AND so, after painting a thoroughly black picture, someone has rummaged down the back of the sofa and rustled up some cash to save a few threatened services.

You’d almost think it was miraculous, had we not been here so often before.

The Conservatives will not like the comparison, but the last Labour Government made an art of floating ideas that were deeply unpopular only to “listen to the people” and come up with a compromise.

It was still something that would not have been universally welcomed, but it did fool some of the public that they were not that bad off after all.

So here we are in 2011 with a one-off pot of £450,000 appearing for Oxfordshire County Council to use to save some services.

The county is not alone in doing sums based on a worst-case Government settlement. It would have been irresponsible to do otherwise.

But for such a sizeable sum to fall suddenly into its lap does make you question the accounting.

We say to all affected groups, please pitch for the money if it can do some good. But don’t fall over yourselves believing it is only down to the budget fairy being in a good mood and sprinkling some magic money our way.