JUST how cruel can they be? It's bad enough that Lancashire County Council is treating hundreds of old people like cattle in sweeping closures of dozens of care homes.

Bad enough that their residents are now living in fear, wondering what their fate will be. Bad enough that people who have given their lives making this country a better place face being uprooted from the place they call home.

Bad enough that they may be suddenly parted from their friends and carers they know and trust.

And bad enough that the shock of all of this may be enough to kill some of them.

But if all of this is the collateral damage that the county council is callously ready to allow as it still sticks to its plans to shut down 35 of its care homes, it is absolutely terrible that it is also ready to let old couples be split up after a lifetime together.

Yet such is the terrible prospect facing wheelchair-bound husband and wife Harold and Ann Hacking.

They have been wed for 54 years and have hardly spent a day apart in all that time. Harold is 83 and Ann 77. They have lived in the Castleford home for the elderly in Clitheroe for the past 10 years.

Now, in the draconian shake-up of old folk's care, they face being moved out while the place is refurbished. But not only will officials not tell them where they will be sent, they won't even guarantee that they will be together.

And, shockingly, they won't say whether they will be moved back into Castleford when it has been improved.

What an outrage! For heaven's sake, it's going back to the workhouse era when couples were torn apart like this!

Yet, says the county's heartless officialese, the consultation process is still on-going; nothing is definite and though they'll try to keep people together, they can't give any guarantees.

Don't they realise that these are people they are talking about, not cases or numbers?

If the leaders of at Lancashire County Council cannot give Ann and Harold Hacking an immediate cast-iron promise that they will not be parted, they deserve to be thrown out - along with these overkill closure plans.