Anton's Ideas

If I appear to keep disappearing: I haven’t posted anything for six weeks! the anaesthetic must be stronger than the doctors realise. So instead of having nightmares I shall merely share the press release on my recently published novel, James and Jacqueline which is now in book stores and available on line.

New book is a tale of love, organized crime, phobias and university life
Anton Wills-Eve tells the story of ‘James and Jacqueline’ and their wild romantic adventures

UNITED KINGDOM – Two people, lost in the dizzying maze of life, haunted by the vicissitudes of fate and gripped by their myriad fears, come together and find strength and solace in each other’s presence in Anton Wills-Eve’s new novel. “James and Jacqueline” is a tale that follows the eponymous couple’s romantic hijinks – and the myriad personal, mental, familial and criminal crises they face – which begin within the walls and halls of an English university, and eventually reach all the way to Paris, the city of love and light.

The lovers start off broken by their respective phobias, which dominate their lives, and are initially defined by how they face their circumstances. James believes that God is his greatest aid, while Jacqueline cannot accept the idea of any creator who could make her so cruelly ill. He suffers from agoraphobia, she from claustrophobia, reflecting their similarities and their polar differences. Their meeting is fateful, and eventually they fall for each other and face the challenges before them, which range from dogmatic doctors, the difficulties of living and working in the university, the loss of loved ones and parents, and family involvement in a major crime syndicate. As they go on this arduous journey, they are changed by each other and by the hardships they encounter, the courage they muster as they fight against their inner demons, and the help they get from those who come to their aid. Lives are threatened, anxieties and neuroses inevitably manifest, passions and emotions run wild, and appalling revelations emerge as the couple makes their way towards the end of the story and their journey.

At once touching, exciting and humorous, the story of “James and Jacqueline” shows readers how to live with a serious anxiety neurosis while being faced with moral, romantic, family, criminal, religious and social crises. Wills-Eve’s unpredictable tale, and the flawed characters populating it, contains something of everybody’s concept of true love and life.

For more information on this book, interested parties may log on to http://www.XlibrisPublishing.co.uk.

I am not going to indulge myself this year in telling you everything that is going to happen in 2014. This time last year I got seven of my top ten forecasts hopelessly wrong, so I am restricting this year to three dead certs.

Firstly sport. I am tipping Argentina to win the world cup if, and only if, they have to play Brazil before the final, or some other country knocks Brazil out for them. A quarter final match would be the best time for Pope Francis’ XI  to meet and beat Brazil, probably 2-0 or 2-1. The final should be Argentina v Germany or Italy and a 1-0 scoreline after extra time is the most likely result. But all this does not say who I would LIKE to win the trophy. Being a Scots Australian who was born in England and educated in France and  Switzerland, I have to stick with my favourite soccer team. Italy! I don’t know why I love the Azzuri, I just do. It’s like my support of the Pittsburg Pirates which probably stems from my favourite uncle being a native of Pennsylvania who taught me the game in exchange for cricket lessons. But  if Italy win I’ll be happy and if Argentina win I’ll be richer. Oh, and while on the subject of sport, this year the British golf open is at the Royal Liverpool links at Hoylake. As the tenth hole is only 784 yards from my home I shall be glued to the television that week trying to spot  my house!

My second forecast is in the field of politics. I have a very strong feeling that David Cameron is going to call a snap election just when the Eastern European immigration crisis is coming to a head and the Tories will squeeze back in, this time in coalition with  UKIP who should pick up at least fifty seats. Election to clash with the golf? Heavens, I hope not!

And finally an entertainment forecast. Absolutely nothing new that is worth watching for even five minutes will break out in our sitting rooms  anywhere in the English speaking world. As far as drama is concerned 2014 is going to reach a new low in the world of the small screen.

Right, that’s the forecasts over, so all I have to do is wish everyone a very happy and enjoyable, above all enjoyable, year and for those of you who are so inclined I would be very grateful for a short prayer that my cancer hurries up and disappears. I am beginning to get a little fed up with it. Thanks.

All the best.

Anton

Very soon now we will be into 2014 and marking the centenary year of the first world war. It must have been wonderful a century ago today to be looking forward to a New Year in which most people in the western world feared that conflict might soon break out between Germany and Britain, if not more countries, but safe in the belief that the power of the British Empire would soon crush any military threat from Kaiser Bill. We were invincible in those days, or so we believed, and could see no further into the future than a week or so ahead  because the world was not going to change and we ran it. What lessons have we learned since then?

To start with, we forgot that our power and wealth were based on the money we had accrued from  our great days of industrial invention which spanned the century from 1770 to 1870. From then on, approximately, we were living off the wealth which our lead in the means and the source of everything we needed to maintain our place as top nation were, by 1914, dependent on owning our colonies and sitting back and enjoying the fruits of our forefathers’ labours. The Germans, on the other hand, had spent the whole of the previous 100 years from Waterloo in 1815 to the start of 1914 in gaining supremacy in continental Europe where only the French could keep up with them, and again only because of their colonial possessions . The Franco-Prussian war of 1870 to 1871 should have told us to stamp on the German threat then. But as most of our rulers had German relations we had neither the interest nor the inclination to do this. When the United states produced the first working aeroplane at the turn of the century the whole world should have seen that the New World was about to become the New Top Nation as well. But those who did just sat back, again, and lived well off what they had. It was obvious to a blind man that the balance of power was moving but those who could have made sure this balance was carefully monitored and controlled for the good of everyone did nothing. And then there was another element that effectively changed the world in the last half of the nineteenth century.

