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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MG arrives in Indonesia…

MG logo

I'm on the way to the office and come to a stop in a traffic jam. 

Nothing unusual about that. 

But looking over to my left and I see this:

MG showroom Jakarta

WTF!

MG – 100 years of British legacy!

Argggg!

I instantly recoil and have flashbacks to the halcyon days when MG was actually a UK company that produced unreliable and rusty ‘sports cars’ that were nonetheless stylish and had CHARACTER.

And now?

Well, the MG brand is no longer British and is instead owned by the Shanghai-based Chinese state-owned automaker SAIC Motor.

Their cars, like nearly all modern cars, have no character but are probably highly reliable.  The complete opposite of what they used to be!

SAIC Motor’s MG cars that are sold in Indonesia are currently imported from Thailand where a plant has recently been set up by the Chinese company.

However, the cars do not come cheap in Indonesia and the MG 4 EV sells for a mouth-watering Rp649.9 million, for example, while prices for the conventional petroleum fuel driven MG 5 start from Rp347.9 million.

I’m not sure there will be too many buyers.

Looking ahead, MG cars will also be produced in Indonesia. The assembly lines are expected to start operating in the first quarter of 2024 at an expanded plant owned by Wuling in Cikarang near Jakarta.

MG’s life story is nothing special, of course, and pretty much chronicles the post-war industrial decline of the UK where spineless politicians are only too willing to sell off the country’s heritage. Hell, these bastards would probably sell their own children if they could get away with it.  In other national absurdities, British passports are not even printed in the UK anymore (Poland) while the England football team’s jerseys are made in Bangkok, Thailand.

Just how long until everything is confined to the history book as a 'legacy'?

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