CRIME RATES continue to rise. Schools, hospitals and roads are crumbling. The Royals are teetering on the brink of oblivion and the weather is as bad as ever. But we keep smiling.’ So wrote the author of the first health report in March 1993, when he summed up the state of the nation. And most of that still applies: hospitals are still under immense strain, if not more so, crime levels have spread and
