@ipsquiggle the internet supercharged busybodyness I think. Before the internet, people who had an opinion on stuff that was none of their business could mostly just vent at their friends impotently. Sometimes they would get enough people together to make a stink but it took real work and so there was a filter on importance and widespread support.

Now political parties and other groups like them mine social media for social wedges they can amplify and exploit.

@ipsquiggle this has given me complex feelings. I think people should have more input into local development, I’m a proponent of extreme devolution. That doesn’t necessarily mean that people should be allowed to veto things because they’re different though, or chase a pub that’s been there long before they moved in out of the area on the grounds of noise.

@jon I think that localizing governance is pretty neat, but governance comes with obligation to find solutions and move forward; the "maintaining of neighbourhood character" is, if anything, an abdication of that responsibility IMO. That's why it bothers me so much.

@megmac Yeah reading all the candidate profiles this election (it's municipal election time in BC), "neighbourhood character" is definitely whipped out as a wedge even in sentences where it makes no sense. That's actually a much more sane (if aggravating) view than simply thinking one's neighbourhood is their domain.