Begorra: Dubai's debt-laden Sheikh Mohammed al Maktoum

The Sheikh is basically a dictator. He does what he wants.

Arab Dictator, basically just a reboot of the modern crusader

Has f-all to worry about, the UK banks were so desperate to pump their money into Dubai they have made massive errors everywhere with guarantees etc and the Maktoums know it, the UK taxpayer that had to prop up these banks doesnt.

If the idiot who appears to be calling me a modern crusader would like to elaborate I will be prepared to enlighten him. If that is possible.

They never had that much oil compared to their neighbours and there isn't much left. The Maktoums have ruled the place since 1833 and Sheikh Mo has been the effective ruler for decades although his elder bother Maktoum was the titular head until he died a few years ago. Sheikh Mo had a sort of westernised palace dream which was undone by the 2008 crash. As has been pointed out despite Dubai as a state having a debt,which proportionately would make Osborne shoot himself ( hopefully ) the Sheikh continues his expensive hobbies.

there is no point to dubai, its a vast white elephant. its also in easy shelling distance from tehran.
Oman, Bahrain, Saudi, Dubai, britain has propped these medieval systems of government with a little help from some friends for the best part of a century. Its served us well we buy the oil then get most of the cash back by flogging them 3rd generation weapons to keep the bolshi's down....

then there is the complete mess the US and M16 made of Iran, which started when they had the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh ousted by sponsoring a coup:

An author, administrator, lawyer, prominent parliamentarian, he became the prime minister of Iran in 1951. His administration introduced a wide range of progressive social and political reforms such as social security, rent control, and land reforms.[4] His government's most notable policy, however, was the nationalization of the Iranian oil industry, which had been under British control since 1913 through the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC/AIOC) (later British Petroleum or BP).[5]
Mosaddegh was removed from power in a coup on 19 August 1953, organised and carried out by the United States CIA at the request of the British MI6 which chose Iranian General Fazlollah Zahedi to succeed Mosaddegh.[6]
While the coup is commonly referred to as Operation Ajax[7] after its CIA cryptonym, in Iran it is referred to as the 28 Mordad 1332 coup, after its date on the Iranian calendar.[8] Mosaddegh was imprisoned for three years, then put under house arrest until his death.

You refer to these middle east places as  medieval systems and yet historically before the romans spearheaded the move towards iron weapons which was the first major arms race, these middle eastern provinces had some of the greatest and most beautiful cities in the world but they were all nearly all robbed and burned to the ground at around 1850 bc by the plague that was the sea peoples, the early roman pirates who using the latest iron weaponry and stratigraphic islands strongholds,
commanded the first assaults upon the Arab nations and Europeans have always persecuted these once great peoples.

The feared Sea peoples who were proto roman hoards would have horns on there helmets and Mohican's haircuts to look as barbaric and savage as possible, once the early roman nations acquired enough wealth it would not be long before they would pay for bigger and more organized armies that still carried a Mohican's style crest on there battle helmets and would set out to plunder greater untapped resources and then have the nerve to call there victims barbarians and cut any resistant down brutally that stood in the way of centralized greed and control.

One wonders what great cites would now exist in the middle east had the early to present day Europeans have not made life so difficult for them but with great oasis's of wealth and beauty as is Saudi we get a glimpse of what could of been...

In life Facts are always stranger than fiction but either lost or never discovered through the mists of time!

Saudi has always been a Freeport and has now a huge tourist economy so I would take all the factors into account before declaring their imminent demise ...

bf fanatic.
Your ancient history may be a bit ropey but it's probably not far off.
What you seem to forget is the Arabs conqured almost all Spain,bits of Southern France and a good half of Italy much later than the Romans.

Salmon - Saudi Arabia is not Dubai imo so bf_f isn't even in the right country for this discussion

its complete rubbish..
I dont know what he is smoking?

bf-fanatic is obviously unaware of suicide bombers that are prepared to wantonly murder their own,including women and children.Besides which I thought there was a separate politics forum.

It was actually a racing thread to start with and I am sure unbiased has been known to post on political threads on here.
To turn it back to racing. Just hypothetically what effect would the disappearance of the Maktoums have on racing in Europe and the UK in particular iyo ?