Clean Bandit: for Jeremy Cobryn and Azerbaijan
Compare and contrast the following news on Clean Bandit (the soundtrack for Marks & Spencer – the bands rider is Marks & Spencer mozzarella salads and quinoa) – fronted by a couple of poshos, including Grace Chatto. In 2017, Chatto wore a pro-Jeremy Corbyn t-shirt for a BBC broadcast. In a bid to retain its commitment to political impartiality, the Beeb blurred out the slogan championing ‘Jeremy Corbyn’, the former star of Iran’s Press TV. Chatto, a keen Corbynist, talked about that and the band’s headlining of Jez Fest. Chatto told the Huffington Post:
“Well, I think the BBC has shown, you know, they showed a really terrible bias against Jeremy Corbyn in the run-up to the general election, and that [censorship] was just part of it…
[Labour] had that huge triumph in the election, and I think the media’s been a bit different [since the election result]. But now the BBC bias is kind of like creeping back a little bit. I think, anyway…
“For me, I’m not that interested in reading newspapers, for example, so the Labour Live event is a really good way for me to engage in party politics and hear speeches and have discussions. It’s all changing.”
In 2015, Clean Bandit were at another politically infused festival: the European Olympic Games in enlightened Azerbaijan. That’s the country where “dissenting voices are practically absent from mainstream media and critical journalists risk arrest and imprisonment”.
“President Ilham Aliyev has been waging a relentless war against his remaining critics,” Reporters Without Borders said in 2017. It said “independent journalists and bloggers are thrown in prison if they do not first yield to harassment, beatings, blackmail, or bribes.”
Musical interlude:
Emin Milli had something to say about the The Games:
UK band Clean Bandit, the supposed stars of the closing ceremony, did not even mention their appearance to their thousands of social media followers…
The regime decided it would target the messengers, banning journalists and human rights activists from the Guardian, Platform and Amnesty from entering Azerbaijan during the games.
t seemed like a public relations disaster but perhaps Aliyev doesn’t care anymore. His people have even started issuing threats to Azerbaijanis abroad.
Last week, I received a message from Azad Rahimov, Aliyev’s sports minister: “We will get you wherever you are and the state will punish you for this smear campaign against the state that you have organised. You will get punished for this. You will not be able to walk freely in Berlin or anywhere else. You must know this.”
It would appear that Azerbaijani journalists and activists are not safe at home or abroad.
Something else for censorship-busting Chatto not to read about in the papers she doesn’t read.
Posted: 1st, July 2018 | In: Music, Politicians Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
