I’m in (snowy) Ireland where, according to the newspaper I’m reading, one in four mortgages is in trouble and yet the eviction rate is only 0.25%. In the UK, which is not going through a property crisis on anything like the same scale, the rate is 12 times higher. In the US it’s 5%. Something has to give.
But eviction (aka foreclosure) has terrible historical connotations in Ireland, much as the Highland clearances have for Scots. So on the one hand the current situation is unsustainable. On the other hand, it’s hard to see an Irish government condoning what ruthless English landlords used to do to their peasantry (aka my ancestors). Politics in Ireland is the art of the impossible. And meanwhile tomorrow is the start of the Cheltenham racing festival. Now there’s something really serious.
] is a paradigmatic exposition of the dominant narrative about technology – what one might call the Californian ideology – which sees computing technology as an essentially benign force that, over time, will iron out many of the economic, cultural and ideological divides that so disfigure our contemporary world. The basic message is that the internet creates a level playing field. And the freedoms that the network brings – freedom to communicate, access knowledge, publish and consume – will in time undermine the capacity of tyrants to keep their subjects in thrall. In this at least, the Californian ideology mirrors its Marxist counterpart, in that both believe that the state will eventually wither away.