[ekkeke]

I believe (though I don't have the evidence for it) that we likely see a similar phenomenon in the UK. House prices seem to have become the most important thing to the home owning class and they selfishly oppose anything that would affect them negatively, whether that be HS2 or new house building programs.

This is not current generation I might add, who I believe would be quite happy with a shake up. It's previous generation of 50 years olds and over that have brought this about.

[frosted-flakes]

I was interested in HS2 after seeing stuff about the Elizabeth Line, so I watched some YouTube videos about it. In my eyes it seems like a great project despite the high cost (easy for me to say since I'm not British), but holy smokes, the amount of people in the comments poo-pooing it with comments like below is absurd.

"It breaks my heart to see such needless desecration of our beautiful countryside for this catastrophe!" -- the video in question was drone footage over wholly unnatural farm fields. That will return to being farm fields once construction finishes, with a 20m strip of train tracks running through it. Of course, they didn't mention the existing motorway that was also in the shot.

"An obscene use of fossil fuels, environment, and money for something we don't really need." -- About a train that will use zero fossil fuels and will lessen demand for cars. Really.

Also, a bunch of people saying it's useless because it won't have a station in their town. It's a high-speed line, of course not! The whole point is to make local services faster and more frequent by removing express services from the existing over-crowded lines.

[ekkeke]

Yup, exaclty. We seem to have become a nation of landlords seeking to turn a profit without an ounce of effort, rather than the industrious country we once were.

[api]

It's the same in a lot of US cities, but to play devils' advocate: this generation was basically told that their home was their savings and in many cases their entire capability to retire or take care of their health and other needs in old age is tied to the value of their home equity.

We dug a very, very deep hole by treating housing as an investment instrument and it's going to be hard to dig out.

[antod]

> This is not current generation I might add, who I believe would be quite happy with a shake up. It's previous generation of 50 years olds and over that have brought this about.

I have my doubts. I suspect in 25yrs time it will be the same old story with the current generation becoming the previous generation.