BMTH live in Jakarta 2024

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This time around Ravel gets it right and BMTH (Bring Me The Horizon) are headlining the Nexfest festival in Jakarta which also features Babymetal. In this format there is no seating - which makes for a much more intimate experience - although you do have to arrive really early if you want to pick a spot right up close to the stage.  We arrived about six hours before BMTH were scheduled to start their performance and bought plenty of drinks to stay hydrated in the tropical afternoon heat (mind you, some of those were Iceland vodka mix!) This was a gig I had long been looking forward to - especially after the debacle last year. Not everyone likes BMTH of course. For deathcore fans the band sold out. For metal heads the band is not purist enough. And for the wider mainstream audience, the band is too heavy. You can't please everyone of course but there are few bands in the rock world which can match the sheer emotional velocity of BMTH. To bring metal and even aspects of metalcore t...
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Putera Sampoerna’s £115m London casino bet

Last week a few British newspapers picked up on a very juicy piece of business news indeed.

So incredible in fact that I didn’t bother to cover the story as I thought that it would soon be covered by other bloggers such as Yosef Ardi who does such a great job in digging up dirt in the murky world of Indonesian business and politics.

But as of yet nothing. And nothing in the Indonesian press either.

So I guess I’ll be the first to break the news:

Putera Sampoerna, a former tobacco tycoon, has made a £115m approach to buy Les Ambassadeurs, the upmarket Mayfair casino owned by London Clubs International!!!

If this is not taking the mick, I don’t know what is.

Just think about it: Sampoerna made his fortunate by exploiting millions of smokers in Indonesia and now he wants to buy a business overseas! Wouldn’t it be better for him to invest the money in Indonesia (around 2.4 trillion rupiah!) – where many people still live below the poverty line - and create jobs here rather than see such a huge amount of money flow out of the country? Isn’t this the least this dollar billionaire could do?

Apparently not. And his choice of business raises the eyebrows too. Not because casinos don’t make money, but because gambling is illegal in Indonesia. So this little deal isn’t going to please the conservative elements in society one little bit - if it is accepted - especially as religious tensions have flared recently following the Danish cartoons controversy.

I just wonder if the Indonesian press is deliberately holding off on this story.

But then again, why would they?

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