think that’s what it was like.
I can assure my reader that it was not. The programme should really have been titled The Only Way is Dubai or even The Real Housewives of Dubai.
The people featured were amazing – and not necessarily in a good sense.
During our time in Dubai there were obviously a few expatriate families eager to flaunt their new lifestyles.
We found that they were usually the people who had very little in the UK and then found themselves in a well-paid, tax-free job, with free accommodation, a generous car allowance, a paid-for trip back home every year and a full-time maid.
I have to admit we had all that except the full-time maid. Well, we did have a maid but she was part-time and on the payroll, and sponsorship, of another family.
She used to clean for us and come in to clear up after we’d had people round for dinner. There - I’ve admitted details of our lavish lifestyle.
Like most western expats back in the day we were on good deals because, believe it or not, Dubai was considered a hardship posting that gave people the chance to better themselves while helping build the Emirate’s economy.
We were there to help and give guidance to young locals. My role, as a PR manager in a newly founded aluminium smelter, was to set up the PR department and then recruit a national to take over from me.
It should have taken two years, the length of my contract, but ended up taking seven and a couple of contract renewals.
We came back to the UK voluntarily but many other expats didn’t – their contracts ended and they could not, in those days, simply find another role because of sponsorship rules.
Therefore anyone staying for more than a couple of years found they had to continually forge new friendships as people came and went.
It was also impossible to retire there as foreigners could not buy a property.
But then the UAE rewrote its laws on property ownership – which, in my opinion, is where it began to go wrong.
Loads of “new money” flooded in, as people snapped up beachfront villas. No longer was it enough to say you owned a 4wd vehicle – you had to own a luxury car and more than a couple of handbags.
My biggest gripe about the Inside Dubai programme was the fact it largely ignored the thousands, nay millions, of expats from around world who keep the Emirate ticking. And they are not all maids, cooks and drivers.
But then that wouldn’t have made a good programme. Or would it?