THE writing has been on the wall for a considerable time but few people seem interested or concerned enough to read it. However, the message is becoming increasingly clear; so clear in fact that not even the blind - and by that I mean those who will not see - can miss it. This country is skint. The more perceptive Irish call it 'fiscally ungovernable.'

What other interpretation can one place on the astonishing events unfolding on TV nationwide as county halls are besieged by crowds of council employees fearing redundancy and council tax payers facing a punitive rise in their bills.

In Blackburn that represents a 17 per cent increase; in Hyndburn a relatively modest but nonetheless unwelcome seven per cent. Both local authorities put forward cuts in central government funding as the main reasons behind the increases.

Councils across the country are threatening jobs cuts in an effort to save money, thus placing still more people on the dole.

The predictable political in-fighting has the Labour Party accusing the Tories of deliberately starving Labour-controlled councils of cash while the Tories hit back with accusations of Left Wing profligacy.

Much nearer the truth is that Central Government has only a certain number of thumbs with which to plug the fiscal dyke and no matter what platitudes Chancellor Kenneth Clarke likes to trot out for the media, the dyke is in danger of collapse.

As more and more people, particularly the young, enrol on the state benefits register, fewer people have the ability or desire to pay direct and indirect tax in the form of Income Tax, Value Added Tax, Council Tax, to say nothing of mortgages, electric, gas, water and telephone bills.

To attempt to underpin a social services system already costing billions AND promise income tax cuts is an act of almost criminal irresponsibility.

You don't need an honours degree in accountancy to conclude that you cannot pay out what you have not brought in. And as the number of contributors to the nation's coffers - willing or otherwise - diminishes by the hour, so does its ability to pay.

How can people already weighed down with mortgages and domestic bills be expected to find the extra for the council tax without making sacrifices in other areas - like eating?

How can councils meet their responsibilities of providing a public service if they are so desperately under-funded? We all know what happens if we get a significant snowfall: chaos on the roads because of a lack of gritting, etc.

We may yet reach the nightmare scenario when too few with an income are asked to pay for too many without. What happens when those giros stop dropping through the letterbox? Who will bail us out then, Mr Clarke? Not even George Orwell could answer that one.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.