By HILARY GAVIN
TO BE honest, folks, I didn’t watch Tommy Robinson’s flag-touting rally in London on telly yesterday – but I had to chuckle to myself when I heard the multi-billionarie X owner Elon Musk had dialled the Far Right leader by video link to address protesters by saying: “Violence is coming … you either fight back or die.”
Now, I’ve yet to fact-check this story, but I assume it’s true because it appeared in our national Press – and I couldn’t help chortling as I recalled the fictional British media baron Elliot Carver in the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies”.
If you watch the Classic Trailer YouTube clip of the United Artists distributed 1997 blockbuster (above), you’ll see Welsh actor Jonathan Pyrce – who played Hong Kong-born global tycon Elliot Carver – declaring: “Let the mayhem begin.”
Of course, September was a tumultuous month in that year as the nation bade farewell to England’s Rose Princess Diana following her tragic death in the car crash in the Pont de l’Alma tunnel in Paris on August 31st, 1997.
And, if you Google Princess Diana and Tomorrow Never Dies, you’ll discover online stories published at the tailend of the Naughties revealing that the late princess and her beau, Egyptian film producer “Dodi” Fayed, had planned to visit the James Bond Pinewood Studios filmset the following day.
Of course, the Princess Di/Royal Family/Mohamed al-Fayed assassination conspiracists must have had a field day hearing that snippet of information at the dawn of the Twenty-first Century. Does anyone know?
(Before I move on, I should like to extend “Dodi” the courtesy of addressing him in my blog post by his full name Emad El-Din Mohamed Abdel Mena’em Fayed rather than simply his nickname and British tabloid press moniker.)
Now, I’m not a dedicated movie buff but even I know that Drogheda-born Irishman Pierce Brosnan once played the English/British MI6 spy in the James Bond 007 movie franchise based on, and inspired by, Ian Fleming’s thrillers.
And, of course, people of my generation well remember the all-encompassing power that Aussie, and British Establishment-knocking, Rupert Murdoch wielded at his News International newspaper empire in Wapping in the late Nineties.
So, I presume many of you, like me, initially thought that Tomorrow Never Dies’ scriptwriter Bruce Feirstein must have drawn inspiration for his Machiavellian villain Elliot Carver from Murdoch? Well, apparently, I was wrong.
A quick squint at the countless online movie fanzines and real movie critics reliably inform us that Feirstein initially had The Daily Mirror news magnate Robert Maxwell in mind when penning his blockbusting script.
In reality, it seems Feirstein drew on both Murdoch and Maxwell in bringing the “Emperor of the Airwaves” Carver to life in Tomorrow Never Dies – but the film’s nod towards Czechoslovak-born Jew Maxwell is more overt.
To be honest, it’s a long time since I watched Tomorrow Never Dies – but I’m reliably informed that Carver used his M-shaped slealth yacht “Sea Dolphin II” as his lair to engineer a war between China and Great Britain.
And I’m told, online, that MI6 boss M (played by the indomiable English/British actress Dame Judi Dench) instructs Moneypenny to issue a press release at the end of the movie stating that Carver died “falling overboard on his yacht”.
For those of you who don’t know, pension-fund swindling Robert Maxwell’s body was found floating off the Spanish-owned Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean in November 1991 after he presumably fell overboard from his luxury yacht.
An inquest, held in December 1991, presided over by a Spanish judge, dismissed murder and suicide – with the official ruling being death from a heart attack combined with accidental drowning.
So, now I hear you cry, what does the South African-born Big Tech geek and US multi-billionaire Elon Musk – owner of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter) and Starlink – have in common with the likes of Murdoch, Maxwell, the Daily Express’s Richard Desmond and The Telegraph’s old owners the Barclay Brothers?
Worldwide media domination, perhaps, in both his and Rupert Murdoch’s case at least?
In all honesty it seems eons ago since we all began bedecking our houses and apartment blocks in Britain with Murdoch’s BSkyB satellite TV dishes. Saying that, I only recently got rid of my rusty old dish from the roof of my home.
