IF it was cocooned from everything else, the case for Burnley councillors giving themselves a 50 per cent pay rise -- already on the slipway with a three-to-one vote in favour ahead of next week's decisive budget meeting -- might just stand up.

After all, they have not had a rise for 12 years and the proposed increase roughly matches rises in inflation over that time.

But have not those seeking the spending of another £27,000 on themselves a lot of neck nonetheless -- since it cannot be divorced from Burnley Council being so strapped for money that the taxpayers from whom they are asking for all this extra are being lined up for all sorts of cuts in town hall services?

There have already been suggestions of shutting the Mechanics or Gannow Baths. Only the day before the council voted massively against independent group co-ordinator Councillor Harry Brooks' call for members to search their consciences and peg their allowances for next year to the present level, hundreds of mothers and children were marching on the town hall to protest against the proposed closure of after-school play schemes as part of the spending cuts.

And the very day that their consciences allowed members to seek a spending increase for themselves, the council was writing off debts of more than £60,000.

Not satisfied with this level of financial finesse, the council then went on decide against letting a trust take over the running of the town's leisure facilities despite having spent £70,000 -- in effect, for nothing -- on an investigation lasting almost two years into what to do and then opting for the status quo.

It may be that over 12 years and totting up the cost of living in the meantime, a case for a whopping 50 per cent rise in councillors' allowances can be made -- by potential recipients alienated by light years from financial reality and with skins as thick as rhinos.

But if just this past week's instances of the council's value-for-money performance is taken into account, I'd say that all that's owed is a trough full of apology to the townsfolk -- by councillors for having the flaming cheek to even imagine they are worth a penny more.