Industrial wealth and colonial exploitation of sources of wealth were only made possible by the use of very poorly paid workers or slave labourers. Two works which changed the world’s approach to the poor appeared in the 1850’s and 1890’s. The first, Das Kapital, by Karl Marx advocated a complete change in the world order and the levelling of all social orders under what came to be known as Communism. But this was a doctrine opposed to the possession of money or almost any property and thus also was against any religious teachings which allowed people to hold what they had. The great encyclical of Pope Leo XIII in 1891, Rerurm Novarum, (concerning the new order of things) laid down for the whole world the first sensible rules governing the rights of workers and their duties to their employers, and the duties of these employers to treat their workers humanely and pay them a negotiated living wage. This idea that a trade union need not be anti-capitalist, but on the contrary a tool for making capitalism work better for the good of all, ultimately became the central idea of all political parties which used the word liberal in their names. But it took a war which killed millions of working men, but very few rich employers, to awaken the average citizens of all countries to the plight of workers globally.  Unfortunately it also stigmatised the people who owned and controlled the means of workers’ earning their living and, by being ignored by too many governments for too long, led to the forty five years of dreadful Communist oppression in Asia and Eastern Europe from 1945 to 1990. If a Tory government had been returned to power in Britain in 1945, instead of a Labour Party with a huge chip on its shoulder and no concept whatever of world affairs, it is most probable that Communism would never have been allowed to survive in Eastern Europe and possibly even China.

Yet today we can look with hope upon a different world map to that of 1914. Islam controls the majority  of the world’s wealth, and for the same reason as we and the United States, did 100 years ago. The ethos behind its method of ruling the countries it controls does not allow for the inhabitants to have a say in what is or is not right concerning how the ordinary citizen conducts their own life. We did this in Asia, Africa and the West Indies especially, but today we do it nowhere. Islam has another 623 years to go to catch up with our concept of democratic government and we can only hope that it will not take this long for it to change its ways. If it does not I greatly fear that the third world war will be between Muslims and the rest of the Industrial countries. But personally I suffer from optimism and do not believe that the average Muslim would let this happen. At least it is my fervent hope and prayer for the next hundred years, even if I will not be around to see whether I am right or not.

I have no idea how many people ever read my posts and poems but to those who do I wish a very happy, healthy, holy and enjoyable Christmas. Tomorrow is the celebration of the birth of our Saviour and I was very upset today to read the lead story in the Daily Telegraph pointing out just how persecuted Christians are in our modern world in their own country. I have no idea whether reminding people that Christianity is how God wants everyone to live, and how all other religions just get in the way of making this possible for so many people, is permitted or not in our politically incorrect country. There is no reason I can think of why I should not be allowed to say that I love all my fellow men and pray for them every day, while at the same time reserving the right to preach the gospel as God wants me to no  matter how many other religions it may contradict. The greatest tragedy in Britain in my lifetime has been the way infidels, and by that I mean people who do not share my Faith, have been encouraged by so many people in authority to claim their right to preach heresy with immunity, while Christians  are not allowed to point out that these doctrines are false.

So my main resolution for 2014 is to do all I can to work towards changing the law in this country so that everybody can preach what they believe without the fear of being fined or imprisoned as they are now. I do not wish any members of any other religions, or people who do not claim to have a religion, any ill will at all. Quite the opposite; they are all God’s creatures and for that reason they should be allowed to hear and decide for themselves  whether the Christian Church preaches the truth or not. I believe it does and I do not recognise any person or organisation’s claim to say they have the right or the power to stop me telling all my fellow men that this is so. Therefore I repeat my message. Have a happy and holy Christmas and make your resolution next year to help bring about tolerance in everyone’s heart no matter what they believe or how they worship.

God Bless you all.

Anton

Censoring the Internet.

Given that the internet has slowly crept up on the world and taken over the role of ‘communicating medium en chef’, without anyone really appreciating what that role would ultimately control, we are now faced with a world in which half the population have access to some form of hardware that allows them to read, watch or talk to , with, against or at each other. The question that has to be asked today, therefore, is should such freedom of ‘access to communicate’ be controlled by any government or international organisation or should everyone in the world include among their civil rights the right to post or publish, preach or pray on, to, for or at the world as a whole, without being subject to a regulating body? I can think of no argument in favour of either giving total freedom of expression or exercising any degree of censorship or control in this matter at all. The Wikileaks farce that the US took such exception to was a wonderful example of how if there is one body that should never have this power it is the military, in any country. If a security system is as easy to penetrate as the emailed information contained in the Wikileaks messages then the US armed forces should thank all the people who demonstrated how insecure their military intelligence was. At least in Britain we only allow deliberate disinformation to reach the press. But the main point at issue here is should censorship of communication be enforced when it is done to protect the young, the old, or the mentally ill? Yes it should.But only where defence of the most vulnerable members of society is at issue.The picture (above) demonstrates better than anything why censorship never works. This is an image which any normal person would look at with perhaps fleeting interest and not give it another thought. But if I was to tell you what it represented to those who had already been told its significance and, more importantly, the message which it carried instructing those in the know how or when to act in a particular way, you would be horrified. But how could any censor, who was not previously primed to expect and then interpret such an image, be able to say whether it should or should not be shown? They would have an impossible and meaningless task. Would someone please tell me how to regulate the displaying of such iconography. I know that it desperately needs to be done. But not how !