Yearly Archives: 2011

Will the new crime website have the same impact as school league tables?

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Last week the government introduced a new crime website – www.police.uk – where we can find out the level and type of crime on every street in the U.K.  This is meant to keep residents informed with what is going on in their area.  It should also help us to keep the police accountable for how they spend their time. This information has always been available but it was a bit more complicated to find before and less publicised.

It’s great if we all have more information so we can help our communities to be safer and better places to live.  My worry is that it will have the same impact as school league tables – www.education.gov.uk/performancetables

There were always schools of varying success but once school league tables tell you that your local school is on the bottom of a list then you will look for a school at the top of the list.  Many house moves have occurred to facilitate access to better schools.  Similarly there have always been varying amounts of crime but once these lists are compiled then the differences will be clear, and lots of individual decisions will probably lead to more low crime and high crime areas, with a lot less in between.

I hope that I am wrong and we continue to have diverse communities where we look out for our neighbours and work with the authorities to keep our communities safe.

It is true that some people have a fear of crime that is out of proportion to reality and finding that crime is lower than they think should be helpful.  However there are others who don’t want to think about the reality of crime and believe it wont happen to them and for those these statistics might increase their anxiety.  As a counsellor I know that such anxiety affects people differently and needs to be worked through.

So, how do you feel about having such information available to you?  Will it help you be more involved in your community/neighbourhood scheme?  Is it just a tool to spy on people you know in other areas of the country?  Is it all a cunning way to get us involved before more cuts?  I’d love to hear what you think about it – please leave a comment below

Love after Love by Derek Walcott

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The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror,

and each will smile at the other’s welcome.

and say, sit here. Eat

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit. Feast on your life.

“Love after Love” from COLLECTED POEMS 1948-1984 by Derek Walcott. Copyright © 1986 by Derek Walcott. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC

Film: Inception

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I very much enjoyed watching Inception recently. The concept of the film is very intriguing as it proposes that we can infiltrate peoples’ dreams with ideas and convince them that the ideas are theirs. When said out loud it is hard to believe that this is possible – surely we all know what is our idea and what ideas we have picked up form others, don’t we? I have to admit here that it is not always clear: many of our ideas and actions are influenced by several people.

This is why advertising works. When faced with a new idea, in the correct package, we embrace it and buy in to it.  In the past we may have been able to trace our purchase to a particular iconic advert – Nescafe, and Boddingtons come to mind, but we now consume so much media that we can’t always remember where or when were presented with an idea. Human nature is social and we want to build relationships and feel we belong.  Allowing other people to plant ideas in our minds can help that process.  We do need to share our ideas and have them grow and evolve.

Maybe the only thing to take from this is to monitor what we watch and listen to. If we surround ourselves with negative input and half-truths then that will affect our view of life negatively.  If we surround ourselves with hardworking, engaged and forgiving people then our life would be very different from the previous scenario.

Another aspect of the film was about what we store in our unconscious, and how that has an impact on what we project onto the world. So, we think our unconscious is fully hidden but sometimes our behaviours say what is really going on underneath.  But how do ideas get into our unconscious?  Well that has been built up over time and through our life’s experiences.

Having watched the film I feel very aware of how fragile our mental health can be – and proud that I allowed myself to trust the film and go on the journey. I did not know how it would end but was very relieved by the ending. (It was completely absorbing and I don’t think it was because I was on a flight.)

At one point it transpires that one of the leading women enjoyed regular trips of fantasy which eventually lead to her losing her grip on reality.  This is not entirely surprising.

The movie also demonstrates: standing by your word, taking a leap of faith, and doing your best to hold on to your family. These are great values that we can all respect whilst recognising the challenges therein.

Another theme being explored in the movie is that of being haunted by your spouse after they’ve died or, you could say, struggling to put to rest the memory of a beloved spouse. It seems a theme Leonardo Di Caprio is keen to explore as it also underlies his other recent movie Shutter Island. Again issues of reality and fantasy are explored and we come to the thought that what is real depends on our perspective?

Have you seen the film Inception and how did you get on with it?