extractorfan wrote:The atmosphere of the PS forum has deteriorated since the stop EU migrants thread. Sure it's been heated and attacking on occasions in the past but it's an almost constant thing now.
The way I read Biff's post was that we are not going to see hoards of homeless people whether house prices rise or fall as there is x amount of housing stock that isn't going to sit empty, nothing more. I didn't read anything that suggested Biff thought anything in particular about renting versus owning, just merely pointing out that people shouldn't get worked up to the point of being hysterical about these things.
OK. I agree that the atmosphere has deteriorated, and wish it had not. However, I also wish that Biff would stop posting the kinds of things that provoked myself and SteveCook to respond in the way that we did. Unfortunately I think this is a sign of things to come as the standard of living in the western world deteriorates in the coming years. It is going to be one of the defining characteristics of the post-peak world, as the people at the bottom of the wealth pyramid get ever-more desperate about their own future even as the ecological/sustainability situation continues to deteriorate.
There are some clear common factors between the argument in the EU immigration thread and the debate in this one. It's exactly the same attitude that set off the response from me here as there. I understand that Biff was making a point about homelessness and the comparitive numbers of houses and people. The problem was that at the same time he described house price movements as "a distraction", which really does sound like he doesn't think it matters very much. The common factor between this and the immigration thread is that it matters much more to poor people, who are mainly concentrated in urban areas, than it does to wealthy rural folk like Biff Vernon. He apparently either doesn't understand what reality is like for the poor in the UK, or he doesn't care. And he also does not appear to be able to take on board that he comes across like this (because he keeps on doing the same thing.)
He responds to what we say by claiming we must be misunderstanding what he posts. And yet when I go back and read them, they still appear to be saying the same thing to me. It still looks like he doesn't understand what it is like to be a poor, urban-dwelling person in the UK, or doesn't care. If he was a Tory, this would not bother me - I'd just despise him like I despise them, but I wouldn't waste any effort getting upset about what he posts or trying to change his mind. But he isn't a Tory. He claims to be a socialist and an environmentalist. That causes me a major problem, and leads to big arguments.
