AFTER ten years of Tony Blair, the arguments have rumbled this week. Has Blair made Britain a better place or turned it into a worthless wasteland? Has the economy boomed and are we freer and happier, or are we over-regulated and cowed by intrusive legislation?

For the pound in my pocket, the country is better than it was a decade ago, but only by the slimmest of margins. Just think how much finer it could have been.

Tony Blair has been a good prime minister, not a great one. He has been a huge political success, in winning three general elections in a row, something unheard of for a Labour leader.

To many of us, he has not seemed like a Labour leader, but that has, conversely, been his strength. His lack of party ideology has let him press ahead without regard, and originally it gave him mass appeal. He has never pleased those on the far left, who still itched for the old class war, or those on the grumpy right, who pined for that romantic, fictitious idyll of old England, a rose-tinted place where everything was perfect.

Tony Blair deserves praise for the minimum wage, tinkering with the House of Lords, introducing devolution for Scotland and Wales, free nursery care, more and better paid nurses, teachers and doctors, the building of new schools (look around York and see how many are springing up), and the Freedom of Information Act.

Sadly, the NHS seems to be suffering more than ever, the doctors and nurses are grumbling, the teachers seem over-burdened with educational bureaucracy, the schools are funded by complicated public-private arrangements on the never-never, and the Government seems irritated with itself for having made so free with information.

Some will only ever remember Iraq, and the lethal dalliance with George Bush, something which is likely to provide Blair's lasting legacy. The Iraq war is supported by almost no one nowadays, with Mr T. Blair being one of few advocates to an increasingly lost cause.

So Blair good or bad? Oh, let history roll that one up, or let bar-stool orators declaim over their foaming pints or their chilly gins, if they can summon up the energy. History probably will have to decide, because for now most people are simply tired of Tony Blair, too weary of him to care.

And yet, perhaps we should distrust the present over-heated dislike of Tony Blair, so intense it seems to lack all perspective. Or indeed any memory of the long, threadbare Tory years that went before.

I'm glad he arrived on the scene, glad he made the Labour Party successful after years in aimless opposition; happy, too, that he has forced politics one tiny notch to the left, as witnessed by David Cameron having to tug the Conservatives into the middle ground, even if it is a muddled, over-crowded place these days.

This lingering shed of optimism has to be matched by a greater sadness that Tony Blair wasn't bolder and braver, that he wasn't prepared to take more risks and really ride the wave of popularity that swept him in ten years ago. That wave washed him up long ago.

SOMETHING which has got worse in the past decade is litter.

What a lot of it there is these days, as inconsiderate morons scatter the detritus of their lives all over the place, dropping packets and bottles, wrappers and packaging, scattering sweet-wrappers and masticated chewing gum.

Maybe litter seems worse the older you get. Whatever the case, the cause has a new champion, in the shape of Bill Bryson, the wise and witty best-selling American author.

Bryson, 55, was brought up in Des Moines, Iowa, lived in North Yorkshire, returned to the US, and has now settled back in England, in Norfolk. He was named yesterday as the new president of the Campaign To Protect Rural England, and is making litter a priority, complaining about the rubbish filling up our beautiful countryside.

Well, good luck to you, Bill. You are going to need it, because litter seems to be another modern addiction. Your original best-seller could now be titled Notes On A Small (And Very Messy) Island.