I've a piece in the current issue about how commentators turned on the facile but essentially harmless presenters of "property porn" programmes after the housing market crashed. The scorn directed at Kirstie Allsopp reveals an abiding human trait to hate what we know. After the Second World War public opinion demanded the execution of Lord Haw-Haw because he was the Nazi propagandist they had heard on the radio, while remaining unconcerned that real criminals were escaping punishment. Similarly, after the economic crisis, mobbish commentators damned Allsopp, while the heads of banks and building societies who had lent recklessly, the ministers who had failed to build new homes and the Labour Prime Minister who had let the bubble inflate remained in office.

Fortunately, Ms Allsopp was not taken to Wandsworth Prison and hung by the neck until she was dead, but allowed to carry on broadcasting by Channel 4. Here's the piece.