HAS the Labour Government abandoned places like Burnley and Pendle?

Or have they just made a huge "unintended consequences" blunder?

Numbers are notoriously difficult in public debate. Who understands the difference between 500,000, 5 million, or 5 billion?

Perhaps we can imagine the number of people needed to fill Wembley stadium or even understand phrases like "twice the size of Wales".

But when it comes to percentages it's, as my old Liberal colleague Lord (Ralf) Dahrendorf, says, "50% of the population don't know what 50% means".

And who is to get their mind round something with such name as the "regional housing pot"?

It's money that each year the Regional Office – in effect the government's district commissioner in the North West – hands out to councils throughout the region.

And this year it's possibly the biggest policy scandal that we in East Lancashire have seen for quite some time.

Yet it's about numbers, all very difficult to understand, all mangled up in political spin, and so it all goes by without much of a fuss. So far anyway.

What's happened is that the amount of money given to councils in this part of the North West has been slashed.

Burnley, Hyndburn and Pendle are down by a third with Pendle losing no less than £855,000..

Rossendale and Blackburn are also among the 13 councils that lose out, though by less than the others.

Of the 44 councils in the region no fewer than 31 get increases.

What's it all about? The letter that went out with the allocations is full of New Labour jargon.

But behind these garbage words the reason seems to be the government panic over how impossible their targets for new housing have become.

It is now government policy, it seems to encourage new housng on green fields in the suburbs and the countryside.

Will there be an up? of protest? Do they think we can't count round here?