Worcestershire CC has won a judicial review over its plans for a ‘maximum expenditure limit' for supporting a person to live in the community – based on how much it would cost to keep the same person living in a care home.

I'm not sure ‘won' is the right word. Given unlimited resources, this case would probably never have come up. But Worcestershire CC doesn't have unlimited resources – nor do other councils.

Increasingly, public services are facing rationing.  What price should be paid to allow a single person to live independently, when a cheaper viable option is available?  Is Worcestershire violating human rights by taking away that choice – or violating the rights of other taxpayers by cutting their services to give choices to a single user?

Many years ago, long before the first graph of doom was plotted, I recall the then chief executive of Hertfordshire CC, Caroline Tapster, saying: ‘I am practising saying to people, "You'll just have to look after your mother yourself".'  And I'm sure that wasn't her only preparation for the cuts ahead.

The moral dilemmas bubbling up from the austerity measures are set to continue and grow.  Forget the NHS postcode lottery that we have witnessed to date.  There are more stark choices ahead.

Calculations based on the cost of care and treatment versus the quality and length of life may be made all the time, but as the bar lowers, we are likely to see more and more media coverage from the families involved, as they try to limbo underneath the criteria.

This isn't going away.  All the latest signs show young people are now less likely to tolerate high taxes than their older counterparts.  The public sector so beloved of the baby boomers could face a huge cull under generation ‘Y'.  The welfare changes so far have raised barely a whimper.

As we enter a post-dependency era, just how far is the public willing to go?  Who knows, but we can expect to see more cases like Worcestershire on the way