I think it could get really nasty -- 'mob' nasty.

This is a post from the House Price Crash forum.
I've been reading this website quite regularly for the past six months.
Its a very interesting place to read about the current financial shenanigans.
There are also outlandish posts like this which are food for thought...


Post by Dissident Junk 13/10/08

Something is not right, there's a presence somewhere, something waiting to be born.

I know I sound utterly nuts (I don't often speak about these things because I know I sound nuts), but I tend to be able to read how things will pan out politically and culturally, what is inevitable and what isn't. I have wondered whether it is a "Blink" thing -- you know that book by Gladwell? -- because I have spent the last ten years of my life utterly submerged in political, cultural and social analysis in both my work and social spheres, so maybe my feelings are a form of subconscious process of analysis that then make me feel something 'instinctually'.

But, nevertheless, I told people in 2000 we would see race riots in the North -- they laughed at me -- and we did. I said we would see a terrorist attack on British soil -- they laughed again -- and we did. I became convinced that the implications of house price rises meant something rotten at the heart of our systems, and that they had to crash and it would be horrific -- everyone laughed at that -- so I found HPC and realised I wasn't alone, and now we see it all panning out.

And at the moment, I just feel this 'presence of an absence', something really strange, bizarre and -- you use this word yourself -- surreal that is about to come to pass. I can't explain what it is or what it will look like. This feels like the calm before a very weird and insane form of storm.

I guess, putting my rational hat on, that there has been too much social, cultural and financial change in the UK in too short a time. There has been a loss of a sense that anything is stable, or works to understood parameters and theories. When things seem so subject to change like this, then people do not know how to 'predict' their best course for the future, they find it hard to make informed decisions, everything becomes uncertain, and with uncertainty comes unease, a sense of vulnerability, a sense of anxiety and then panic. And with panic comes the loss of morality, the loss of civilised behaviour.

I would say that the size of the ultimate reaction relies on two factors: one) to what extent people have repressed their reactive impulse over how long, and two) how much pressure has been placed upon them.

And it is this that bothers me. The last eight years have seen a political environment where dissent or challenges to the existing ideological position have been stifled, quashed or just ignored; modes of reaction to events from both the government and media has felt very muted in proportion to the significance of those events (you can see this in the official responses from situations as disparate as the raft of teenage stabbings, for example, or the response to the Bridgend suicides to the terrorist attack on 7/7 and the blatantly preposterous nature of the housing and credit boom. Even the response to the J-18 or the May day riots, which, when you think about it, were astonishing really as public displays of youth disaffection, seem now to have been dangerously non-existent).

These official responses have served to mute public reaction, but they do not dissolve it. Instead, it is stifled but continues to grow in its smothered state as new events add to the keg of discontent. And more and more things just keep adding to the keg: high migratory patterns (both immigration and emigration: the impact of emigration upon those left behind is never discussed but also has quite significant social and psychological consequences), taxation, financial instability, even things are small as a lap-dancing club opening in a small market town can really unsettle people.

And we seem to have seen a lot of this type of change, and reactions to it have been stifled.

It bothers me. And I know that the way things are going simply cannot continue. Too much change, and too much pressure. I think the keg is going to blow soon. I suspect the outcome will be some form of ideological paradigm shift, but I think it could get really nasty -- 'mob' nasty.