'Fear and money in Dubai' by Mike Davis and 'At home in the neon' by Dave Hickey

With the introduction to 'Fear and the Money in Dubai' by Mike Davis you are immersed into the characters experience of visiting this place. He has made you relate to what you would experience if you were on that plane. The means of flying you in is a scene setter which sets the mood for the narrative. I feel that he starts in this manor to hint at the fact that the majority of people coming to Dubai are outsiders and that the major artery is the airport. He uses extravagant descriptions to embody the overwhelming gigantism of this city that can only really be fully appreciated from above. This is where the Western rich come to play 'an entirely separate, Western-based commercial system for its financial district that would do business in dollars, and in English'.

The title immediately make you think of the film 'Fear and loathing in Las Vegas' by Hunter S Thompson. This film blurs the lines between the real and surreal never quite identifying between what is real and what is part of the characters imagination. I feel that this is a hint towards how he feels about Dubai. That this city boarders on the real and surreal. Like on a film set the city is squeaky clean on the surface but behind the scenes there is a underworld that is dark and fearful. This is in stark contrast to what Dave Hickey writes in 'At home in the neon' where he describes Las Vegas as an open book with no hidden secrets and all is to be see in daylight. With this city being so honest you feel that what you see is what you get and there are no hidden agenda. `The secret of Vegas is that there are no secrets`. Yes there maybe the dirty feeling you may get once you have been there, the 'Hangover' scenario, but this is not a hidden feeling, this is what most people expect when they visit this city. There are no predigests here, everyone is on the same level no matter who you are or where you come from. A democratic city. Peoples hopes and dreams here are valued from wanting to move from a food waitress to a cocktail maker because the tips are better, to coming for your last right as a single bachelor.

To me what makes home home is a place that holds certain values. In my heart of hearts, home is really where I grew up, a small sleepy countryside village in Worcestershire but to be honest anywhere I stay for a significant amount of time that embodies the same values that I felt there could be referred to as my home. Somewhere that I am who I am and don't feel pressured to be anything else.

“Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they take you in.”– Robert Frost. 

''This crisis is the spectacle: where is the real?'' from Alain Badiou's The Communist Hypothesis (2010) and Jonathan Meade's ''Zaha Hadidi: The first great female Architect''

When I first read the article 'This crisis is the spectacle, where is the real?' it made me think about how much of what we are shown in everyday life is the full truth. To what extent is the media world manipulated to the point that we live in a media 'matrix world'. The media, in my opinion has a responsibility to contribute to the wider surrounding environment. What they report should influence people in a positive way so that whatever the crisis is the outcome will be aided by the public. I feel that the global crisis that is displayed in front of us but distorted to feed us a sugar coated view is not just one thing but several that sit hand in hand. Financial iniquity and increased national and global inequality are two factors that exist by feeding off each other. With the margin between the rich and poor ever increasing, people are nowhere near standing on a level playing field. With this difference of levels appearing in the financial world there is an increase in opportunities for the higher powers to feel no obligation or responsibility, therefore they are detached and more likely to take irresponsible risks.

This week it has been announced that the UK's unemployment rate has reached a 17 year high of 991, 000 16 to 24 year olds out of work. It is reported that the banks have pumped £200bn in to the economy by buying assets such as government bonds, in an attempt to boost lending by commercial banks but where is the common mans gain. There is no obvious and tangible increase in the jobs market which is so desperately needed. As seen in Badiou's essay 'no one even thinks of nationalizing a factory that runs into difficulty because of competition, even though thousands of people work there,' The lending of money can only benefit to a certain degree but how can you pay back a loan when there is no opportunity of a job.

Jonathan Meads article on Zaha Hadid appears to me to fight two sides of an argument about whether she is here to break from mistakes of the past or if she is an irrational and unexplained product that people buy into. Meads describes her offices 'like a factory'. A factory that churns out what the consumer desires, rather like a designer item. Are people buying in to a product and is it suitable for its use or to be admired as a sculpture?

The article is very forceful and at times seems to attack Zaha in a slightly sarcastic manor. She is a character whose personality is as known as her work. Her confidence is speckled with arrogance that makes us question her process seeing as how she never fully divulges her method. I find it hard to believe that she thinks she is not influenced by her surrounding historical environment. 'It is as though the possibility had never occurred to her' and that she has no rational explanation for her buildings. It is said that there are no original ideas any more and that all thoughts have been influenced by our surrounding whether we are aware of it or not. For every idea you come up with, there are probably ten other people in the world executing that same idea.

“There are no original ideas. There are only original people.” – Barbara Grizzuti Harrison