Nowadays, it seems to me that a day doesn’t pass by without being bombarded by online adverts promoting Musk’s home Wifi Starlink at knock-down prices or even FREE introductory deals (see screengrab below).
Over the sixty-three years that I’ve been alive on Earth I’ve been too rebellious to regard myself as one of those folk who’s susceptible to cults of any kind – so I’ve never understood why Elon Musk’s gadget-loving fans idolise him.
As my handful of Facebook and LindedIn social media readers know, I’m having problems with both my EE/BT data roaming and wifi broadband signals at home in West Sussex so it’s tempting to bite the bullet and order a Starlink kit.
According to the ads, I wouldn’t need to call in a Starlink engineer to install a terminal and router because I can simply point the wifi towards the zillions of SpaceX satellites encircling our Globe.
Now, I’m not sure what some of my elderly neighbours living in Hunston are going to do because I know they don’t yet have home wifis and they still rely on their landline phones.
Only recently our parish council published the latest edition of their Hunston Voice newsletter informing villagers that the UK’s landlines will be switching over to digital by January 2027.
Apparently, this switchover might stop telecare alarms working so owners MUST contact their landline providers as displayed on logos on the public information “advert” alongside one for the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology.
Now, I’m not blaming our parish council, but years ago our UK Government would have broadcast a public information ‘What to Do’ film, possibly starring comedian John Cleese, on terrestrial TV whilst also posting explanatory leaflets through letterboxes nationwide.
How times change! Today, we’re not even given the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology’s phone number so we can call them to ask for advice!
And to think Great Britain once produced the world’s leading Industrial Revolution engineers and telecoms and electronics genuises, such as Alexander Graham Bell, John Logie Baird, Alan Turin and Tommy Flowers.
Excuse the cack-handed satire, but I can’t help wondering what Q Branch gadgets boffin Major Boothroyd would have had to say about it all as he briefed MI6 operative James Bond for his latest mission. I can only speculate, but it might have gone like this…
“Listen carefully 007, Britain’s really up against it now…
“As you know the madman Donald Trump is serving a second term as US president over the Pond, and his side-kick Nigel Farage is flying the flag for the Reform Party here alongside Tommy Robinson and his Far Right blockheads.
“Now we might have been able to contain the situation, 007, until this South African chappie Elon Musk fell out with Trump as his efficiency adviser because it appears that he’s out for revenge.
“I know M must have briefed you about Musk once telling his followers to be good Christians by ‘turning the other cheek’ but it seems he’s gone rogue and is now inciting violence.”
At this point, I can only imagine Q shaking his head in dispair as he tells Bond: “If only the free world hadn’t let Musk go on for so long without nipping his bid for world domination in the bud.
“You see, 007, I’m afraid Musk, as M has told you, is without doubt a megalomaniac who now has all the cards in his hands.
“Soon every home in Britain will have a Starlink wifi terminal and router, and yet the components and satellites are manufactured in either the US or Taiwan.
“It’s only a question of time, 007, before Musk’s satellites, routers, wifi kits and robotic Tesla cars turn on us here in Britain, so you know you’ve got a hell of a mission on your hands.
“Now, 007, this is the box of toys I’ve got to assist you…”
Eat your heart out, Bruce Feirstein! I reckon I’ve got the next James Bond 007 blockbusting spy movie script sewn up.
By HILARY GAVIN
- A public row is averted at Sidlesham Parish Council meeting over Bremere Rife culvert ‘flooding’ surveys and ‘scope of repairs’ – Hilary Gavin
- A public row is averted at Sidlesham Parish Council meeting over Bremere Rife culvert ‘flooding’ surveys and ‘scope of repairs’
- Public row over village culvert flooding averted at lively Sidlesham Parish Council meeting – Hilary Gavin
- Public row over village culvert flooding averted at lively Sidlesham Parish Council meeting
- Road safety campaign: Handing on the baton to the electorate
Hilary Gavin
Freelance Journalist & Writer
T/A Business ‘n’ Commas
6 Southover Way
Hunston
CHICHESTER
West Sussex
PO20 1NY
hilarygavin.blog
Email: hilarygavin@hilarygavin.blog
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