We’ve just returned from a week on the west coast of the Isle of Lewis – as far north west as you can get in Great Britain and still find people living there.

(The next stop to the west is St Kilda and after that it's Newfoundland or Nova Scotia!) It certainly puts into perspective complaints that here in East Lancs we are off the beaten track.

But one thing is the same. Everyone complains that all the resources are being sucked in by the nearest Big Town.

We were staying in an idyllic spot (for visitors anyway) in Uig which is where the famous Norse chessmen were found in a local sand dune.

People there complain that the island's resources are spent in Stornoway, the only town over on the east coast.

People in Stornoway complain that Highlands and Islands development money tends to be spent on the mainland. People in the Highlands say too much gets sucked in by Inverness, the self- styled Highland Capital.

And in Inverness they all look enviously south to the Central Belt and Edinburgh.

We returned home to the doom and gloom spreading out from the party conferences with the threats that public spending and public services are to be slashed with the only debate being about how soon.

Of course people have to be sensible about spending but that is always the case. But Mr Cameron's proposal to slash spending at the heart of a recession is illiterate nonsense, which is why he is largely on his own in the world.

It's like the old practice of bleeding a patient to get rid of a fever (though the metaphor of Tory leeches does have some mischievous political attraction!) And now Mr Brown wants to sequester £13billion of local community assets owned by English Councils to pay off a bit of the national debt.

That averages out at over £37million per council! Of course there are big councils and small ones and boroughs like Pendle and Burnley are now at the smaller end.

But including the County Council it looks like some £50million at least that Mr Brown wants councils here to raise by flogging off ‘assets’.

What does he mean?

Bits of land? Swimming pools? Town Halls? Schools? It's more panic-stricken and damaging nonsense.