Dubai labourers offer new package for journalists

DUBAI: A gang of enterprising Dubai labourers have banded together in a new initiative to assist international journalists. Misery-U-Like LLC  has been billed as a ‘one stop shop’ for global press looking to investigate the living and working conditions of workmen based in Dubai’s labour camps.

Bilal Tungsten-Tip, CEO of Misery-U-Like, promises the new organisation would offer unrivalled resources for Western media planning a “warts-and-all” expose of life “behind the glitz and glamour of Dubai”.

“Me and the lads were getting sick of all these do-gooding media types, with their fancy Moleskines and Blackberries, coming to our camps and crying with distress at our sanitary facilities, before jumping in a rented Hummer and heading back to their all-expenses-paid luxury beachside resorts.”

On Misery-U-Like’s website – which went live yesterday – there is a breakdown of services offered to journalists. The basic ‘We’re Being Exploited Senselessly’ package for a knock-down introductory rate of $10 gives at least two quotes from labourers describing their pitiful lives. “We’re talking your typical ‘We just want to go home and we haven’t seen our passports in months’, kind of thing,” said Tungsten-Tup. “Plus you get a couple of photos of bored-looking blokes in their underwear thrown in.”

For those prepared to spend a little more, Tungsten-Tip offers the ‘Platinum Exploitation Package’, which allows the stricken journalist free access for an hour to a labour camp and interviews with up to five fully-prepped inmates who can give quotes that will have Western readers sobbing into their organic breakfast porridge. “Also, you get the surefire misery-shot of a labourer staring sadly at a dog-eared photo of his family,” he said.

Finally, the ‘VIP Diamond Super-Exclusive Iconic Package’ promises the ‘ultimate labour camp experience’ for high-end media outlets. For the princely sum of $30 and a phone card, Tungsten-Tip promises a night’s stay in a specially desecrated luxury suite at one of Dubai’s most notorious camps, infinite photo opportunities with wistful labourers staring into the distance and access to an online library filled with stock footage of Westerners enjoying a hedonistic all-you-can-eat brunch. “And we guarantee to really mess up those toilets,” smirked Tungsten-Tip knowingly.