I found myself being fascinated last night by the programme “Megastructures” on Channel Five. I saw it a couple of weeks ago when they documented the construction of the Millau Viaduct, the tallest vehicular bridge in the world but last nights episode was about the spectacular and as yet unfinished Palm Islands in Dubai.

The islands first really came to the publics attention after all the news stories covering the fact that the planned luxury homes went on sale in 2004 and were sold within three days to people who obviously have more money than sense (the Beckhams and other members of the England football squad for example). The construction of the artificial island was very impressive: thousands of tonnes of snad was dredged up from the sea floor and “rainbowed” into place to create the impressive formation of man-made islands.

Of course, being sand and being man-made, it is prone to potential problems such as, well, it’s sand and sand is notoriously difficult to build on until it’s been compacted and is nearly solid. Then there’s the sea which has a habit of moving sand around with the ebb and flow of the tidal current. They’ve already found that there have been problems with the design which, fortunately, they could correct before they’d gone too far. And as a side benefit, there’s been an increase in aquatic life in the area. I say benefit but they did point out that new species that don’t normally frequent the area have started popping up and I’m sure that that’s always good for the natural balance of the local ecology. But at least they’ve set up some artificial reefs for recreational divers which sound very appealing.

Despite the fact that the first island, Jumeirah, is still not quite complete and there aren’t any people living on the island and dumping their crap into the sea, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai was so impressed that his idea (I believe) has started having such a good effect on the local sealife that he’s commissioned two more artificial islands; Jebel Ali, which will look similar to the Jumeirah but have one of the Princes poems spelled out by board walks around the “fronds” of the palm, and Deira, an artificial island planned to cover a bigger area than Manhattan. Oh, and then there’s the artificial archipelago that will be built in the shape of the world.

I think the Crown Prince is being somewhat ambitious personally. Sensible thinking would have at least advised waiting a few years to make sure that the first island actually worked. All the way through the program I couldn’t help but think about a hymn we used to sing at primary school, taken from Matthew 7: 26-27. It was about a wise man who built his house on a rock and a foolish man who built his house on the sand. “And the rains came down and the floods went up and the house on the sand went splat!”

Then again, I have a funny feeling that I’ve seen the encumbent ruler of Dubai before and he might not be someone to upset.