Perception is a strange thing, whichever way you look at it. 

What is said, what is heard, what is understood, what is inferred, what might become the lasting impression, can all be poles apart or any angle in between.

We are increasingly media-savvy – by which we mean media-cynical.  The standard rule when looking at tabloid headlines or TV commercials is to ask, ‘Why are they telling me this?’   At work we instinctively know that the ‘5 Values’ the organisation’s employees are now supposed to uphold are, in reality, the things that are perceived as lacking.

The depth of double-speak and the need for translation has never been greater.  Being transferred into ‘managed exit mode’ is pretty poor cover for getting the sack and downright ironic if you valued your job on the reception desk.

Such is the tangled web of layered meanings (alternatives to being honest, aka lies) that market regulators, those champions of competitive fair play and efficient markets, now feel the need to urge citizens to apply caution when buying anything from those whom they regulate.  Bureaucratic backside protection seems to be a growth sector in the current crunch as the outgoing tide exposes the real meaning of a lightly-regulated ‘efficient market’.

The banking sector does not, of course, hold a monopoly on ‘efficient market speak’.  EMS has run riot through all sectors of the economy.  We have been as economical with plain speaking as much as hopelessly profligate with EMS during the delusory build-up to the current confusion.

The perception of passive acceptance (and absurdist claims that no-one saw it coming) is in itself a measure of the ‘dissent deficit’ so elegantly described by The Observer's Ruth Sunderland.  All incoming Administrations act early to mark out how different they intend to be.  The message that dissent and evidence-based debate will now be welcome in the White House says much about the perception of the stifling power of last generation group-think.  It was saying that we’d allowed ourselves to drift in a world governed by regulatory Darleks croaking ‘All resistance is futile’.  Anyone not ‘on message’ very quickly understood the reality of asymmetric warfare.

Few now would try to deflect criticism from the FSA but it is blindingly obvious that regulators of all shapes, sizes and sectors have been expert communicators of EMS.  The all-pervasive notion of illusory competition, a pretence of choice, was required to create markets, to enable trading, so that market efficiency (or gambling) could relieve government from governing.  The impacts can be seen in the regulation of railways, energy, water, telecoms, radio spectrum and gas as well as the current spotlight on financial services.  Nor should we spare large corporate enterprises for their inability, or unwillingness, to challenge regulatory regimes that allowed those fantastic bonuses to be fuelled.

Beyond banking look, for example, at Ofcom – a regulator, at arms length from government, that has until recently operated without much policy guidance (governance) from above.  Their recent report on broadband performance was revealing but has not attracted much in the way of critical review. They report, as if it is in some way justification for lax market supervision, that their code of practice requires them to urge service providers to explain to new customers (the old ones presumably matter less) that they are unlikely to get even half of what they are buying.

How jolly nice of them to do this.  There’s no hint, of course, that it might be better to demand  that service providers charge for what they actually supply or compensate customers for under-performance.  No, the report settles for a litany of reasons why things don’t work like that around here – largely on account of infrastructure inadequacies.

To take action would, one supposes, be regarded as an unwarranted intervention that would offend the perfect working of their lightly-touched regulation of an efficient market that, in reality, gives us less choice, lower performance, under-investment and an economy operating in the slow lane relative to our competitors.

President Obama’s inaugural speech proclaimed, ‘that the ground has shifted’, the tired policies are due for retirement and the restoration of essential infrastructure investment includes ‘the digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.’ 

Here in the UK we need to look at ‘Digital Britain’ (and all aspects of essential infrastructure) with fresh eyes to see what is possible.  We need an urgent call for solutions, not for a host of reasons for doing nothing.

Delivering next generation infrastructure needs next generation investors with next generation regulation to serve a next generation economy.

Governments everywhere are belatedly waking up to the new realities and sometimes looking enviously to those countries where market efficiency was subservient to their citizens' needs.

'Market failure', that circumstance that those who could see the shortcomings had to test, prove and suffer from before anything blindingly obvious could be done to remedy the mess, has finally arrived.

As the failed regulatory models are sent to the sidelines, ask not for whom the bell tolls.  Your call is being transferred.

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For further commentary on the recent Ofcom report see 'The Hang-On Hang-Up Dilemma' published in the CMA editorial section of this website.

Ruth Sunderland is Business and Media Editor at The Observer .