The Public Realm

 The end of the year seems a good time to compose an inventory of the state of the UK's public realm after 14 years of Conservative rule.

Prison estate: under-staffed, rat-infeed; so close to capacity that new government forced to release inmates to make room for  more recent offenders.    Courts:  buildings closed or neglected, insufficient functioning toilets for jurors, insufficient barristers, long waiting-lists (up to two years or more) for trials  NHS: Hospitals, crumbling buildings, long waiting-lists waiting lists           GPs: insufficient; few “designated “ doctors; 8am phone-call lottery.           Nurses; massive shortage; too few in training (result of abandonment of            bursaries.)           Dentists; completely unavailable in many areas.  Schools: restricted curriculum, arts/music etc neglected; crumbling concrete in bulking; shortage of teachers.. UUniversities: many on brick of bankruptcy; grade inflation; overseas students discouraged.  Local government: savage cuts to grants: forced to abandon vital services  (eg Sure Start)  Social care: long-standing problem left unaddressed.  Roads: pothole infestation  Privatised industries: Inadequate regulations  and rip-off dividends to owners (often foreign governments.) eg Water; sewage pollution;                                                      Railways; inadequate services; cancellations Housing: failure to build sufficient for affordable rent or purchase  Stock Exchange: flight of key firms from.  Money laundering: London now the word’s capital for.  Key industries and assets: sold to overseas buyers (eg ARM!)  Poverty: percentage of families in poverty increased.  BBC: Savage cuts to this world Class institution, especially the World Service  House of Lords: unprecedented number of new “peers” created; failure to reform  Democracy: restrictions on voting, reduction of powers of electoral commission.   IIn my view this list, or something similar,  should be brandished every time the tories calim to be ready to form a government again.  I'm sure I've not thought of everything: amendments and suggestions for additions welcomed.   for balance, is there anything that i is better at the end of 2024 tan it was in 2010 .  Well, we pensioners have done rather nicely, thanks to the Triple Lock (introduced at the insistence of  the Liberal Democrats, who played a noble but unrewarded part in making the Tores less bad than they proved to be  after the first years of tTory Rule, when they escaped from our restraining hand.)  But the basic state pnsion still compares very unfavourable to those in similar developed countries..) Anything else. . . ?