Sky high Dubai

This month's Storycake award goes to the LA Times, for a superb article describing the sandlands as "a zany boomtown afloat in plastic fantasy, unbridled ambition and rivers of cold cash":

"Today's freewheeling Dubai is a bewildering stew of nationalities, a place where natives make up less than 20% of the population of about a million. It's also a place where politics is seldom spoken of — people are much too busy amassing cash and spending it as flamboyantly as possible.

"Misgivings rumble into the conversation sometimes. People wonder whether the go-go economy has enough real stuff underpinning it to sustain itself, or whether the real estate bubble will pop. Human rights groups have accused developers of exploiting thousands of foreign men who come from countries such as India and Pakistan to toil in the hot sun for about $200 a month."

Very nicely seasoned. A generous dash of sympathy for workers, a good dollop of cliches - "once-sleepy port of pearl traders and pirates", and a liberal sprinkling of traffic - "the Porsches and Jaguars and Ferraris are jostling and crawling along Sheik Zayed Road". And for a wonderful cherry on top:

"Lurching through the liquid turquoise of the gulf, hulking ships power-spray great arcs of sand, pounding it tight enough to make the man-made islands."