The Utopian Dream

It's strange, yet also more than a little exhilarating, to realise that virtually all of those things that one used to be able to so easily do, to perhaps take for granted, will often become beyond-attainable within the realm of one's dreams. 'Exhilarating,' in that one may temporarily escape one's ailing mortal coil; yet is it not perhaps also a mite wearisome in that, upon waking, one is so swiftly to be reacquainted with one's (or life's) stagnant limitations.

I often find, for example, ensconced within my own dreams, that I am once again able to fully participate in the recreational Godsend that is cricket, or to travel more freely to environs anew, whereby all manner of avifauna might inhabit the pristine forests, but never so furtively as to prevent a perfect observation of these selfsame creatures.

In my dreams life's insolubles tend towards the more amenable. Would that life were even remotely as yielding.

Now that I am, once again, fully awake, no longer bowling perfect inswingers to a series of technically perplexed batsmen, or busily acquainting myself with all manner of exotic-looking birdlife, I find that, awake, life is very much more of a give and take affair. An affair whereby the 'giving' is rather too frequently brought about as a result of an overzealous 'taking' on the part of others.

Thank you [Beta]

Is this really the wonderful free-market economy in which the wakeful I reside, within which I am expected to spend all of my non-sleeping hours, the 'perfect' dream of the enterprising capitalist? Perhaps we will revisit the term, 'enterprising,' again later in this blog; I feel it may be rather pertinent.

'My' ever-informative BBC informs me that I shall soon be required to participate in a tad more of that 'giving,' that another might yet again benefit through the act of 'taking.' My water, that created in order to sustain and support life, honed and perfected over eons by nature, has apparently further evolved; evolved an ability, no less, to differentiate. That such benign matter might have come to discriminate so, in favour of one over another, leaves me to ponder the pros and cons of the monetarist's dream, the entrepreneurial ideal, as set against the simpler and far-less-discriminatory world in which I might reside during the hours of my slumbers, my dreaming.

Water costs to rise by 3.5% over the next year, we have been informed. Regina Finn, operating on behalf of Ofwat- that's the lot charged with ensuring that all is well and good with the water market- pushed her little face up to the screen and smiled the smile of the eternal lie. Just to recap, Ofwat are the supposedly independent body who have been charged with ensuring that the water consumer is not to be exploited by the current anathema that is a water-providing business. A water-providing business, it's what God would have wanted! Anyway Regina, speaking up for those who may wish to partake of one of life's necessities, helped to clarify the situation.

And again, to [Beta]

What she said on the BBC- I scribed the short BBC interview verbatim- was, "They (Water Companies) cannot make unreasonable returns; they need to make fair returns because they need to be able to fund the huge investment that's needed to improve services for customers and we're making sure that happens at the best cost to the customers." Thank God that Regina has made the sacrifice of huge personal gain and chosen to speak up for the ordinary person; one can only imagine what she might have said if, instead of battling hard for the underdog, she were misdirecting criticism on behalf of the Water Companies that she's charged with keeping an eye upon.

So, to return to the concept of 'the enterprising capitalist,' that as required for the 'free'-market economy, such an economy that might reward a 'wise' investment, less so one more casually made. Cast aside, for the moment, any objections that might be levelled at such a system that chooses to reward the fortuitous guess, over honest hard work, and consider instead one that (supposedly) robustly endorses the art of gambling.

We would, of course, first need to level the field of play. Gambling could not possibly be seen to work upon a rigged surface. Site the Pakistani cricket team's recent disgrace, over the spot-fixing scandal. So, I would venture to suggest that the 'art' (it's not really an art, is it?) of buying shares in a company requires that, in a 'free'-market, shares might be seen to fall in value as well as to rise. Should losses never be incurred, then profits would also not be possible; that's just the way the Utopian Dream of the enterprising capitalist works. Forget, for the moment, that Thatcher effectively rigged the markets in order to dupe the general public into the free-for-all of shareholding, when all of the British utilities were sold off in the 1980s; she'd long recognised that within just a few years most of the shares would be 'safely' in the hands of her city friends. And so they were, and seem set to remain.

Thanks also, to cheltenhamborough

Thus, when all of those 'enterprising' would-be-Water-Company-shareholders decided to invest- and that's perhaps the key word here, 'invest'- they should really have been opting into playing an active role in the 'development' of the Water Companies, recognising that their money might be required to help to fund improvements and build towards greater profits. Whereas, what Regina Finn- 'our' guardian against exploitation on the part of these companies- seems to be saying is that spot-fixing in the 'free'-market is alive and kicking, thriving, raking it in, licensed-and-fully-endorsed-to exploit.

It's 'tough' in the business world! Free and 'honest' competition continues to 'contest,' in order to continue to deliver the best service to you, at the most reasonable and affordable of costs. And, one can only assume that operations within the Water Companies really must have been honed to virtual capitalist perfection, that during such times of necessary investment shareholding premiums should be expected to continue to deliver at 8%. And all in such times of manipulated austerity and fabricated annual drought. Who'd have thought it?

Thanks, on behalf of the oft-referenced tax-payer, who surely could not have contrived a better use for his or her money, to the 'honourable' Regina Finn. Thanks for striving, ever towards that Utopian Dream.