Dubai’s shops need to offer more variety

Dubai needs more small shops offering new brands, a reader says. Other topics: breakfast venues, Air India, energy saving, child safety

Dubai needs more small businesses offering new brands, a reader says. Tom Dulat / Getty Images

Dubai needs more diversified shops (Smaller Dubai malls feel the pinch of saturation as mega shopping centres dominate, March 7).

Enough of those big brands that you can find everywhere with the same items.

Open the doors to small independent businesses that can bring us diversity and new brands with smaller inventories. Then people would go shopping again.

Benoit Rochegude, Dubai

Few cheap breakfast venues

I don't believe that residents in Abu Dhabi pay less than 1 per cent of their daily income to eat breakfast (Business of breakfast: Abu Dhabi's is the most affordable in the world, March 3).

Average breakfast at Mugg & Bean, for example, would cost you about Dh45. So are they saying the average daily pay is Dh45xDh100 = Dh4,500? If you worked 20 days a month, your monthly pay would be Dh90,000 per month.

Jase White, Abu Dhabi

What kind of study is this and how would the outcome benefit society?

Khalil Khazaleh, Abu Dhabi

Women-only seats? Why?

I wonder why Air India introduced women-only seats on its domestic flights to give female passengers "more choice and comfort" (Air India all-female crew flies around the world and into the record books, March 6).

You mean to say the airline will block a section for women even if it means many of those seats might go empty? Who comes up with these ideas?

If you are so uncomfortable sitting next to male passengers, then don’t travel.

With every step forward some people seem to be willing to take 100 steps back and others encourage it.

May I suggest that men and women be educated on how to behave? Perhaps then they wouldn’t have to worry about such choices.

Jean Francoise Ng Lewis, Dubai

What to learn on saving energy?

Regarding the news item Sharjah housewives to be trained on energy-saving tips about the home (March 7), what is possibly there to be guided on? Change your light bulbs to energy efficient ones, turn off the lights in rooms when they aren’t occupied and keep air-conditioning above 24 degrees.

Anything below this temperature uses a lot of electricity. I’m all about saving energy, but there needs to be a nationwide campaign that will cover a wider range of people in a short span of time.

Beth Angharad, Dubai

Child safety is everyone’s duty

It’s everyone’s responsibility to make sure children don’t have access to life-threatening substances (It’s all too easy for teens to buy dokha in Dubai and Sharjah, March 6). They include cigarettes and shisha, which many think are not so problematic.

Momen Khaiti, Abu Dhabi

Tax on dokha (The use of dokha in the UAE must be regulated, March 7)? It’s produced domestically, so levying tax on it is not an option. But if that is still considered, then fast food should also be taxed.

Aouse Al Anee, Abu Dhabi