In an essay on ‘Equality’ Craig McGregor tells us that when he was a kid he was mystified by those tales where the fisherman’s wife or whoever would be given three wishes by the Good Fairy and she ‘always wished for crazy self-indulgent things like ‘ I wish everybody I touched turned to gold’, and of course it always rebounded on them ... and I always wondered why they didn’t wish for something more general, like wishing that everyone in the world ... should be happy every afterwards, because then nothing could ever go wrong again and the world would be a perfect place to live in ... all it needed of the fishermen and fishermen’s wives and shoemakers and others was a bit of imagination, and a bit of common sense, and just a hint of generosity ... Ah! the birth of utopianism.’