An open rasberry to Simon Jenkins

Below is an open letter to Guardian columnist and former Times editor Simon Jenkins, in response to his column: As they did Ozymandias, the dunes will reclaim the soaring folly of Dubai

Dear Simon,

As many of my fellow Dubaians have already done, I read your comment piece on this city yesterday.

What utter drivel.

Your contempt for a place that, unless you have missed a major point from your article, you have never visited beggars belief.

This does not adhere to any reasonable measure of journalistic competence; your research is non-existent, your generalisations are sweeping, and your prejudice shines through from the headline, standfirst and introduction of your piece.

Speaking as a young journalist, had I written such appalling trash, I would, I hope, feel ashamed. I would not expect to remain a journalist for very long, and would expect to move into a profession more suited to my particular skill-set – street-sweeping, say, or licking the grime from Germaine Greer's don't-fuck-me shoes.

I will not bother to list the many, many factual errors and incorrect assumptions you make in your article (although I can certainly do so if you would like).

Instead, I had rather intended to make a series of wittily sweeping generalisations about your good self, possibly of the nature that your inability to spell the names of the world's capital cities clearly means you're only minutes away from a retrograde step to the Guardian's subs-desk; or that the large parts of your brain that are currently lying unused and decaying will no doubt be occupied in short order by packs of malevolent dwarves (although possibly this has already happened).

However, as this would merely be lowering myself to your level I will content myself with blowing you a raspberry from 3500 miles away, which would seem to be a rather more mature response to your childish malice than it in fact merits.

Thrrrrrrrrrrp.

On a serious note, Dubai – and the UAE as a whole – has many faults and problems, some of them appalling, and some of them appalling only to those with delicate sensibilities and a dislike for what they perceive as "vulgar".

But this type of comment does nothing to address them – and if you, as a human being, really take such glee in the downfall of others, well, I feel somewhat sorry for you.

Others more eloquent than I have rightly described Dubai as an experiment, an alternative to the hitherto oppressive and closed cultures that have been seen in the Gulf. As Dubai has succeeded, others – Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Qatar, and now even cities in Saudi Arabia – are tentatively following in this city's footsteps.

Were Dubai in fact to fail – and more importantly, be seen to fail, and be publicly derided by people such as you – then the experiment would be for naught. Other cities and states may well see that the reward for risk is ridicule, and quietly slip back into the old way of doing things.

This is a complex issue – and if all you're seeing is ski-slopes and palms and shiny cars, you're not looking hard enough.

Regards,

Eliot Beer
Editor, AdNation Middle East