Seabee: "It's not only the respect & rights of the current property owners they need to think about - it's also Dubai's future. We're getting bad press overseas about these problems and poor building standards already. And that impacts not only property investors' confidence, it also impacts on anyone thinking of investing. If they don't believe they can trust the place, that it has integrity, they'll simply put their money somewhere else. And Dubai's future relies on foreign investors pouring the dollars in."

One of democracy's virtues is that it works slowly and in the open so much of the debugging of policy is down before implementation. One of the virtues of the rule of law is that it removes discretion. Discretion ain't all its cracked up to be.