There's no such thing as a free lunch...Or is there?

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It's official. The next president of Indonesia is former army general Prabowo Subianto. Quite how the next five years will pan out is anyone's guess but hopefully the foreign pundits who always bring up his dodgy human rights record will be proven wrong. Nonetheless, on policy making, Prabowo's popularist move to literally offer the poor 'a free lunch' every day of the week does not augur well for the future. Such a policy - if it ever came to fruition - would cost a phenomenal amount of money and likely lead to huge inefficiencies (food waste) and poor incentives (make people lazy). Another concern is Prabowo's strong nationalist bent. Thus, in the possible event that he finds himself with his back against the proverbial wall in the face of stern economic challenges, there is a big chance that he will simply scapegoat foreigners. But he will have to be careful. Construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, for example, is highly dependent on foreign in
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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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