Look down from the 50th floor of your hotel in the Gulf port of Dubai and you can see 110 acres of desert that will be forever England.
Below you is a free trade area, an enclave with no taxes or customs duties and no restrictions on foreign ownership. That, in itself, is nothing special: Dubai has nearly a dozen already. But what's unique about the Dubai International Financial Centre, DIFC, is that Dubai's normal civil and commercial laws do not apply within.
Under a formal decree of the United Arab Emirates, and local laws signed by the late Ruler of Dubai, the two authorities that hold absolute power carved out an area from which they withdrew their own system of laws. The concept is breathtaking: here in DIFC, English common law reigns supreme - and under a British chief justice. Although there are some similarities to the Vatican, Hong Kong and even Gaza, it is thought to be the first time that any state has done this.
Could it be that the same peoples that gave us the modern numbering system (including 
