True cost of oil wealth
From Mr Tareq Albaho Sir: I thoroughly enjoyed reading the article by Neil Clark on Eastern Europe ("East is Eden', 20 July). In particular, I liked his comments about how life in many ways is better there, but the fixation with 'money' and 'per capita income' blinds many people to this. This reminded me of a characteristic of Middle East societies, where I come from. A few decades ago, people in places such as Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were generally polite, well-mannered and extremely decent. With the massive influx of wealth over the last half-century, however, social graces have all but vanished, and people there are now generally rude and, ironically, badly educated. (The irony is that the number of university graduates has rocketed but general education and skills have plummeted.) In contrast, societies such as Egypt, Syria and others which have not had this 'affliction' of rapid oil wealth are still generally regarded as far more civil, or even civilised. Yet their oil-rich brethren deride them and treat them as secondclass humanity.
Perhaps there is some deeper link that justifies the traditional cliché of 'nouveau riche', and shows that the obsession with money that is rampant in the 'market economies' does come at a human cost, in addition to the environmental cost.
Tareq Alba ho
London W1
Previous page
