William Moore’s letter (Undoing Tory failures would cost billions, The Press, December 3) is timely and important. Every single part of our public infrastructure has been slowly stripped of core and regular funding during the last fifteen years, to the point where they are now set up to fail.

The quality and well being of the infrastructure of our society is now resulting in worn out public areas and cash-starved councils and Government departments, seriously undermining our morale. How can we possibly feel proud of our society at present?

Prison officers, nurses, health centres, road maintenance, nursery education and sure start centres, housing and homelessness, schools and social care for adults with disabilities and elderly people are just some of the areas where the evidence of the damage of the last ten years can be seen, wherever you live, whichever party you support. For instance, did anyone ever ask us if our social care services (e.g. day centres, home care, residential care) should be almost totally privatised?

Despite the recession, the gap between rich and poor is wider than ever. This is no accident and can be traced to the design of our public policies of recent times.

It is time we began to value our public services and to show it. We all need them all the time. We need to stop our begrudging, mealy mouthed rubbishing of public authorities and of paying taxes. The next Government, whatever its colour, will have an uphill struggle to even start to repair this damage; unless of course, it doesn’t care?

S Young,

New Earswick, York