A set of data released by the ONS passed most of the world by yesterday. It relates to the UK’s local government accounts, and in its own way it is as explosive as the situations in Illinois, California and lots of other places around the globe.

Under Labour, capital expenditure was let rip from 2004-2009, during which period it rose 30%. So too did the people employed in this sector – to 1.8 million. Nothing wrong with this if it’s affordable, and services improve: but research done by the Taxpayers’ Alliance showed that most residents felt their services got worse – especially those supplied by the police. And, as it happens, it isn’t remotely affordable.

Now that the economic environment has turned sour, income receipts in local government fell by a frightening 24% in the last fiscal year. Despite this, expenditure ploughed ahead at £160 billion – roughly the same as central government takes in straight income tax per annum. From 1997, real terms expenditure at local level rose a weasel-popping 58%. Even worse, three in five councils borrowed to fund expenditure last year: at nearly £60 billion, local government borrowing stands at almost a quarter of all assets. How mad was that in a 2009 context?

But there’s worse to come: there are 4 million people in the local government pension fund, and thanks to the skills of those investing it, the value crashed by 22% in just twelve months.

Nearly two-thirds of local government expenditure is funded by Whitehall, not the Council Tax. The chances of that level of subsidy remaining intact are zero. And the chances of local residents accepting huge increases in Council Tax are even less.

So to sum up, while local government income is falling and will fall further – and the employee pension fund value is heading south – employee costs have been rising, debt servicing costs will continue to rise, but both service levels and citizen disposable incomes are collapsing.

When I read appalling figures like these – and then the next day read articles by fluffies with all the commercial perspective of a Zimbabwean policeman – it makes me want to weep. Not because I’m Right wing by nature, but because one of the most disappointing discoveries of middle age for me has been the realisation that most people with fairness at the heart of their being can’t add up. They also couldn’t organise a prayer meeting in Tehran, wouldn’t know which way to hold up a balance sheet, and understand nothing about real people who have a life.

They compound this crime of ignorance by writing in every medium available about why none of this matters, and the answer is to spend our way out of it. The coming disaster will teach them all a terrible lesson.

The problem is, they won’t learn it.