Say Hello, Wave Dubai

‘A FEW years ago, Middlesbrough mayor Ray “Robocop” Mallon might have visited Saddam Hussein’s Iraq to pick up a few ideas on zero tolerance policing.

The proposed new sands at Redcar

But, with Saddam gone, Mallon has gone instead to Dubai, a state where the death penalty and flogging are punishments available to the courts.

Middlesbrough has seen a 17% drop in crime under Mallon’s no-nonsense leadership, although he has still got a long way to go to match Dubai, which claims to be virtually crime free.

However, Mallon tells the Telegraph that it is not Dubai’s criminal justice system that he is seeking to emulate but its economic success.

He will be asking economic development minister Mohammed Ali Alabbar how Dubai has been transformed from a desert to an international sea and shopping resort in just a quarter of a century.

“I see parts of Middlesbrough and the Tees Valley as a desert, ripe for development,” he says.

And if they could only strike oil, then their problems would be solved.’

Posted: 15th, December 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comments (2) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink